[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 14:30:31 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 5/25/2005 12:39:45 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
>
> Help me think this one through, perhaps as a test case of whether or
not
> governments spend money wisely. On the face of things, the numbers seem
as
> absurd as umpteen hundred dollar toilet seats, yet more proof that taxes
are
> wasted. And yet every time I've looked into particular examples of
> government spending, I've found the mix that is familiar to most military
> historians: corruption, ineptitude, diligent good-hearted people doing
their
> best, confusion, muddling through. Putting civil servants in charge of
> anything has always been a risk, but as Mike says, who better to do the
> things that a conscience-less market will not do?
A.A. "Who better than" implies options. Those options are ...
Everyone here is well
> read on these issues, but should someone be casting about for a new
> perspective I recommend, rather than a tub-thumping lecture on nineteenth
> century social misery from someone like Dickens,
A.A. Dickens wrote of the world he lived in, the world of unrestricted
private industry. Do you call it tub thumping because it wasn't a very
nice life? Does reality not please?
the nuances of an annotated
> Pepys, a volume that might be sub-titled, "how to be a somewhat-honest
civil
> servant and still get on in the world."
A.A. Haven't read him. Were his circumstances more fortunate than those of
Dickens?
>
> So here goes. The latest "news" from Iraq is that Abu-Musab
al-Zarqawi
> may have been wounded. Stories about this "news" mention that the U.S. is
> offering a reward of $25 million for this man. I can see the very old
> fashioned notion here that it is a wise use of resources to offer a reward
> for one's enemy--getting someone to betray him is cheaper than finding and
> killing the fellow oneself. But why $25 million rather than say one or
even
> two million? Are we hoping a very large group of people will band
together,
> twenty five at a million apiece? Or are we reasoning that a man tempted
by
> a reward of one million dollars will be twenty five times more tempted by
> twenty five million dollars?
A.A. Royal messes are royally expensive.
Andy Amago
>
> David Ritchie
> Portland, Oregon
>
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