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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
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Author: Lapsody   😊 😞
Number: of 84346 
Subject: Re: One Possible Tariff Endgame
Date: 04/14/25 9:03 PM
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The truth of the matter is that the government is bloated, is slow, is behind private industry to such a degree that the two can't really communicate because the people in the government literally have no idea a) the speed at which the private sector moves nor b) the tech/issues behind why they do what they do.

Something has to give.


Story time. Other countries come over to look at how IRS collections works because the IRS does it better than anyone. When a tax due is uncollected the IRS first starts with dunning letters.

Dunning is the process of methodically communicating with customers to ensure the collection of accounts receivable. Communications progress from gentle reminders to threatening letters and phone calls and more or less intimidating location visits as accounts become more overdue.

As the balance ages out of dunning it's sent to collections, which starts with phone contacts and proceeds to agent going out and seizing cars, the whole smear. These agents are specially trained and retrained.

So those people who think the government is bloated, slow and inefficient talked Congress into doing experiments, they allowed civilian dunning letters, to civilian phone contacts, to civilians going out to taxpayers and seizing, etc. It turned out the civilians weren't as good at dunning, phone calls, etc., but there was one huge difference - they were terrible at taxpayer rights. They trampled on taxpayer rights badly and the training was poor.

What one company proposed was that the IRS give them the addresses and information for the dunning letters, they would mail them out, and as the balances aged out of dunning, they would be returned to the trained IRS collection staff. In the meantime the company would take a percentage of the amount collected from dunning. The IRS could show Congress that a lot was collected from dunning letters, the IRS was already set up to do that, and all that would happen is that the company would collect a percentage that would be more than the cost of the IRS dunning.

Under the mantra of "The government can't do anything right and is bloated, slow, and inefficient" are a bunch of pariahs who want to make easy money, and leave all unprofitable things to the government.
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This community has written 84,309 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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