Wasn't everyone fine before the DoJ, FBI, and CIA?

[Theb]

In a country full of naive college students with incredibly simplistic perspectives, you stand out as a champion.

 

[LegendKiller]

In a country full of naive college students with incredibly simplistic perspectives, you stand out as a champion.

That's what you get for being a spoiled kid who couldn't get into anything but a 3rd tier undergrad school.

 

[ShawnD1]

Even without crazies, as civilization progresses it becomes much more complicated. Much as I dislike the growth of government, it must inevitably also grow larger and more intrusive to deal with this new level of intricacy. Imagine tax law with the original size of government.

Due to technology, the government can be more intrusive and in your face without hiring extra people. When I filed my taxes a few years back, the government sent a letter saying I screwed it up, the following lines are wrong, your new tax return is this much. The letter also said how much I can pay toward my tax free retirement fund and how much tax credit I had left from education costs. They knew everything there was to know about my situation and it was all handled by computers. Back twenty or thirty years ago I probably wouldn't get any of that. Hiring armies of accountants would be too expensive.

Modern government is surprisingly small for the amount of money it manages. Things like medicare and social security are all handled by computers. They don't have people wasting an hour trying to figure out where the hell your file is. People don't sign or stamp checks or figure out how much the check should be for. It's all done by computers.

Of course that raises an interesting fact that people need to realize. There isn't some magical black hole that eats your tax dollars. The programs in place are very efficient...... at handing out checks. They pay SS checks to old people, they pay medicare checks to doctors, they pay welfare checks to poor people. The thing is all very efficiently run, but it's still brutally expensive because of all these checks. If people want to cut government spending, they can't just say "cut overhead" and call it a day. No, you can only cut the number of checks being handed out.

 

[werepossum]

Due to technology, the government can be more intrusive and in your face without hiring extra people. When I filed my taxes a few years back, the government sent a letter saying I screwed it up, the following lines are wrong, your new tax return is this much. The letter also said how much I can pay toward my tax free retirement fund and how much tax credit I had left from education costs. They knew everything there was to know about my situation and it was all handled by computers. Back twenty or thirty years ago I probably wouldn't get any of that. Hiring armies of accountants would be too expensive.

Modern government is surprisingly small for the amount of money it manages. Things like medicare and social security are all handled by computers. They don't have people wasting an hour trying to figure out where the hell your file is. People don't sign or stamp checks or figure out how much the check should be for. It's all done by computers.

Of course that raises an interesting fact that people need to realize. There isn't some magical black hole that eats your tax dollars. The programs in place are very efficient...... at handing out checks. They pay SS checks to old people, they pay medicare checks to doctors, they pay welfare checks to poor people. The thing is all very efficiently run, but it's still brutally expensive because of all these checks. If people want to cut government spending, they can't just say "cut overhead" and call it a day. No, you can only cut the number of checks being handed out.

Good points.