> And in return for having you most basic needs like healtcare/education/food covered, why aren't people fine with paying some taxes for this? I thought I've had is that the nature of having states 'compete' against each other with lower taxes plays a part in this vilification of taxes. But surely this would only explain a small part of this problem.
Because certain people in government convince people that citizens can manage their money better than the government can. Forget about the purchasing power of pooling your money (by way of taxes). Then you have people like Mitch McConnell who calls programs for the less fortunate as "entitlements". The people who need these services don't feel "entitled". Not one bit.
US healthcare isn't a free market. How much of our costs are due to government rules limiting the number of doctors and hospitals? Perhaps healthcare could be cheaper if the government was less involved.
But let's compare the two systems as they are, both dictated by the government. The US is actually rather heavy handed, imposing regulations on healthcare and pharma that most of the world doesn't share. For example, in most countries medical education doesn't require a previous non-medical degree. Pharmacists are often allowed to provide basic medical advice. And medicines are often approved more quickly and less expensively in Europe.[1] How much of the extra cost is due to over-regulation?
Also, how much of our costs are due to our unhealthy lifestyle? If we lived as healthfully as Europeans, we'd surely have lower medical costs.
We can't honestly compare the cost of medicine without controlling for factors like those.
High speed rail cost overruns are almost always due to how expensive eminent domain is more than anything. The estimations given to state officials are often an order of magnitude off how much land they would need to buy. Its also the kind of project beyond the scope of anyone but the largest companies to even attempt, so even if an investment firm could do the math to recognize the economic benefit of having high speed rail and thus they could capitalize on investing in it through other investments in other industries that would grow substantially in the presence of better transit they can't raise the capital to do it and the time frame to realize those returns is too long for any investor to consider reasonable. So we don't get public or private trains.
> the bloated military budget
Its not a money mismanagement at all though. The money allocated to the military that is squandered on hundred thousand dollar toilets and billions on fighter jets that don't even work and will never see practical application in aerial combat were all budgeted intentionally to make private defense contractors rich. Those contractors paid the bribe money to see the budget allocated to them and get a tremendous return on investment.
Something like comparing NASA and SpaceX can be reasonable, but you have to be nuanced about it. A large part of the SLS overrun, for example, was due to their contract with Boeing which was budgeted for 4B but overran time and money up to 9B. Thats "private enterprise" at work wasting tax money because they knew the oversight wasn't there to hold them accountable, as is the case with many government projects mired in corruption.
But you know what? If your government is corrupt, the solution is not to give private enterprise - those that corrupted said government - control over the functions government was supposed to fulfill. You fix your government. If NASA is unable to budget or deliver projects on time, you fire those given the responsibility of managing said projects, do independent investigations of why they failed, and if some party is culpable for the intentional sabotage or deception of the proposals arrest them. If theres a revolving door in Washington of defense contractors lining the pockets of congressmen for taxpayer money via the defense budget investigate and impeach the corrupt politicians. When you contract with a third party to budget infrastructure expansion make them culpable for failure to deliver or for budget overruns.
The whole libertarian and conservative sales pitch is just a sales pitch for business practices that hurt the many at the betterment of the corporations or rich few. They clamp divisive stances onto it to pull single issue voters into their pool. Whether any of their actual enacted laws decrease deficits or increase personal freedoms isn’t even discussed routinely. (The last time the US ran a budget surplus a D was in the White House. Deregulating is always pitched as a positive but winds up in selling people less than they had before - relaxation of banking regulations leading to recessions, etc)
I don't think you've accurately represented the libertarian pitch, which is that government bureaucrats, even if they are well meaning and better planners than you are, are not likely to understand your needs, wants, and preferences nearly as well as you are and, further, are likely to have incentives other than your welfare – careerism, political winds, and the pleadings of special interests, to name a few.
Because certain people in government convince people that citizens can manage their money better than the government can. Forget about the purchasing power of pooling your money (by way of taxes). Then you have people like Mitch McConnell who calls programs for the less fortunate as "entitlements". The people who need these services don't feel "entitled". Not one bit.