7 ms·

Its funny that the government is as bad with money as the people. Truly a good representation.

nkrisc 8y ago
Considering the people elect the government, it's hardly surprising. Representative indeed.
maxerickson 8y ago
The problem isn't really "bad with money", it's more "benefit from making promises that someone else has to try to fulfill".
- oconnor663 8y ago
  Or from the perspective of someone who has to run for election: Candidate A says, "We need to cut benefits now to make sure the pension has enough money in the future." Candidate B says, "No we don't." Everyone votes for Candidate B. It's not like we accidentally elected people who don't value the long term. It's that voters don't value the long term when there's real short term money at stake.
  - raincom 8y ago
    Pensioners, union members, and their families always vote for B. The people who care about the long term hardly form a solid block to elect the candidate A.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      Just cutting benefits misses the point, how is austerity a long-term solution? The US has a massive problem with the perception of "government usefulness", heck you've got whole political wings solely trying to appeal to "the only good government is no government" mentalities. As a result, barely anybody wants to pay taxes for anything, in their extremely egotistical and narrow-sighted definition of "freedom".
      - fbonetti 8y ago
        Cutting existing benefits is the only way to avoid bankruptcy in many states and cities. The long term solution is to switch to a defined contribution plan instead of defined benefits. The reason why many on the right are wary of government programs is because they’ve watched the government horribly mismanage their tax money over and over and over again. It’s not necessarily because politicians and bureaucrats are necessarily stupid or evil, it’s because the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market.
        freeflight 8y ago
        > the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market. Isn't that exactly the kind of mindset that facilitated this whole situation in the very first place? "Government can't handle money, that's why we gotta privatize everything". And if that would be true, how come it wasn't a private business that took us the moon, with all the resulting auxiliary inventions, but the combined effort of a whole nation in education and research [0]? "A better job" isn't always the one that "makes more money", some ventures don't need to be directly financially profitable, in some fields introducing a profit-incentive can have rather negative consequences (Education, Healthcare) and in others, it's just perverse (for-profit prisons). Would any private company have taken the risk, of flying to the moon, back then? Hell no, because there was literally no money in it back then, it was all just a big venture of "wasting money". That's why I don't think literally everything needs to be "profitable", we can't eat money and money doesn't make anybody a better person. It's also friggin weird how on issues like this there's never "enough money", but when it's about tax-cuts for massive corporations, which is, in essence, nothing but handing out free money to private businesses, then there seems to be always plenty of enough money to justify it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis
        gmx0 8y ago
        1. So, what tangible benefits did you get from the country going to the moon? How has it affected your everyday life? Sure, we have more space based stuff, but most of those things don't contribute anything to our well-being. No new mining operations on the moon for new resources. Nothing. Sure, maybe in the very long term it will have a return, but now, nothing. All the auxiliary inventions from it were already possible without going to the moon itself, just continuing space exploration. 2. And the government was facing competition like a private business. Soviet Russia provided the competition. If Russia didn't, there's no reason for the US to. In that way, even the moon landings were operating capitalistically, just on a higher level. Most of the resulting inventions from it anyways were for bettering weapons of war than anything truly substantial for the people. So, we went to the moon, cool.
sushid 8y ago
It's nice for the previous generations that got something out of nothing. Too bad that "nothing" is my generation and we'll be putting our "contributions" into a pit that will give us actually nothing in return when it's time for us to retire. As I get older I realize why people say if you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart but if you are not a conservative by 30, you have no brain (or something to that effect).
- lovich 8y ago
  The previous generations are far more conservative than our generation and they are still all for these sort of entitlements. This is not a liberal vs conservative argument, this is a "fuck you, I got mine" argument from the beneficiaries of these pensions currently
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  > It's nice for the previous generations that got something out of nothing. The same generation that mindlessly claims that millennials are spoiled while we field $10K+ medical bills for things like childbirth when they cost <$1K for them. I haven't seen any data to back this up but I suspect they're also far higher in diabetes diagnoses which is another reason our care costs so much more.
- rgcapozz 8y ago
  As I get older I become more anarchist or socialist or syndicalist.
  - justaman 8y ago
    Socialism is like punching all your friends in the nuts until you run out of friends.
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Or ideological battle comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Someone1234 8y ago
Both US Democracy and CEOs at large companies both have an adverse interest in short-term success, even at the cost of the long term. This is why in both cases out-sourcing/privatization is popular. It shows a short term benefit, the long term is someone else's problem. How can we expect politicians to care about the pension fund if the problem isn't going to materialize for tens of years pass the end of their term limit? And if they were a "hero" and increased taxes to try and tackle it, they'd only get voted out next election, so someone else can come in, undo it, then spend all the savings. In a theoretical Parliamentary Democracy, the "upper house," with lifetime terms would exist primarily for this function, consider the long term interests over the short term point-scoring. But no country that I know of can be described as having an effective upper house.
- pmwhite 8y ago
  "And if they were a "hero" and increased taxes to try and tackle it, they'd only get voted out next election, so someone else can come in, undo it, then spend all the savings." George H. Bush is one of the few important fiscal conservatives elected in my lifetime, and he is despised for it, especially by people who like to claim they are fiscal conservatives.
betterunix2 8y ago
I do not think it is quite as simple as that. Pension funds often invest in bonds because they provide reliable cash flow, but for the past 30 years bond yields have been falling, to the point where 3% on a 10-year treasury is considered big news today (it was much lower just a year ago). For the past 10 years interest rates have been kept artificially low as part of the response to the great recession, but pension funds have still had to make their payments. Retirees are also living longer thanks to advances in healthcare. It would not have been easy to predict those longer lifespans decades ago when they were first promised their pensions, but the pension still has to keep paying as long as they live. None of this is to say that governments have no share in the blame for this. Failing to take action to stabilize these funds, or worse, cutting taxes when the money could have been used to help keep the funds solvent, was a bad decision too many states made.

Considering the people elect the government, it's hardly surprising. Representative indeed.

The problem isn't really "bad with money", it's more "benefit from making promises that someone else has to try to fulfill".

oconnor663 8y ago
Or from the perspective of someone who has to run for election: Candidate A says, "We need to cut benefits now to make sure the pension has enough money in the future." Candidate B says, "No we don't." Everyone votes for Candidate B. It's not like we accidentally elected people who don't value the long term. It's that voters don't value the long term when there's real short term money at stake.
- raincom 8y ago
  Pensioners, union members, and their families always vote for B. The people who care about the long term hardly form a solid block to elect the candidate A.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    Just cutting benefits misses the point, how is austerity a long-term solution? The US has a massive problem with the perception of "government usefulness", heck you've got whole political wings solely trying to appeal to "the only good government is no government" mentalities. As a result, barely anybody wants to pay taxes for anything, in their extremely egotistical and narrow-sighted definition of "freedom".
    - fbonetti 8y ago
      Cutting existing benefits is the only way to avoid bankruptcy in many states and cities. The long term solution is to switch to a defined contribution plan instead of defined benefits. The reason why many on the right are wary of government programs is because they’ve watched the government horribly mismanage their tax money over and over and over again. It’s not necessarily because politicians and bureaucrats are necessarily stupid or evil, it’s because the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market.
      - freeflight 8y ago
        > the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market. Isn't that exactly the kind of mindset that facilitated this whole situation in the very first place? "Government can't handle money, that's why we gotta privatize everything". And if that would be true, how come it wasn't a private business that took us the moon, with all the resulting auxiliary inventions, but the combined effort of a whole nation in education and research [0]? "A better job" isn't always the one that "makes more money", some ventures don't need to be directly financially profitable, in some fields introducing a profit-incentive can have rather negative consequences (Education, Healthcare) and in others, it's just perverse (for-profit prisons). Would any private company have taken the risk, of flying to the moon, back then? Hell no, because there was literally no money in it back then, it was all just a big venture of "wasting money". That's why I don't think literally everything needs to be "profitable", we can't eat money and money doesn't make anybody a better person. It's also friggin weird how on issues like this there's never "enough money", but when it's about tax-cuts for massive corporations, which is, in essence, nothing but handing out free money to private businesses, then there seems to be always plenty of enough money to justify it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis
        gmx0 8y ago
        1. So, what tangible benefits did you get from the country going to the moon? How has it affected your everyday life? Sure, we have more space based stuff, but most of those things don't contribute anything to our well-being. No new mining operations on the moon for new resources. Nothing. Sure, maybe in the very long term it will have a return, but now, nothing. All the auxiliary inventions from it were already possible without going to the moon itself, just continuing space exploration. 2. And the government was facing competition like a private business. Soviet Russia provided the competition. If Russia didn't, there's no reason for the US to. In that way, even the moon landings were operating capitalistically, just on a higher level. Most of the resulting inventions from it anyways were for bettering weapons of war than anything truly substantial for the people. So, we went to the moon, cool.

sushid 8y ago

It's nice for the previous generations that got something out of nothing. Too bad that "nothing" is my generation and we'll be putting our "contributions" into a pit that will give us actually nothing in return when it's time for us to retire. As I get older I realize why people say if you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart but if you are not a conservative by 30, you have no brain (or something to that effect).

lovich 8y ago
The previous generations are far more conservative than our generation and they are still all for these sort of entitlements. This is not a liberal vs conservative argument, this is a "fuck you, I got mine" argument from the beneficiaries of these pensions currently
castlecrasher2 8y ago
> It's nice for the previous generations that got something out of nothing. The same generation that mindlessly claims that millennials are spoiled while we field $10K+ medical bills for things like childbirth when they cost <$1K for them. I haven't seen any data to back this up but I suspect they're also far higher in diabetes diagnoses which is another reason our care costs so much more.
rgcapozz 8y ago
As I get older I become more anarchist or socialist or syndicalist.
- justaman 8y ago
  Socialism is like punching all your friends in the nuts until you run out of friends.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Or ideological battle comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Someone1234 8y ago

Both US Democracy and CEOs at large companies both have an adverse interest in short-term success, even at the cost of the long term. This is why in both cases out-sourcing/privatization is popular. It shows a short term benefit, the long term is someone else's problem. How can we expect politicians to care about the pension fund if the problem isn't going to materialize for tens of years pass the end of their term limit? And if they were a "hero" and increased taxes to try and tackle it, they'd only get voted out next election, so someone else can come in, undo it, then spend all the savings. In a theoretical Parliamentary Democracy, the "upper house," with lifetime terms would exist primarily for this function, consider the long term interests over the short term point-scoring. But no country that I know of can be described as having an effective upper house.

pmwhite 8y ago
"And if they were a "hero" and increased taxes to try and tackle it, they'd only get voted out next election, so someone else can come in, undo it, then spend all the savings." George H. Bush is one of the few important fiscal conservatives elected in my lifetime, and he is despised for it, especially by people who like to claim they are fiscal conservatives.

betterunix2 8y ago

I do not think it is quite as simple as that. Pension funds often invest in bonds because they provide reliable cash flow, but for the past 30 years bond yields have been falling, to the point where 3% on a 10-year treasury is considered big news today (it was much lower just a year ago). For the past 10 years interest rates have been kept artificially low as part of the response to the great recession, but pension funds have still had to make their payments. Retirees are also living longer thanks to advances in healthcare. It would not have been easy to predict those longer lifespans decades ago when they were first promised their pensions, but the pension still has to keep paying as long as they live. None of this is to say that governments have no share in the blame for this. Failing to take action to stabilize these funds, or worse, cutting taxes when the money could have been used to help keep the funds solvent, was a bad decision too many states made.