4 ms·

Maybe, maybe not. Yes is a real possibility. I was born in a country where government is largely trusted and live in another. It's a mixed story depending on b

by Arnt 8y ago

Maybe, maybe not. Yes is a real possibility. I was born in a country where government is largely trusted and live in another. It's a mixed story depending on branch, but by and large people trust the government no less than they trust the average bigco, and partly more. But you're in the US, which seems different, so maybe not. And I've always wondered: Why is that? You Americans seem to distrust your government so much. Why do you vote as you vote and get a result you don't like?

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Speaking as an outsider - Did you see what their choice was last time around? I'm far from pro-Trump but it seems Hillary would have come with a whole different set of issues. Unfortunately it's the whole 2-party system that's broken. I'm speaking as someone from a country with pretty much the same system (the UK). Voting for anyone other than the candidate you dislike the least is essentially a wasted vote. I and plenty of others in my country really wish we knew the answer (and so do many Americans, from what I've seen). I'd be interested to hear where you are from. From what I know about Japan I gather that people are generally satisfied with their leadership. Maybe New Zealand as well?
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  Scotland (still part of the uk for now) has proportional representation rather than first past the post. This can help avoid the wasted vote idea.
creaghpatr 8y ago
If you look at the success rate for US public schools, you may want better odds under a healthcare system. The VA is a good example of government run healthcare that continues to fail its members to an astonishing degree.
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  A major part of the reason the VA fails is that it is legally bound to provide coverage for people all over the country, with a center within X miles of every person that needs it, while only getting funding to cover roughly one percent of the population. Singler payer healthcare works a lot better if everyone is covered because then resources can be allocated more efficiently.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    Serious question: Do you trust the government to "efficiently allocate resources"?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
      Which government? Your government? That sounds like your problem and your responsibility. And mine too! “The government” is ours and our responsibility to maintain. You appear to be assuming everybody wants to abandon that responsibility as much as you do. Wake up! Why it gotten so trashed is beyond me, but I am young and myself and my circle are doing everything in our might to repair the state of our community because others disowned it in the past. I find what they did to be shameful, but I don’t want them to feel shame. I just want them to start taking responsibility instead of pretending like their government is some foreign entity. It isn’t. It didn’t have to get this bad, and it won’t get better by sitting around and talking this nonsense.
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      I think that single payer will more efficiently allocate resources than the current system. I think this based on the fact that the countries that have single payer healthcare manage to produce the same or better health outcomes for a fraction of the cost of the us. Part if the issue is that the incentives in the US today encourage the poorest people to get health care at the most expensive places (emergency rooms), as well as the insane amount of wasted effort coordinating insurance providers, billing people, verifying copay amounts etc.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
  This is the bed Americans made for themselves. It’s mind-boggling to me how Americans evaluate their government like it is somebody else’s company, like you are doing here. You do know the government belongs to you, right? It falls apart when you stop taking care of it. This is like abandoning a family member. It’s not a huge deal if you do it alone but when you try to convivce everybody else to abandon that family member, they are going to fall behind, become more needy, more manipulative, eventually dishonezt, and surprise surprise, less likeable. But they are your family member. When you ridicule them, you’re ridiculing your own creation.
- pjc50 8y ago
  The VA business is interesting, because the right clearly does support the spending of almost unlimited amounts of money on defence, where presumably this is "efficient", but not on healthcare for the troops. I'm surprised nobody's suggested that soldiers should have to buy their own battlefield health insurance and choose from a selection of medevac providers yet.
  - pnutjam 8y ago
    Shhh... Don't make suggestions.
mikeash 8y ago
One of our two major parties has built its entire brand around mistrusting the government.
dx87 8y ago
For the most part, people trust their state and local governments, but distrust the federal government; state politicians are commonly re-elected until they choose to retire. I think it's because the country is so large and diverse that what's good for one state may not be good for another. We've got cities and states with a higher population and more economic power than some of the EU members, but a huge geographic divide in the middle of the country. Culturally, people on the west and east coasts seem to be different enough that they don't agree with the politicians that are elected, then you have smaller states that feel bullied by the bigger states like New York and California. Eventually it starts to feel like the only people you can trust to look out for your interests are state and local politicians. I've seen a similar sentiment from citizens of smaller EU members who feel that Germany and France are willing to push for changes that benefit themselves and the EU as a whole, even if the changes are detrimental to the smaller states.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Depends on what you're trusting them to do. Here's my personal ranking: When it comes to "I trust the government not to send a bunch of thugs to kick down my door and shoot my dog for no good reason" I personally rank them local > state > federal For "I trust the government to spend my money wisely" it goes state > federal > local For "I trust the government not to pass legislation that makes my life worse" it goes federal > local > state. My local government is inept, corrupt and burns money like a German housewife in 1923 (A 100ft ladder truck when the tallest building is 3-stories, a boondoggle of a new highschool, a town run pet cemetery for Christ sake!!!) but mostly harmless. My state government is hell bent on screwing over certain classes of people and passing laws that annoy everyone for political virtue points (and it is a 1-party state so there's no stopping them) but they mostly spend their money wisely. The feds wrongly harm a lot of people (some violently, some not so violently) and aren't all that great with money but they're too gridlocked to enshrine any real stupidity in law.
  - DesiLurker 8y ago
    Without knowing which state you live in I can tell this is so true. So much so that it make me wonder if there is a structural reason for this?

by Arnt 8y ago

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

Speaking as an outsider - Did you see what their choice was last time around? I'm far from pro-Trump but it seems Hillary would have come with a whole different set of issues. Unfortunately it's the whole 2-party system that's broken. I'm speaking as someone from a country with pretty much the same system (the UK). Voting for anyone other than the candidate you dislike the least is essentially a wasted vote. I and plenty of others in my country really wish we knew the answer (and so do many Americans, from what I've seen). I'd be interested to hear where you are from. From what I know about Japan I gather that people are generally satisfied with their leadership. Maybe New Zealand as well?

alasdair_ 8y ago
Scotland (still part of the uk for now) has proportional representation rather than first past the post. This can help avoid the wasted vote idea.

creaghpatr 8y ago

If you look at the success rate for US public schools, you may want better odds under a healthcare system. The VA is a good example of government run healthcare that continues to fail its members to an astonishing degree.

alasdair_ 8y ago
A major part of the reason the VA fails is that it is legally bound to provide coverage for people all over the country, with a center within X miles of every person that needs it, while only getting funding to cover roughly one percent of the population. Singler payer healthcare works a lot better if everyone is covered because then resources can be allocated more efficiently.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  Serious question: Do you trust the government to "efficiently allocate resources"?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
    Which government? Your government? That sounds like your problem and your responsibility. And mine too! “The government” is ours and our responsibility to maintain. You appear to be assuming everybody wants to abandon that responsibility as much as you do. Wake up! Why it gotten so trashed is beyond me, but I am young and myself and my circle are doing everything in our might to repair the state of our community because others disowned it in the past. I find what they did to be shameful, but I don’t want them to feel shame. I just want them to start taking responsibility instead of pretending like their government is some foreign entity. It isn’t. It didn’t have to get this bad, and it won’t get better by sitting around and talking this nonsense.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    I think that single payer will more efficiently allocate resources than the current system. I think this based on the fact that the countries that have single payer healthcare manage to produce the same or better health outcomes for a fraction of the cost of the us. Part if the issue is that the incentives in the US today encourage the poorest people to get health care at the most expensive places (emergency rooms), as well as the insane amount of wasted effort coordinating insurance providers, billing people, verifying copay amounts etc.
yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
This is the bed Americans made for themselves. It’s mind-boggling to me how Americans evaluate their government like it is somebody else’s company, like you are doing here. You do know the government belongs to you, right? It falls apart when you stop taking care of it. This is like abandoning a family member. It’s not a huge deal if you do it alone but when you try to convivce everybody else to abandon that family member, they are going to fall behind, become more needy, more manipulative, eventually dishonezt, and surprise surprise, less likeable. But they are your family member. When you ridicule them, you’re ridiculing your own creation.
pjc50 8y ago
The VA business is interesting, because the right clearly does support the spending of almost unlimited amounts of money on defence, where presumably this is "efficient", but not on healthcare for the troops. I'm surprised nobody's suggested that soldiers should have to buy their own battlefield health insurance and choose from a selection of medevac providers yet.
- pnutjam 8y ago
  Shhh... Don't make suggestions.

mikeash 8y ago

One of our two major parties has built its entire brand around mistrusting the government.

dx87 8y ago

For the most part, people trust their state and local governments, but distrust the federal government; state politicians are commonly re-elected until they choose to retire. I think it's because the country is so large and diverse that what's good for one state may not be good for another. We've got cities and states with a higher population and more economic power than some of the EU members, but a huge geographic divide in the middle of the country. Culturally, people on the west and east coasts seem to be different enough that they don't agree with the politicians that are elected, then you have smaller states that feel bullied by the bigger states like New York and California. Eventually it starts to feel like the only people you can trust to look out for your interests are state and local politicians. I've seen a similar sentiment from citizens of smaller EU members who feel that Germany and France are willing to push for changes that benefit themselves and the EU as a whole, even if the changes are detrimental to the smaller states.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Depends on what you're trusting them to do. Here's my personal ranking: When it comes to "I trust the government not to send a bunch of thugs to kick down my door and shoot my dog for no good reason" I personally rank them local > state > federal For "I trust the government to spend my money wisely" it goes state > federal > local For "I trust the government not to pass legislation that makes my life worse" it goes federal > local > state. My local government is inept, corrupt and burns money like a German housewife in 1923 (A 100ft ladder truck when the tallest building is 3-stories, a boondoggle of a new highschool, a town run pet cemetery for Christ sake!!!) but mostly harmless. My state government is hell bent on screwing over certain classes of people and passing laws that annoy everyone for political virtue points (and it is a 1-party state so there's no stopping them) but they mostly spend their money wisely. The feds wrongly harm a lot of people (some violently, some not so violently) and aren't all that great with money but they're too gridlocked to enshrine any real stupidity in law.
- DesiLurker 8y ago
  Without knowing which state you live in I can tell this is so true. So much so that it make me wonder if there is a structural reason for this?