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> As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. I wouldn't bundle

> As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. I wouldn't bundle military expenditure with the rest of public spending. Our military budget currently stands at a staggering $639bn (that's billion) for FY2019. In fact, there's a good argument that if we diverted some of these enormous funds to invest in other areas, those problems you mentioned (infrastructure, etc) would be fixed. > The situation is easy to fix in economic terms but not in political terms. The article is about defined-benefit pensions. Nobody has those anymore, not in the US. This is a large group of privileged individuals, who years ago got themselves a sweetheart deal as employees of the state. It's basically another case of the previous generation mandating extremely comfortable benefits for themselves, and passing the bill to the next generation. These are people who worked for the government their entire lives. They may not be rich, but they were generally comfortable, and certainly not the neediest part of the population. They can stand a modest cut to their pensions. Otherwise, your argument is that all of us should pay substantially higher taxes to bankroll these lucky few individuals who got themselves a sweetheart deal thanks to their affiliation with state and local government. In most places, you'd call that "corruption".

adventured 8y ago
You could fix infrastructure by slashing the US military down to a reasonable size (~2.5% of GDP), there are no other large problems you can fix with that money. The scale of the entitlement problem, healthcare cost problem, etc. is far beyond anything that $150b-$200b per year will solve long-term. I have no interest in seeing Chicago fix its pension problems by using funding taken from the US military. Chicago made its bed by intentionally, dramatically over-promising, it gets to sleep in that bed. National high speed rail? That would get my vote, so to speak. We could throw some money at the university cost problem. However that's not lacking funding at all. In fact it has far too much funding, we need to deprive it of the federal slush money and legally mandate how funds can be spent (ie restrict admin spending). It's a massive theft cartel run by the admins at the universities, they're the ones that have universally benefitted by perpetually raising the cost. You can see that represented in the charts comparing the extreme expansion of admin cost & employment at universities, vs the employment of eg professors, over 30 years.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > I have no interest in seeing Chicago fix its pension problems by using funding taken from the US military. Chicago made its bed by intentionally, dramatically over-promising, it gets to sleep in that bed. Taxpayer money should be not be used to fix any of these over-promised pension problems, and certainly federal tax money should not bail out corrupt, irresponsible local governments.

adventured 8y ago

You could fix infrastructure by slashing the US military down to a reasonable size (~2.5% of GDP), there are no other large problems you can fix with that money. The scale of the entitlement problem, healthcare cost problem, etc. is far beyond anything that $150b-$200b per year will solve long-term. I have no interest in seeing Chicago fix its pension problems by using funding taken from the US military. Chicago made its bed by intentionally, dramatically over-promising, it gets to sleep in that bed. National high speed rail? That would get my vote, so to speak. We could throw some money at the university cost problem. However that's not lacking funding at all. In fact it has far too much funding, we need to deprive it of the federal slush money and legally mandate how funds can be spent (ie restrict admin spending). It's a massive theft cartel run by the admins at the universities, they're the ones that have universally benefitted by perpetually raising the cost. You can see that represented in the charts comparing the extreme expansion of admin cost & employment at universities, vs the employment of eg professors, over 30 years.

dunpeal 8y ago
> I have no interest in seeing Chicago fix its pension problems by using funding taken from the US military. Chicago made its bed by intentionally, dramatically over-promising, it gets to sleep in that bed. Taxpayer money should be not be used to fix any of these over-promised pension problems, and certainly federal tax money should not bail out corrupt, irresponsible local governments.