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I would dare to say that our government sucks at solving any problem. A few examples: U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test http://www.wash

I would dare to say that our government sucks at solving any problem. A few examples: U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12... U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pri... Lehman Cooked The Books Prior To Collapse; Geithner And NY Fed Implicated http://thelibertyguardian.com/2010/03/lehman-cooked-the-books-prior-to-collapse-geithner-and-ny-fed-implicated/ http://thelibertyguardian.com/2010/03/lehman-cooked-the-book... Let's face it; our government is setup to help the big corporations.

MartinCron 17y ago
Oh, come on, that's just confirmation bias. Our government solves lots of problems. A few counter-examples: People love Medicare. It helps keep old sick people from financial ruin. That's a good thing. Lots of banks have failed in the last few years, but government-run programs (FDIC, mostly) keep the fallout from damaging citizens. The United States is home to many world-class research institutions, many of which receive government grants. Bernie Madoff was running a huge ponzi scheme to defraud investors, but was eventually caught, by the government, and sent to prison. The military and US AID have helped save lives and assist in reconstruction of post-earthquake Haiti. FAA regulators have made air travel extremely safe. NHTSA and other regulators have improved the safety of cars and saved countless lives. The Parks department has conserved millions of acres of winderness for people to enjoy for generations. The Endangered Species Act has literally saved species from disappearing from the planet. The National Science Foundation helps fund RadioLab, the best thing on the radio.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Uh, if the banks had been allowed to fail the FDIC would have been wiped out. If GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail the PBGC would have been wiped out. Fannie and Freddie were wiped out and would incidentally have failed due to investor flight in the early 2000s if they had submitted financials to investors like other firms (meanwhile the CEOs got very rich). BTW off the books entities are what everyone hated about Enron... our GSEs are the exact same scheme. Bernie Madoff's daughter was married to a SEC official and in spite of being reported to the SEC multiple times over the years his fund was not investigated. Only the biggest financial crisis since the great depression made his scheme unsustainable, at which point the fraud was obvious, and he was used as a scapegoat for the crisis itself... as if his fund caused it! Some of the items on your list are good services that are provided by government... but if you look at the government budget they make up (at best) a few percent.
  - MartinCron 17y ago
    I was responding to a preposterous absolutist comment that government sucks at solving any problems. This preposterous absolutist comment was backed up with a small handful of examples solved poorly by government, so I put up a few counter-examples. You can counter some of my counters and we could go back and forth all day, but that doesn't help anyone. The fact that government can provide multiple valuable services for just a fraction of overall budget each isn't proof of anything. There's a very trendy and shallow mindset these days that government is absolutely terrible at absolutely everything. The truth is more nuanced than that.
    - grandalf 17y ago
      That may be true, but just as the smallest scientific theory is usually the best one, the smallest government intervention is usually the best. This entails that a local program is usually going to be better than a state program, which is usually going to be better than a Federal program at addressing needs.
- protomyth 17y ago
  In this specific area, the gov is treaty-obligated to provide health care to Native Americans. They have failed miserably - http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken-promises-35270 http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken... - the sad part is that those stories in the article are the typical and not even the worst.

MartinCron 17y ago

Oh, come on, that's just confirmation bias. Our government solves lots of problems. A few counter-examples: People love Medicare. It helps keep old sick people from financial ruin. That's a good thing. Lots of banks have failed in the last few years, but government-run programs (FDIC, mostly) keep the fallout from damaging citizens. The United States is home to many world-class research institutions, many of which receive government grants. Bernie Madoff was running a huge ponzi scheme to defraud investors, but was eventually caught, by the government, and sent to prison. The military and US AID have helped save lives and assist in reconstruction of post-earthquake Haiti. FAA regulators have made air travel extremely safe. NHTSA and other regulators have improved the safety of cars and saved countless lives. The Parks department has conserved millions of acres of winderness for people to enjoy for generations. The Endangered Species Act has literally saved species from disappearing from the planet. The National Science Foundation helps fund RadioLab, the best thing on the radio.

grandalf 17y ago
Uh, if the banks had been allowed to fail the FDIC would have been wiped out. If GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail the PBGC would have been wiped out. Fannie and Freddie were wiped out and would incidentally have failed due to investor flight in the early 2000s if they had submitted financials to investors like other firms (meanwhile the CEOs got very rich). BTW off the books entities are what everyone hated about Enron... our GSEs are the exact same scheme. Bernie Madoff's daughter was married to a SEC official and in spite of being reported to the SEC multiple times over the years his fund was not investigated. Only the biggest financial crisis since the great depression made his scheme unsustainable, at which point the fraud was obvious, and he was used as a scapegoat for the crisis itself... as if his fund caused it! Some of the items on your list are good services that are provided by government... but if you look at the government budget they make up (at best) a few percent.
- MartinCron 17y ago
  I was responding to a preposterous absolutist comment that government sucks at solving any problems. This preposterous absolutist comment was backed up with a small handful of examples solved poorly by government, so I put up a few counter-examples. You can counter some of my counters and we could go back and forth all day, but that doesn't help anyone. The fact that government can provide multiple valuable services for just a fraction of overall budget each isn't proof of anything. There's a very trendy and shallow mindset these days that government is absolutely terrible at absolutely everything. The truth is more nuanced than that.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    That may be true, but just as the smallest scientific theory is usually the best one, the smallest government intervention is usually the best. This entails that a local program is usually going to be better than a state program, which is usually going to be better than a Federal program at addressing needs.
protomyth 17y ago
In this specific area, the gov is treaty-obligated to provide health care to Native Americans. They have failed miserably - http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken-promises-35270 http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken... - the sad part is that those stories in the article are the typical and not even the worst.