> Citation needed. When Governments had lots of revenue, they assist the population with public services, which tend to benefit the lowest stratum of society the most. But the cumulative effect is to raise the quality of life of society as a whole.
> > Citation needed. When Governments had lots of revenue, they assist the population with public services, which tend to benefit the lowest stratum of society the most. But the cumulative effect is to raise the quality of life of society as a whole.
> Citation needed.
That's actually fairly uncontroversial. Small government fetishists insist that left unfettered the flourishing market and voluntary charity would more than make up the resulting gap, but any evidence to the contrary is generally taken as proof that we just haven't lowered taxes and deregulated enough.
The defense of Communism that it hasn't actually been tried for real yet doesn't make any more sense when applied in turn to laissez faire capitalism.
On the other hand, we have quite a bit of data about the broad middle ground, and it is pretty clear that the current settings for the US economy are that taxes are currently too low and not progressive enough (how much is a matter of some debate), and that we probably need to revert to Reagan-era levels if only to be able to afford to refresh and replace crumbling public infrastructure that has been a drag on the economy for a while (because putting off maintenance doesn't save money in the long run) and step up enforcement of existing regulations.
> Small government fetishists insist that left unfettered the flourishing market and voluntary charity would more than make up the resulting gap
I'm not making this claim. I'm making the claim that the government does not actually provide all the benefits you are assuming it does, so the "gap" you speak of, if it exists at all, is much smaller than you think it is.
I think most people simply aren't aware of how much inefficiency there is in government services or how much of their tax money does not actually go to benefit the people they think the government is helping.
If all we expected the government to do was to provide basic national defense (not aggressive foreign wars, just keep the US itself from being attacked), enforce basic common sense regulations (laws against obvious crimes like murder and regulations against obvious bad things like dumping toxic waste in rivers), and maintain basic public infrastructure (roads, bridges, public buildings, basic utilities, national parks), we would not have nearly as much inefficiency. The problem is that we expect the government to do much, much, much more than that, and the government does all those other things so inefficiently that, on net, it would be better if we left them to private entities.
I'd like to point out that regulations against dumping toxic waste into rivers (or enforcement thereof) is exactly the sort of government service that is most often targeted by the folks who are pushing for deregulation.
Anyway, feel free to advocate for greater efficiency in government, by whatever means, including public-private partnerships or full-on privatization. More discussion of what services are needed by society and how best to provide them is generally a good thing.
Citation needed.