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People have been citing the failing of US state capacity for decades. This isn’t the first prolonged conflict in a foreign land we’ve wasted lives, money, and t

by ctvo 5y ago

People have been citing the failing of US state capacity for decades. This isn’t the first prolonged conflict in a foreign land we’ve wasted lives, money, and time on. We haven’t had a balanced budget, our public projects are delayed and 2-3x over the estimate, the US military has been inept in most conflicts, federal agencies have failed to regulate the powerful and connected. But the machine marches on, because everywhere else the problems are equal or worse at US scale. China hides its domestic issues much better giving this illusion that the US is crumbling. The hints we get when Jack Ma disappears from public life or the party now speaks of income inequality should tell you under the surface there’s turmoil.

Ericson2314 5y ago
> People have been citing the failing of US state capacity for decades. This isn’t the first prolonged conflict in a foreign land we’ve wasted lives, money, and time on. Yes. Ever since we deurbanized (suburbanized) and kneecapped our fledgling administrative state we've been incompetent. > Our public projects are delayed and 2-3x over the estimate, the US military has been inept in most conflicts, federal agencies have failed to regulate the powerful and connected. Yup. > We haven’t had a balanced budget Please don't drag that into it. The way we run our fiat currency means there is nearly net 0 dollar. Every surplus is someone else's deficit. > But the machine marches on, because everywhere else the problems are equal or worse at US scale. Nope > China hides its domestic issues much better giving this illusion that the US is crumbling. China certianly has issues, but also has somewhat better state capacity than us. Yes people fear-think China has the best state capacity and that is not true. > The hints we get when Jack Ma disappears from public life or the party now speaks of income inequality should tell you under the surface there’s turmoil. Dissapearing Jack Ma is not an indicator of failure, even if you personally don't like it. Income inequality is objectively more worrisome, as it prevents domestic demand, but things including the former (hah!) can be employed to manage the latter.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  Your arguments against the balanced budget don’t convince me. Have you looked at the federal, state, and local debts lately? It is mind boggling
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Ballooning deficits fine. We spent our way out of a recession and prevented untold human suffering. We'll even bet more tax revenue over the next few years than had we did economic Seppuku as the balanced-budgeteers would like instead. There is a ton of literature on why running deficits is not a problem and in fact good in many situations. Rather than try to summarize all that, I instead flipped the question to point out that not running deficits means more than it might sound like.
    - nomoreplease 5y ago
      I get that, but I’m still not convinced. Running deficits is fine, but you can’t do it in perpetuity. When do you suggest we stop?
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        Yes you can run deficits in pepertuity if they are, say, bounded by some coefficient of GDP.
nine_zeros 5y ago
This is accurate. The only reason America (and dollar) holds up is because the primary competitors are worse. China - too much government control, communist and not of the people EU - aging and brexited, too many factions UK - Strong institutions but inconsequential small island nation Japan - aging Aus/Canada - too small population to do anything Russia - untrustworthy India - still too poor but perhaps the only democratic country with a large enough population to counter the US dominance. But India and US appear to be very friendly to each other.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Re: India. It turns out the US has a pretty good system. Nations that might compete also tend to have a similarish system (India's more protectionist, but that'll probably change as they get richer). But if you have a similar system, you'll be friendly with the US. Because being friendly with the US means making more money. We don't have things like the sino-soviet split because our only ideology is nominally capitalism but really making money (at least for elites). That is to say, even if we didn't have the cold war, due to their systems we couldn't really make money in the Eastern bloc anyway. So the cold war made sense. But we're also perfectly fine with India because everyone's making their money, why be mad?
refenestrator 5y ago
China built nationwide high speed rail without breaking a sweat. I'm with you that the USA isn't going to collapse tomorrow but we do need to rediscover how to build actual physical things.

by ctvo 5y ago

Ericson2314 5y ago

> People have been citing the failing of US state capacity for decades. This isn’t the first prolonged conflict in a foreign land we’ve wasted lives, money, and time on. Yes. Ever since we deurbanized (suburbanized) and kneecapped our fledgling administrative state we've been incompetent. > Our public projects are delayed and 2-3x over the estimate, the US military has been inept in most conflicts, federal agencies have failed to regulate the powerful and connected. Yup. > We haven’t had a balanced budget Please don't drag that into it. The way we run our fiat currency means there is nearly net 0 dollar. Every surplus is someone else's deficit. > But the machine marches on, because everywhere else the problems are equal or worse at US scale. Nope > China hides its domestic issues much better giving this illusion that the US is crumbling. China certianly has issues, but also has somewhat better state capacity than us. Yes people fear-think China has the best state capacity and that is not true. > The hints we get when Jack Ma disappears from public life or the party now speaks of income inequality should tell you under the surface there’s turmoil. Dissapearing Jack Ma is not an indicator of failure, even if you personally don't like it. Income inequality is objectively more worrisome, as it prevents domestic demand, but things including the former (hah!) can be employed to manage the latter.

nomoreplease 5y ago
Your arguments against the balanced budget don’t convince me. Have you looked at the federal, state, and local debts lately? It is mind boggling
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Ballooning deficits fine. We spent our way out of a recession and prevented untold human suffering. We'll even bet more tax revenue over the next few years than had we did economic Seppuku as the balanced-budgeteers would like instead. There is a ton of literature on why running deficits is not a problem and in fact good in many situations. Rather than try to summarize all that, I instead flipped the question to point out that not running deficits means more than it might sound like.
  - nomoreplease 5y ago
    I get that, but I’m still not convinced. Running deficits is fine, but you can’t do it in perpetuity. When do you suggest we stop?
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      Yes you can run deficits in pepertuity if they are, say, bounded by some coefficient of GDP.

nine_zeros 5y ago

This is accurate. The only reason America (and dollar) holds up is because the primary competitors are worse. China - too much government control, communist and not of the people EU - aging and brexited, too many factions UK - Strong institutions but inconsequential small island nation Japan - aging Aus/Canada - too small population to do anything Russia - untrustworthy India - still too poor but perhaps the only democratic country with a large enough population to counter the US dominance. But India and US appear to be very friendly to each other.

xxpor 5y ago
Re: India. It turns out the US has a pretty good system. Nations that might compete also tend to have a similarish system (India's more protectionist, but that'll probably change as they get richer). But if you have a similar system, you'll be friendly with the US. Because being friendly with the US means making more money. We don't have things like the sino-soviet split because our only ideology is nominally capitalism but really making money (at least for elites). That is to say, even if we didn't have the cold war, due to their systems we couldn't really make money in the Eastern bloc anyway. So the cold war made sense. But we're also perfectly fine with India because everyone's making their money, why be mad?

refenestrator 5y ago

China built nationwide high speed rail without breaking a sweat. I'm with you that the USA isn't going to collapse tomorrow but we do need to rediscover how to build actual physical things.