Reducing wasteful government spending by 1/3

Imagine if we taxed ourselves to the tune of 19% of our income, then threw 1/3 of that away on nothing, besides murder or maybe enriching some government-connected billionaires.<br><br>Imagine if the government spent 5% of the economy, but most of that was tax money. Then 1/3 of that was just wasted on nothing. Imagine if we were charged for something we didn't need, and the government didn't even use it.<br><br>This is what government spending is.<br><br>The US taxpayers paid almost 20% of their money to the government. Yet we still had 5.7% of the GDP left over as government debt, meaning that the government spent more than their tax money. The government spent 8.6% of the economy.<br><br>**More than 2% of the economy was wasted by inflating prices and printing money to give a 2% discount on the government's projects, and to give the wealthy interest on their money.** This means that these projects didn't actually have to be done. Or they could have been done for cheaper. It also means that the upper-class got a 2% discount on their investments.<br><br>This is the cost of the government borrowing money from rich investors. Of course, the government doesn't default on debts, so this debt just compounds until the government goes bankrupt. There's no such thing as a debt that doesn't compound.<br><br>**More than 1/3 of the government spending was either military spending or paying interest on the government's debts.** This includes money that goes into soldiers' pockets, but also goes into the pockets of wealthy owners of defense contractors.<br><br>There are more opportunity costs of military spending. The government spent a lot of its early money on crushing the Native Americans and picking fights between the ocean states. Now the government is wasting its tax money on its "war on drugs" and "war on terror".<br><br>Besides that, 5% of the economy was for social services. That's 76% of what the government spent, and they still didn't provide basic healthcare or education. Even then, they still didn't provide retirement, disability, or life insurance, but were getting ready to send people back to work.<br><br>The rest of the government's spending was for things like government employees' salaries, infrastructure, science, and regulation.<br><br>The rest of the economy is private companies buying and selling things, which is 94.1% of the economy. Actually, it's more, because the government spent 5.7% of the economy, while it only collected 4.8% of the economy in taxes. That's a difference of about 0.9% of the economy.<br><br>**To put that in perspective, it's like if you charged yourself a 19% tax, and then spent 1/3 of that on nothing.**<br><br>The government has its own reasons for spending money. It's not always the same as our reasons for working for money.<br><br>Obviously we need a better government.<br><br>&#x200B;