This article will evaluate what your tax money is spend on, assuming you live in a rather wealthy first world country.

To have a guideline on what spending is actually done, the Netherlands will be used as a starting point for a general, non-specified, country. So in real life differences are to be expected, but they should be small. Therefor we will make general assumptions and generalise other bits as well.

Civil servant

Generally well meaning and absolutely required to run any administration, though bloated in practice. As a general rule; if more than a handful of people work on public communication (with no more than a single speaker) you are dealing with bloat. The reason for this bloat is: All forms of organisations need clerks to at least see what happens. If you take on more tasks, more worker are needed for more different tasks. As governments consists of either ministries or departments, for just about anything that the supreme leader considers important, you get a lot of different organisations, each of which requires its very own staff.

We said it above, a government needs this to a certain degree. They should just add a separate body to monitor bloat or add a “do you really add value” question to workers` annual review. In theory the press could fulfil this role, which they do perform, just with their private bias or focus on scandals.

First responders

We include all manner of responders in this heading, as all share the same mandate to assist citizens/people. Everybody on the face of the earth has need for these services, just not at the same time. There comes a point in all lives where they need a doctor or have a fire. So having these is essential and most useful.

Besides putting out fires and curing the ill, there is a certain comfort in knowing that these professionals are out there. Without them, we would be fully responsible for keeping our own places intact in case of a fire and need to be trained surgeons at the same time. Just think of it as general professional specialisation, just not on a bill-to-bill bases but paid for from the public purse with a salary.

There is another possibility for this; pay as you go, which could be applied to other services as well. In this scenario public funding would be reduced, but you will be presented an additional bill for requiring anything. The question does remain if this will reduce taxes, or if they use the money for something else.

Social security

With this we mean a combination of guaranteed welfare benefits for the unemployed or unable to (fully) participate. Retirement benefits are also included in social security, such as a guaranteed allowance and pension scheme (the latter is partially saved up for via a different deduction during payroll, so not 100% taxes).

This is a yes and no situation: It is beneficial to have social security, for all as everyone ages. But they deduct obscene amounts from your, not particularly high, wages to redistribute in a manner which have little say about. Also a small percentage of the population actively scams, for which there is only a small force dedicated to finding them. In case of immigrants; these immediately leave the country so no chance of catching them. So you are paying more than needed, partially for people who do not need it.

Just think about the following question: How is this any different from any other insurance scheme, the only difference is that private party insurance has less fraud, but does include profit.

Military

Nobody likes to think about it, but you really do need some sort of professional protection: Every single country has something another one wants, if not resources, simple land will do just fine. Recently threats are coming from small operations, such as drone strikes or small precise attacks, for which a more liquid approach is required in comparison with the old way of marching a huge amount of conscripts across countless miles.

In terms of useful, at time of writing: A large part of Europe has neglected this spending for several decades and finds it short. Besides, they need outside help to assist their neighbour in a actual war. And the ally they turned to, now wants a big piece of land plus resources.. So there are a lot of steps to take before this spending is to be considered really valuable. On the other hand, certainly having a military is partially about having a deterrent. It does kind of do that, as several European countries border`s are with allies or other NATO countries it is hard to tell.

To take a look across the pond: The USA army is very effective and most definitely useful, they are able to secure cheap resources for their country, which does mitigate their high spending. Regular trade also benefits, allies can be coerced into buying their latest products, with promises of protection and such.

It should be noted that this might be how governments started: By having a professional force dedicated to protecting the people instead of raising a less well equipped, and most likely untrained, militia from amongst the farmers. These have to be compensated, as they cannot farm themselves, for which taxes are invented.

Infrastructure

Though some projects are either fully private or a combination of public and private (these variant are usually the ones where you pay toll to use it), most form of roads, bridges and basic utilities are built with public funds. After building they have to be maintained and evaluated on a regular basis.

On its intended form, this is extremely useful as both trade and private travel require a lot of infrastructure, most governments have neglected to maintain their network, leading to all manner of risk; a poorly maintained dam might break and outdated plumbing leaks (often made with materials that are now known to be poisonous). So this is a task where private parties might be better suited, overseen by a independent organisation that can file lawsuits if the company also neglects its duties. Instead of lawsuits, outsourcing to another party might be a good idea.

Closing notes

We realise that nearly everyone considers governmental handling of most listed above as inefficient or plain wrong, but consider this: If it is outsourced to a private party, there will definitely be cost cutting, not to improve efficiency but solely to increase profit. Which history has proven to be a recipe for expensive repairs. If you leave it with the government, such savings are still possible but less then certain to happen, at least it will not be purely to make a extra buck but due to being inept in general.

We have considered including health care in this article, but in the above mentioned example country of the Netherlands this was privatised. There are countries where all health care is fully public, and there is no real difference at the bottom line. In the Netherlands people are unable to afford it as the insurance deductible exceeds most people`s monthly free cash flow. This is partially the case thanks to a excessive mandatory insurance premium (insurers have free rein and are encouraged to charge everyone the highest premium, supposedly to spread costs more equally). In countries where it is paid for via taxes, people are unable to get access due to long waiting lists (long list are also present in the Netherlands), so in both systems the working class is not getting the service that it requires.