Sunday, August 30, 2009

On the Right

I am of the opinion, that while I believe it to be good policy to limit the size of government, a fixation on reducing the size of government and lowering taxes does not produce an efficient government. I fear that too many people have taken on a tax war without understanding taxes. Believing that governments should be small and not overly taxing on the people is not the same thing as believing that governments, and the taxes that support them are inherently bad.
I believe a far more important discussion than how we should cut taxes, is to discuss how taxes are raised and how they are spent. To do this however, one will need to overcome their instinctual resistance to taxation. Consider the following, unless you are considering cutting taxes in half, governments will continue to spend much more money on programs supported by taxes than the people will save on tax cuts. If the right continues their fixation on tax cuts and reinforces the rhetoric that lower taxes create better governments I fear the result will be a government that continues to waste billions of dollars while its financial stability erodes.