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Originally Posted by Slava
Serious question though, does money solve these things? I look at our neighbor to the west who pay higher taxes than we do here, and frankly they're dealing with the exact same issues. It's extremely complicated.
And truthfully, I pay a lot of taxes. I think I'm pretty firmly average, and middle class. It's not some scheme where I have a super high income and at the same time have a 15% marginal tax rate. I wish! So every level of government is "only adding a couple percent" and the next thing you know your taxes are up 10%, and there's only one taxpayer.
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It's a good question and I dunno, I'm not an expert. I am certain there can and should be cuts to various levels of bureaucracy, and I'm sure there's tons of efficiencies that can be found by cleaning out old middle managers in some of these systems that are operating in protectionist fashion and unwilling to make changes, and then convincing everybody around them that no changes can or should take place. I am sure all of that is all true, and should be looked at. One example I can think of, using Nurse Practitioners instead of letting Doctors pretend they can't provide prescriptions or have no value; even though they obviously do. So yeah, work to be done on various issues with a competent leader that has some courage to make tough decisions and not just protect their group(s).
But you actually don't really pay that much taxes, relative to the demands our society has for the services. So it's just a function of if you're willing to let a pandemic shut down society for months and months (vs. maybe less), wait times of exorbitant length to get any care, potholes in roads, poor education systems and crumbling infrastructure. There's a lot of #### to pay for. I had a friend who's kid got cancer. Prior to the kid getting cancer, kind of sang the same tune, don't want increased taxes, etc. After kid gets cancer, all good! Knows that the insane amount of costs that went into saving his child's life- he will never, ever, pay back those equivalent values in care. Doctors are leaving, teachers probably need a raise at some point, ditto for nurses- gotta compete for wages with other jurisdictions.
There will always be a struggle and a dialogue to be had with what's the perfect taxation amount. Taxes never seem to go down either, which is a problem too. But after coming out the back end of COVID-19; I'm just not sure I can rationalize not increasing taxes or adjusting funding levels to health care and education. So, maybe you should pay more taxes, or consider it.