I pretty much agree and that's pretty much what I said. The taxes being paid don't go into the same tax pot so they're paying taxes to different entities but the source is still taxes. I don't see it as belittling to say that government employees are tax consumers. My son is a government employee and as such is a tax consumer, not a tax generator. Does his labor have value? I think so. Is it a necessary government function? Not really....it could be performed by the private sector and probably have the same value.Charlies.Contingency wrote:It depends on the way you look at it. In your simplified form, pretty much, they don't pay taxes. When you complicate matters with what taxes they pay, the money goes in several different directions. So a government employee IS paying taxes, because not all of those taxes are going back to the "pot" that pays him/her. Considering where the money routes on the way back to the account that pays him/her, it's so minute that it may not even be a calculable number. Taxes go to pay a lot of things. So money paid to a government employee that is returned to the government in the form of taxes does go back to the government which paid the employee, but it's so terribly complicated it's not worth discussing.VMI77 wrote:You can disagree with the premise but it doesn't change the math. The source of the funds used to pay the taxes are taxes. If a government employee works for X and he pays Y in taxes his real salary is X-Y. His "taxes" went right back into the same pot that paid his salary (this is an obvious simplification since there are different taxing entities than the one a given employee works for, but it's still just bookkeeping). It's a fiction that is maintained largely because it simplifies the accounting, since taxes are assessed by a variety of different taxing authorities. I'm not suggesting there is anything nefarious about it or that there aren't government employees whose labor earns their salary.mojo84 wrote:I disagree with this premise completely. If one trades their time, effort, labor and expertise for money, that money is their's and any taxes taken out are taxes paid just like we pay. Now, if we were talking about the government agency itself, I would agree.VMI77 wrote:Government employees can't pay taxes. If I give you $100 and you give me back $10 have you paid me $10? Paying taxes with tax dollars is nothing more than bookkeeping. This reality infuriates many government employees but it doesn't change the reality. If all your income is from government employment paid with tax dollars, you don't pay taxes. You're a net tax consumer, period. Those who are privately employed are net tax providers.louisf1 wrote:Are you saying public employees don't pay taxes? Please explain yourself better.Richbirdhunter wrote:As a private sector person, I earn everything my family needs plus enough to help fund the government, there's isn't a single government employee that pays for everything his family needs plus the needs of others. That's why they used to public servants. Not to mention how insulting it is that same public employees are union members as well. The taxpayers pay the salaries and union dues. To protect the government employee from the government.3dfxMM wrote:You being a taxpayer doesn't distinguish you from them. They pay them too.Richbirdhunter wrote:I'm just kind and respectful, but I'm not a very formal guy. On the otherside of the coin, I've never been addressed as Taxpayer Rich by any government employee before. It would be nice to be shown a little respect for all of my hard work too.
Also, I disagree with your premise that if one labors for money that the money is theirs. This may have been more or less true prior to 1913 but since then, not so much. The only limit on how much of your labor the government can appropriate is the prevailing political consensus. And not only can the government directly appropriate your labor in monetary form, it can, does, and is appropriating the labor of your children and grandchildren by the subterfuge of deficit spending. In the not too distant future when this whole house of cards comes tumbling down you may also see the product of your labor expropriated in a bank bail-in --if you have funds in banks or equivalent institutions.
BTW, my oldest son works for the government, so don't construe my remarks as bashing government employees.
The premise is correct in a sense, but it's accuracy is not quite right. I don't like to think of employees/workers as consumers though, because to me, that belittles everything that they do.
So, why isn't it? If it was a private function the industry itself, and hence, those choosing to buy its products would have to pay for it. Instead, everyone has to pay for it whether they buy the product or not, making it in effect a subsidy and therefore a benefit to that industry. And that's what a lot of our current government is...a vehicle for socializing costs for the corporate interests with sufficient political power while allowing the privatization of profits. Corporate rent seeking.