I'm Amazed

That's pretty good.

The problem with that is that there are a number of services provided by the government that may not have obvious benefits to society, but are in fact vital.

For example, in the US, they have NASA. Now, if a person didn't think a good space program was important, they might object to their taxes going to support it. However, the space program has provided a number of benefits over the years in the form of new technologies that would not have been explored without it. Doppler Radar helps in predicting the weather and saves thousand of lives every year. New inventions from the program are later sold in the private sector, stimulating the economy (and going back to the government in the form of taxes).

Public education is another example. A man without children might say, "Well, what's all this doing for me, eh?" However, if only the rich can afford good education, then the country ends up with a shortage of well-trained workers in a generation or so. There will be fewer people to work important jobs that require some education as well as a lot more people on the dole. As well, idle youth are more likely to turn to crime than those who have education to keep them busy (especially if they haven't even the prospect of employment in the future).

How necessary the bail-out is, and under what circumstances it should be are under debate, but it is not merely there to help out millionaires. If the economy collapses, everyone will suffer. People will lose faith in their money (which, like a god, is powered purely by belief). It is rarely the millionaires who starve, when the banks close. Does Randywine have money in the banks? Would he like to see that money again? That is what is potentially at stake if the banking system collapses. It might not happen, even without the bail-out, but that's what the bail-out is intended to prevent.

This is why representative democracy was created. People typically do not know what's best for them in many situations; not because they're stupid, but because they don't have the time to research every issue and try to guess what the ramifications of each decision might be. Thus, people are elected to office, and it becomes their sole job to try and puzzle these things out and help their constituents understand their decisions. Whether or not they perform these duties satisfactorily is an open question, but that is their purpose.

Everything that Ba said. To measure in what terms tax payers without children, for example, profit from supporting public education - and a good public education at that- we'd have to have lived in a society that doesn't.

By the way, here in Germany, a lot of "socialist" elements were "built in" at a time where there could be no talk of wealth or even luxury to distribute - right after the Second World War, when most children didn't even get enough calories at home, the state decided on free education, and support for all political refugees that entered the country, and that everyone who had to live off the state for a while should be supported by society to a degree that not only fed and housed them, but also enabled them to read newspapers and books and participate in public life (can't say that's still the case today).
The idea was to keep them well informed and integrated, and by doing so, keep the democratic state safe and alive after it had combusted before after a majority of its people had been radicalised (to the right and to the left) in times of crisis before.

Twelve years prior, the first German democracy had collapsed, making room for a genociding and war wielding dictatorship. The point of publicly financing a lot of things like culture, health and education was that this way, a certain stability was provided - not only to each individual but to the society as a whole.

I think there might be a reason why, despite sometimes very high tax rates, the last two generations before me never really complained about any of the quirks of public tax paying like my generation sometimes does - providing for schools, or for an army, or for welfare, or for pensions, when there is nothing in it that concerns themselves directly.
They may have remembered living in a state that did a lot worse, whereas we think how much better everything could be. I think constructive criticism is somewhere in the middle, but I also fought for better grade schools long before I thought I'd ever have children, because I think that's the most classic example for how we all profit from giving money for something we will never need for ourselves anymore.

I didn't support high quality education for children because I like children -I do - but because that makes it more likely some of them will become the good doctors I may need some day, or build cars instead of robbing them, or just push my wheelchair, or write good books... :wink: who knows.

Sure there are always bad examples. People permanently on welfare, wether it be their fault or not, weren't planned, thus the welfare of today has been cut down to provide only food and home. The drop of birth rates also males it necessary to re evalue the pension system, and a number of other things.

But another good example that has already been mentioned is health care. I too like having it, even if I could technically pay for our three visits at the doctor per year by myself. (We earn 1400 right now and pay 250 for health care each month because we count as freelance employers. In other circumstances, the employee would take over part of it.)
On the other hand, when we had our daughter, it was nice not to be bankrupted by the complications and the delivery. Now we're (in turn so to say) healthy, non smoking, alcohol abstinent individuals that don't complain about paying, in small amounts, for other people's unhealthy life stiles, if it happens to work out that way - eating habits, drinking, smoking, mountain biking without helmets**, whatever - partly because often such debates get it just plain wrong*, partly because what we get in return is safety: Knowing we won't be billed more than a certain amount when we get hurt in a car accident, or that we don't have to rob a bank should our daughter get seriously ill and need an experimental therapy, or just knowing that we live in a society where no one has to send bills out to people who were hurt in a violent crime.


*Footnote: The debate about overweight children in Germany, who will one day all need treatment because of related illnesses (or so we are told), is one example how public discussions, resulting in political measures, get it wrong. The actual numbers say that despite the media showering us in pictures and documetnations about overweight children, the number of overweight children and their weight didn't really change that significantly over the last 25 years (in Germany, that is). It's just that the 50 or 60 year old decision makers in the West as well as the much younger decision makers from the East of Germany see/perceive more of them because when they were children, the calorie intake was still restricted in more homes, involuntarily so, and the kids were slimmer - not always for the right reasons. What really changed during the last 10 years is the rising number of medically underweight girls, and to a smaller degree boys, between 10 and 14 years. But there is no perceptible interest in the trend, so one can only guess what the reasons are. But a generation of parents obsessed that they have to protect their children from overweight in order to safe them from being stigmatized might not be the best combination with that.

Mowgli. i checked that link.
Hilarious stuff.
This one f.e.:

The Daily Show could have written that.