{"id":36559,"date":"2016-12-15T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T06:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36559"},"modified":"2016-12-07T09:16:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T14:16:57","slug":"qotd-why-reducing-the-size-of-government-is-so-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/15\/qotd-why-reducing-the-size-of-government-is-so-tough\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Why reducing the size of government is so tough"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t want smaller government. I\u2019m a libertarian; my ideal government is about the size of one of those miniature dogs that have to wear coats all the time because they don\u2019t generate enough body heat to keep themselves warm. The problem is, the voters don\u2019t want smaller government. They\u2019d like to pay lower taxes, of course, but they go wild if anyone suggests cutting any sizeable portion of the services that those taxes pay for. By and large, politicians have refused to cut spending anyway. And without doing so, you can\u2019t have a tax cut in any real sense, because to spend is to tax (eventually).<\/p>\n<p>Megan McArdle, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/view\/articles\/2016-12-01\/trump-tax-cuts-a-bad-idea-with-a-bright-future\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Trump Tax Cuts: A Bad Idea With a Bright Future&#8221;, <em>Bloomberg View<\/em><\/a>, 2016-12-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t want smaller government. I\u2019m a libertarian; my ideal government is about the size of one of those miniature dogs that have to wear coats all the time because they don\u2019t generate enough body heat to keep themselves warm. The problem is, the voters don\u2019t want smaller government. They\u2019d like to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,53,41],"tags":[550,118],"class_list":["post-36559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-libertarianism","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9vF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36560,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions\/36560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}