Which countries do you think have the happiest population?

Denmark consistently ranks highly. And Denmark has Greenland. Ergo we need Greenland to be happy. /s

The problem isn't spending, the problem is the rich don't pay nearly enough taxes.

Sure maybe? but more important to me is to lower my own tax burden

If you are competing for resources with billionaires, who's taxes also go down, you are losing money.

By that logic I am better off with lower taxes, since the government is a trillionare and moving the money to billionares is progressive.

The government is accountable (in theory). The government is a different kind of entity with different behaviour to a single human, or even a corporation. Your argument is a semantic one and was not made in good faith I think...

But if the government acted more selfishly , like a corporation (it's heading that way), then yes you are also competing with the government in certain areas. It partly depends if the billionaires in question and your semi-fictional idea of government are colluding directly. In which case you would be competing with a n-trillion dollars of capital for things like housing, some of which is controlled by billionaire beneficiaries. Essentially government monopolies are what you might be worried about, which do exist.

In reality the government also spends some of its money on infrastructure and other common-goods, which creates common wealth. The government (with central banks) also creates money so the idea of direct competition (which makes no sense to me outside of something like sovereignty over large amounts of land / mineral wealth / taxable subjects ) isn't so relevant.

But, more importantly, the thing important to Trump is lowering the corporate tax burden. Even more than he already had.

What specific time period and location before "vast income tax regimes and welfare states" are you talking about? And who gave money to what?

I'm referring to much of the Western world prior to 1950, and you see this behavior in the middle east today (obviously, they disagree with you about "the right thing"). This is usually enforced socially, by communities and churches.

The social safety net that governments provide today used to be a function of community charities and churches. Even modern healthcare has an analogue here.

That's not going to have an impact on the people who believe otherwise.

Correct, but now there will be not even a semblance of bipartisanship. It's not even enough to be a member of the same party, you must pledge full unwavering loyalty and never criticize the administration or face the consequences of being ostracized, attacked, power revoked, and prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ. The media, both social and legacy, are fully on board now too, the gloves are off.

Also, you can now commit crimes and then pledge loyalty in exchange for a pardon. See Eric Adams.

>you must [...] never criticize the administration or face the consequences of being ostracized, attacked, power revoked, and prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ.

It's not "never". JD Vance published a book criticizing Trump, and still got picked as VP.

By contrast, Tulsi Gabbard--who was the vice-chair of the DNC at the time--was run out of the party and tarred as a foreign asset for opposing Hillary Clinton and her desire to start a war in Syria.

That's somewhat of a myth that lets these companies off easy, there's no ruling that says you have to maximize profit at all costs, or at all to an extent. The sole motivator is greed.

Efficacy and product quality aside, I think that's the point.

Obviously the problem is that Red no3 is so prevalent and completely unregulated. Alcohol is sold separately and ID is needed to purchase and isn't added to children's food. If the dye was only sold separately in bottles this debate wouldn't be happening.

The water thing is even more unserious so I'll ignore it.

You can just buy or kill your competition via subsidizing your pricing. There's no appetite to legislate this anticompetitive behavior.

I live in a big city and unfortunately the local price gouging has gotten out of control. It's now often 50% cheaper to buy basics like aluminum foil and cereal on Amazon compared to even the discount dollar store.