"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:bvfjd.610$V41.75@attbi_s52...
Well, I have a degree in economics, something more than "a few
courses".

Well, welcome to the "Land of Useless Degrees" -- as the owner of an English
degree, I can sympathize....

I also have a degree in software engineering. A little more useful
financially. But, I would disagree that economics is a useless
degree. It's helped my understand how many things really work in our
country and elsewhere. Like why deficits are bad or why some laws get
passed.


;-)

You're mixing up money, accounting, and wealth.

I wasn't mixing up anything -- I was simplifying for the sake of a Usenet
argument. If you want to get into macro-economic theory, most people here
(myself included) will quickly doze off.

Hm. Well, I can understand, but too much simplification loses the
heart of it too.

The pseudo-"science" of economics is one of the main reasons I dropped my
Business major in my sophomore year. The only area of study I found that
was less scientific, perhaps, was sociology -- although it was a close race.

Well, it IS a science. Just not physics or chemistry. It determines
general principles and relationships between things. It's also
probably one of the more abused sciences around. After all, it's
easy to make an argument in economics when you ignore facts that
oppose one's position. This happens routinely.

Let's keep it simple: People who work outside of the government pay all the
taxes that pay for the people's jobs who work INSIDE the government --
period. It doesn't much matter if it's stuff that SHOULD or COULD be done
by the private sector -- cuz it's just not happening.

As a strictly accounting issue, you're right. But, it's not a
strictly accounting issue. If my friend at NACO didn't work for the
FAA, he'd probably still be a CFI (his prior job). If NACO (National
Aeronatical Charting Office) didn't exist, someone would have to do
it. Otherwise we'd have CFIT accidents all over the place.

I'm guessing that those accidents would cost a bundle and depress the
aviation industry something awful. So, there's clearly an economic
benefit for NACO. If there's an economic benefit, it's worth paying
for. So there's income: money given for useful work. And the
outsourcing or privitization of FSS that our government still seems to
want to do will just make my point. In your position if the same work
is done by government FSS it shouldn't be taxed, and if it's done by a
private FSS it should be taxed.

Perhaps the problem is that you're thinking of "the government" as a
monolithic thing. It's not. Neither is it's funding. "Taxes" covers
a lot of ground from local, state income or sales tax, federal income
tax, social security tax, medicare, user fees, etc, etc.

If you want to get into strictly accounting issues, which I read as
the heart of your argument, then the idea of transfer payments between
parts of the government should be considered. This is part of a
modern accounting system for a large organization. However, the
leading party in Congress for the last many years doesn't want to
change the Federal accounting system to something more modern.
Perhaps partly because a better accounting system would make it even
more clear that our current deficit's being covered by Social Security
funds.. These should be in a separate accounting system - we make
companies do that after all.

Anyhow, back to aviation: is it money or lift that makes airplanes
fly? Our just our collective hot air in internet discussion
groups?

-Malcolm Teas