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And perhaps your strawman argument veils an inability to debate the topic at hand. I never said anything about doing away with public education. Small governmen

And perhaps your strawman argument veils an inability to debate the topic at hand. I never said anything about doing away with public education. Small government != the doing away of all social programs. "yeah, we'd be much better off if all these programmers we hire from state schools weren't able to afford an education." Your comment superficially sets up an argument I never made, which is the definition of a strawman. Anyways... I'm all for government sponsored programs that work along side the private industry (and force competition) in order to contribute to the general welfare, which is what the constitution states. For example: defense, infrastructure and education among others. However, I'd love to rid our government of all the pet projects, pork, worthless organizations (and employees) and general waste that rape our income. It's near impossible to fire a government worker, which is a crime in and of itself. Our government is so inefficient that consulting firms are rolling out in mass "staff augmentation" programs that take over the responsibilities of a given agency/department. Think about that...you hire government workers to do job X. They are so incompetent at job X you hire high priced consultants to complete job X while not firing any of the workers. The end result? Job X is completed at two - three times the original cost. Ridiculous. If you ever want a first hand look at how inefficient the government is, live in DC for a few years.

jshen 18y ago
"Your comment superficially sets up an argument I never made, which is the definition of a strawman." No, because you made no specific argument. If you make a statement that is so short that it can be interpreted to be anything anyone wants then it isn't a strawman if I fail to read your mind! We all know that government is inefficient, but I think the blame is misplaced. I don't believe it's inefficient because it's a government, but because it's a giant institution. I've worked for the government, for large corporations, and for start ups. Large corporations are equally as inefficient as the government most of the time.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  so a smaller government ought to be more efficient, what exactly does any of this have to do with people affording their education?
  - jshen 18y ago
    because it's the government is what makes education affordable.
    - justindz 18y ago
      Clearly something isn't working. Look at that sentence.
      - jshen 18y ago
        only if you start out with the idealogical position that government is always the wrong answer. Such an ideology is simply the naive opposite of communism.
krschultz 18y ago
Except that the constitution doesn't state anything about education, and defense accounts for nearly 50% of the federal budget. Cutting all the fat and inefficiency does not address the root problem, health care costs and defense spending. If you don't want huge taxes you can't have a military this size, and I haven't a clue on how to fix health care.
- fallentimes 18y ago
  Right, which is where it's certainly open to debate. I interpret general welfare to include things like education and infrastructure since virtually everyone benefits from them in some form or another. As for defense...if we focused on "defense" instead of "offense" that 50% could be sliced in half if not quarters. Think of how much money not invading Iraq would have saved us. There's no reason our defense budget needs to larger than the next 25 countries combined. As for healthcare...I'm with you man - not a clue.
- helveticaman 18y ago
  I agree, but want to underline that the military is pretty efficient. You CAN get fired from the military if you screw up, and compared to the armed forces of other empires, the US armed forces do a pretty good job of kicking ass when there's ass to be kicked, and doing pretty good research (ARPANET, jet travel, Manhattan project).
  - jshen 18y ago
    um, have you ever been in the military? I was in the army for 4 years, you can't really get fired. You have to do somethign way over the line to get kicked out. Out of many hundreds of people I knew only a handful got kicked out. The vast majority of those failed drug tests, usually twice. One guy got kicked out for sexually abusing a few women (sneaking into their rooms at night while they were sleeping and ...). And I think I knew one that got kicked out for being too fat (but I knew a lot of people that were too fat and never got kicked out. Now let's address this efficiency claim. Do you want to know what we did most of the time? Absolutely nothing. We hung out, did some cleaning, hung out some more, played some play station, hung out some more, took a nap. Yeah, that was my usual day. We can also attack this efficiency claim from another angle. The U.S. spends almost as much as every other nation combined for military purposes. No company that did such a thing would be considered efficient.

jshen 18y ago

"Your comment superficially sets up an argument I never made, which is the definition of a strawman." No, because you made no specific argument. If you make a statement that is so short that it can be interpreted to be anything anyone wants then it isn't a strawman if I fail to read your mind! We all know that government is inefficient, but I think the blame is misplaced. I don't believe it's inefficient because it's a government, but because it's a giant institution. I've worked for the government, for large corporations, and for start ups. Large corporations are equally as inefficient as the government most of the time.

cstejerean 18y ago
so a smaller government ought to be more efficient, what exactly does any of this have to do with people affording their education?
- jshen 18y ago
  because it's the government is what makes education affordable.
  - justindz 18y ago
    Clearly something isn't working. Look at that sentence.
    - jshen 18y ago
      only if you start out with the idealogical position that government is always the wrong answer. Such an ideology is simply the naive opposite of communism.

krschultz 18y ago

Except that the constitution doesn't state anything about education, and defense accounts for nearly 50% of the federal budget. Cutting all the fat and inefficiency does not address the root problem, health care costs and defense spending. If you don't want huge taxes you can't have a military this size, and I haven't a clue on how to fix health care.

fallentimes 18y ago
Right, which is where it's certainly open to debate. I interpret general welfare to include things like education and infrastructure since virtually everyone benefits from them in some form or another. As for defense...if we focused on "defense" instead of "offense" that 50% could be sliced in half if not quarters. Think of how much money not invading Iraq would have saved us. There's no reason our defense budget needs to larger than the next 25 countries combined. As for healthcare...I'm with you man - not a clue.
helveticaman 18y ago
I agree, but want to underline that the military is pretty efficient. You CAN get fired from the military if you screw up, and compared to the armed forces of other empires, the US armed forces do a pretty good job of kicking ass when there's ass to be kicked, and doing pretty good research (ARPANET, jet travel, Manhattan project).
- jshen 18y ago
  um, have you ever been in the military? I was in the army for 4 years, you can't really get fired. You have to do somethign way over the line to get kicked out. Out of many hundreds of people I knew only a handful got kicked out. The vast majority of those failed drug tests, usually twice. One guy got kicked out for sexually abusing a few women (sneaking into their rooms at night while they were sleeping and ...). And I think I knew one that got kicked out for being too fat (but I knew a lot of people that were too fat and never got kicked out. Now let's address this efficiency claim. Do you want to know what we did most of the time? Absolutely nothing. We hung out, did some cleaning, hung out some more, played some play station, hung out some more, took a nap. Yeah, that was my usual day. We can also attack this efficiency claim from another angle. The U.S. spends almost as much as every other nation combined for military purposes. No company that did such a thing would be considered efficient.