Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
If I take something from you and use it to pay for a benefit for someone else, that’s a zero sum game.
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No, not necessarily. If the government taxes people and uses the money to build freeways that spur economic growth, you can expect net benefits to society. If the government taxes people and uses the money to buy explosives which it uses to destroy stuff, you can expect net losses to society, notwithstanding the great jobs created from building the explosives. (Note that the last is like a lot of military spending, except that there we externalize the costs of the blown-up stuff.)
It's like you dropped out of introductory economics after the first two weeks, and missed all the good stuff.
eta: Your predilection for seeing what government does as zero-sum explains why you are so temperamentally sympathetic to conservatives.
