Do you think government(s) are efficient money wise?

[TopGear]

This is a spin off of the "US Debt" tread. I just would like to know how many people think the US government or any government for that matter is efficient financially?

I personally think it's a joke that someone who's elected into a position of governmental power takes on the budget. How can our government be efficient if they are the ones who control the printing of our currency?

Would like to hear your thoughts!

~TopGear

[Sith Lord 13]

A government has to run its own budget. Doesn't mean they're good at it.

[AnnaxSanity]

If the government didn't control its own budget, then who would? If a government is going to run things, it has to have control of its monetary flow, the people would be stingy and the government would be underfunded and couldn't run.

[scuba steve]

A government has to run its own budget. Doesn't mean they're good at it.

^ I agree with, Alex here. Who else would even be able to run it? You couldn't really trust a business to run the budget though could you? Sure they'd probably make improvements but they're not doing it for the good of the country they're doing it for profit.

[CaptainObvious]

I don't think the government is particularly efficient but I also don't think you can realistically call many parts of the private sector any better.

[ManyPearTree]

My dad, who is currently serving in Afghanistan, had half this months paycheck cut out because of the budget crisis.

So I think that our government has no damn clue as how to manage our tax dollars.

[Random3r]

im not from the us but as for england where im from,, i think the government is crap! they put the fuel prices up and up and we pay tax on our waige and then we pay it again when we spend our waige and then we find that it has been spent on crap,, the last thing they announced was that they were going to cut 1p off fuel prices :) yaay that makes the £1.30 per litre instead of £1.29 great!

[CaptainObvious]

im not from the us but as for england where im from,, i think the government is crap! they put the fuel prices up and up and we pay tax on our waige and then we pay it again when we spend our waige and then we find that it has been spent on crap,, the last thing they announced was that they were going to cut 1p off fuel prices :) yaay that makes the £1.30 per litre instead of £1.29 great!

ah yes, let's blame the government for the fact that oil prices keep going up, sounds smart.

[Continuum]

ah yes, let's blame the government for the fact that oil prices keep going up, sounds smart.

Here, it's totally the Government's fault for handing down the oil prices (http://www.journal.com.ph/index.php/news/national/314-bill-scrapping-oil-deregulation-law-filed) to greedy assholes. Don't blame me, even they can manipulate the public's money to suit their needs.

So no. I don't want anyone to handle my parent's tax money other than the government, even though we have the a pretty lousy bureaucracy.

[Random3r]

ah yes, let's blame the government for the fact that oil prices keep going up, sounds smart.

Hahahahahaha you clearly dont know that 60% of the price you pay for fuel is tax then??? and even if oil prices were going up how come we are the only country that pays stupidly high prices? whaen i went to ibiza we payed 80p a litre for fuel and it all comes from the same place :D

[CaptainObvious]

Hahahahahaha you clearly dont know that 60% of the price you pay for fuel is tax then??? and even if oil prices were going up how come we are the only country that pays stupidly high prices? whaen i went to ibiza we payed 80p a litre for fuel and it all comes from the same place :D

wrong, i'm not an idiot and thus obviously know that fuel is heavily taxed. however, the tax rates do not change on a daily basis and therefore short term price changes in the price of fuel have nothing to do with how much tax is on it and everything to do with market forces, worldwide expected supply vs. demand, and the like.

there are even countries that go the opposite way and subsidize fuel to make it cost less at the pump than it is worth on the open market. iran does that, for example. but it's wrong to postulate that most fuel price increases have anything to do with taxes.

[JohnHoper]

No, the government is not well money wise, but its them who has to do it or no one will... were gonna hve to wait for our generation to come in and fix this up. :) but to bad its gonna be hard to fix something that's already broken.

[Random3r]

wrong, i'm not an idiot and thus obviously know that fuel is heavily taxed. however, the tax rates do not change on a daily basis and therefore short term price changes in the price of fuel have nothing to do with how much tax is on it and everything to do with market forces, worldwide expected supply vs. demand, and the like.

there are even countries that go the opposite way and subsidize fuel to make it cost less at the pump than it is worth on the open market. iran does that, for example. but it's wrong to postulate that most fuel price increases have anything to do with taxes.

i can see what you mean and as you said earlier ''ah yes, let's blame the government for the fact that oil prices keep going up, sounds smart.'' i was never blaming the government for the prices of oil going up was i ??,, im blaming them for the stupidly high amount of tax that they put on to the final product! as oil prices may vairy from time to time due to demand or shortage etc this would make no big time impact on people if the price was reasonable in the first place (which its not) thanks to the government?? or is there people out there that DO like to get taxed once on receiving their waige and then secondly on spending their waige oh and then ofcourse thirdly if you plan on saving your waige in the bank youll get hit again :D yeh i can see how you can stick up for them robbing [email protected] and then we have that great justice system where most people will only do half the time of that they got,, everyone knows that if you plead guilty then youll get off easy because it saves everyone doing an investigation and so on... if only it was like America where you would get life that means life and death for such unhuman convictions that people have been known to commit!

Im not here to offend!! this is a debate that i have strong feelings against :D