4 ms·

I always have and always will take umbrage with how people downplay the government's role in ameliorating the lives of people. Case in point, can anyone really

I always have and always will take umbrage with how people downplay the government's role in ameliorating the lives of people. Case in point, can anyone really deny that the overwhelming majority of the cures and vaccines for deadly afflictions that have plagued the US (and the planet, for that matter) have been developed in a university or non-profit lab under the funding, technology transfer, and/or support of governments (in the US case, the NIH)? Polio (Salk), TB vaccine (Calmette), the list goes on. Hell, even Norman Borlaug helped eradicate famine in several parts of the 3rd world under the encouragement (and part-funding) of the Roosevelt administration. You're right that it's not just about socialized interstates and bunker bombs. It's truly about doing those things that just _cannot_ fit on any sane balance sheet trading on Wall Street (or if they tried, investors would truly revolt).

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
grandalf 17y ago
Ok so you've successfully argued for 1% of the Federal budget and 5% of state budgets. I hope you're not going to stop your thought process there.
- jballanc 17y ago
  Well, ya gotta be able to kill people! That accounts for another 23%...
- muhfuhkuh 17y ago
  Manned space missions that go more than "just passed the exosphere", making sure people with the pre-existing condition called "old" and "dirt poor" and the extra-duper fun combination "old and dirt poor" are actually not left to die on the streets with a simple infection, networks of massive national laboratories whose prime mission is to secure technologies and advance science for one of the most technologically advanced and by far most innovative countries on earth (perhaps not in the adoption of personal electronics, but we surely laid the foundation for all innovation, not the least of which was von Neumann and his work with Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC, the first programmed computer). Those labs take several billion a year each to operate, and have arguably single-handedly placed and kept the US at the forefront of technology for decades. I'm not going to pussy-foot around it, we spend 50% of our tax dollar on defense, and most of that into personnel and pure weapons r&d and manufacturing. It's a shame, but it's the truth. Just imagine if we could refocus those dollars elsewhere (in an ideal world, anyway), where would we be now? More importantly, why hasn't private industry come and done it for us?
jballanc 17y ago
It's truly about doing those things that just _cannot_ fit on any sane balance sheet trading on Wall Street (or if they tried, investors would truly revolt). This, to me, is the single most convincing reason for the government to be in charge of health-care, and not the markets. It's always been my assertion that the government needs to be responsible for investments that vest in an amount of time longer than the length of the average career; things like basic science research, retirement benefits, and health care. I think the failure of the American automotive companies makes this point rather clearly. When automotive execs were faced with a decision in the 60s and 70s to either raise salaries or promise their workers plush retirement benefits, which did they go for? The retirement benefits, of course! Why? Because those execs would likely be long dead and gone before the proverbial shit hit the fan. Ah, but what about the investors? Shouldn't they have demanded long term fiscal responsibility from the executives? Um...why? If you were 20 in 1960 and invested $100 in GM, how many times over would your money have doubled before the trouble began? ...and you'd be 70 now! If you were a prudent investor, you would've moved that money out of stocks and into bonds sometime during the surpluses of the 90s. In my opinion the government should exist to cover those things the market won't (or to sufficiently incentivize markets to act responsibly enough that they do cover extremely long term investments).
- grandalf 17y ago
  You bring up some interesting points. I'd argue that the much maligned concept of "corporate personhood" is designed to solve the problem of individuals having short (and finite) time horizons for making cost/benefit calculations. Similarly, patent law offers a tradeoff between unfettered innovation monopoly by offering a limited, short-term monopoly on exploiting new ideas. Consider briefly the FDA approval process and a profit-seeking scientist developing a pharmaceutical. The scientist has a 20 year time horizon to maximize profits, so she has a huge incentive to do R&D and to launch the product. Meanwhile the FDA regulator collects the same salary whether he approves or delays approval of a drug, yet he stands to be fired and disgraced if the drug he approved causes harm. If he's overly cautious in order to keep his job, society suffers profoundly. If you claim that government is better than private industry at solving these sorts of problems, you are making the rather strong claim that the incentives of the FDA burocrat are broadly superior to the incentives of the R&D scientist. It follows that you would believe that if all R&D scientists were paid a fixed salary and stood to gain nothing for finding a breakthrough drug but stood to be humiliated and disgraced if any unforeseen consequences of a discovery occur, society would be significantly better of. I think that's a fairly sweeping claim to make, and I'm curious if you could elaborate. Also, with respect to the automotive pensions, I think you'd be well advised to review this history of the PBGC (pension benefit guarantee corporation). It is a government entity tasked with offering pension insurance for workers in the event that the firm fails. Surprisingly, both unions AND corporate interests lobbied congress to decrease the premiums firms would pay into the PBGC. The result is that the PBGC is not actuarially sound and that if a few major US firms failed the PBGC would go belly up. Why did this happen? Corporate interests understand that once the government provides a safety net, so long as they were compliant they have nothing to lose (plus, if the firm failed then it's game over anyway). Unions focused on increasing the current allocation of benefits and didn't worry about the future... after all they "won" improved pensions for workers and were pleased when firms could dedicate the extra cash (saved by having artificially low risk premiums) to other forms of compensation, etc. So in this case the government clearly acts on the whim of interested parties and utterly fails to protect citizens (even though doing so is a trivial matter of actuarial calculations and collection of a premium!). So I would be curious to read your elaboration based on these points of rebuttal.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

grandalf 17y ago

Ok so you've successfully argued for 1% of the Federal budget and 5% of state budgets. I hope you're not going to stop your thought process there.

jballanc 17y ago
Well, ya gotta be able to kill people! That accounts for another 23%...
muhfuhkuh 17y ago
Manned space missions that go more than "just passed the exosphere", making sure people with the pre-existing condition called "old" and "dirt poor" and the extra-duper fun combination "old and dirt poor" are actually not left to die on the streets with a simple infection, networks of massive national laboratories whose prime mission is to secure technologies and advance science for one of the most technologically advanced and by far most innovative countries on earth (perhaps not in the adoption of personal electronics, but we surely laid the foundation for all innovation, not the least of which was von Neumann and his work with Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC, the first programmed computer). Those labs take several billion a year each to operate, and have arguably single-handedly placed and kept the US at the forefront of technology for decades. I'm not going to pussy-foot around it, we spend 50% of our tax dollar on defense, and most of that into personnel and pure weapons r&d and manufacturing. It's a shame, but it's the truth. Just imagine if we could refocus those dollars elsewhere (in an ideal world, anyway), where would we be now? More importantly, why hasn't private industry come and done it for us?

jballanc 17y ago

It's truly about doing those things that just _cannot_ fit on any sane balance sheet trading on Wall Street (or if they tried, investors would truly revolt). This, to me, is the single most convincing reason for the government to be in charge of health-care, and not the markets. It's always been my assertion that the government needs to be responsible for investments that vest in an amount of time longer than the length of the average career; things like basic science research, retirement benefits, and health care. I think the failure of the American automotive companies makes this point rather clearly. When automotive execs were faced with a decision in the 60s and 70s to either raise salaries or promise their workers plush retirement benefits, which did they go for? The retirement benefits, of course! Why? Because those execs would likely be long dead and gone before the proverbial shit hit the fan. Ah, but what about the investors? Shouldn't they have demanded long term fiscal responsibility from the executives? Um...why? If you were 20 in 1960 and invested $100 in GM, how many times over would your money have doubled before the trouble began? ...and you'd be 70 now! If you were a prudent investor, you would've moved that money out of stocks and into bonds sometime during the surpluses of the 90s. In my opinion the government should exist to cover those things the market won't (or to sufficiently incentivize markets to act responsibly enough that they do cover extremely long term investments).

grandalf 17y ago
You bring up some interesting points. I'd argue that the much maligned concept of "corporate personhood" is designed to solve the problem of individuals having short (and finite) time horizons for making cost/benefit calculations. Similarly, patent law offers a tradeoff between unfettered innovation monopoly by offering a limited, short-term monopoly on exploiting new ideas. Consider briefly the FDA approval process and a profit-seeking scientist developing a pharmaceutical. The scientist has a 20 year time horizon to maximize profits, so she has a huge incentive to do R&D and to launch the product. Meanwhile the FDA regulator collects the same salary whether he approves or delays approval of a drug, yet he stands to be fired and disgraced if the drug he approved causes harm. If he's overly cautious in order to keep his job, society suffers profoundly. If you claim that government is better than private industry at solving these sorts of problems, you are making the rather strong claim that the incentives of the FDA burocrat are broadly superior to the incentives of the R&D scientist. It follows that you would believe that if all R&D scientists were paid a fixed salary and stood to gain nothing for finding a breakthrough drug but stood to be humiliated and disgraced if any unforeseen consequences of a discovery occur, society would be significantly better of. I think that's a fairly sweeping claim to make, and I'm curious if you could elaborate. Also, with respect to the automotive pensions, I think you'd be well advised to review this history of the PBGC (pension benefit guarantee corporation). It is a government entity tasked with offering pension insurance for workers in the event that the firm fails. Surprisingly, both unions AND corporate interests lobbied congress to decrease the premiums firms would pay into the PBGC. The result is that the PBGC is not actuarially sound and that if a few major US firms failed the PBGC would go belly up. Why did this happen? Corporate interests understand that once the government provides a safety net, so long as they were compliant they have nothing to lose (plus, if the firm failed then it's game over anyway). Unions focused on increasing the current allocation of benefits and didn't worry about the future... after all they "won" improved pensions for workers and were pleased when firms could dedicate the extra cash (saved by having artificially low risk premiums) to other forms of compensation, etc. So in this case the government clearly acts on the whim of interested parties and utterly fails to protect citizens (even though doing so is a trivial matter of actuarial calculations and collection of a premium!). So I would be curious to read your elaboration based on these points of rebuttal.