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Controversial Opinion: Elder Care/Hospice + Childcare + A lot teaching is "infrastructure" and should probably be done on Debt spending. It should be marginall

Controversial Opinion: Elder Care/Hospice + Childcare + A lot teaching is "infrastructure" and should probably be done on Debt spending. It should be marginally cost optimized in that it should not give in to consultant + contractor + admin bloat driven cost diseases, but worrying about cost "effectiveness" here seems to be defeating the point, as you laid out in your example.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Given we seem to be all-in on "our economic system rewards you greatly for being highly mobile, and punishes you—potentially greatly—for sticking around somewhere with family roots" I'm inclined to agree. We should either modify our economy so that's not (at least, to such a high degree) the case, or treat elder care and child care as the costs—to society, not individuals—of doing business that way.
- kiba 4y ago
  I don't think that's necessarily true. Freedom of movement is restricted by housing supply.
pirate787 4y ago
Much of the federal spending on these categories is deficit spending.
nivenkos 4y ago
Ongoing costs should never be met with debt spending. Just raise taxes to compensate - wealth tax, land value tax, capital gains tax, property tax, sin taxes, etc. - all of which help to push money into useful parts of the economy too.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
There's a sociology (yeah yeah I know the criticisms) podcast recently that pointed out this was actually a decision made through following economic frameworks of efficiency. Before this framework was in place, social good programs were actually run by social workers and similar people who had personal careers in the thing they were running. A lot of our golden age of government regulation and robust social programs and the like were when agencies were run by actual folks in that career, social programs run by social workers, environmental programs run by scientists... An example they used was the EPA during the ozone crisis. The EPA tried to set something like "we should set maximum allowable ozone to a level where 95% of americans wouldn't be affected" vs the economists at the time arguing they should look at the marginal cost of saving american lives and go for the efficient tradeoff between lives and economic production of more ozone.
- hgsgm 4y ago
- bumby 4y ago
  I’m inclined to agree with your point, but I think there is a downside that has to be acknowledged. For somebody very close a problem, that problem is always The Most Important Thing. Sometimes it takes someone further out to put it in the proper perspective.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    Yes, there's something to be said that for economists, economics is always The Most Important Thing and that results in incentives like arguing for increased ozone destruction because it works out to be more efficient economically than not destroying the ozone layer, lol.
    - bumby 4y ago
      This is why leaders have to balance all the perspectives of their different consultants, economists and environmentalists alike.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Given we seem to be all-in on "our economic system rewards you greatly for being highly mobile, and punishes you—potentially greatly—for sticking around somewhere with family roots" I'm inclined to agree. We should either modify our economy so that's not (at least, to such a high degree) the case, or treat elder care and child care as the costs—to society, not individuals—of doing business that way.

kiba 4y ago
I don't think that's necessarily true. Freedom of movement is restricted by housing supply.

pirate787 4y ago

Much of the federal spending on these categories is deficit spending.

nivenkos 4y ago

Ongoing costs should never be met with debt spending. Just raise taxes to compensate - wealth tax, land value tax, capital gains tax, property tax, sin taxes, etc. - all of which help to push money into useful parts of the economy too.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

There's a sociology (yeah yeah I know the criticisms) podcast recently that pointed out this was actually a decision made through following economic frameworks of efficiency. Before this framework was in place, social good programs were actually run by social workers and similar people who had personal careers in the thing they were running. A lot of our golden age of government regulation and robust social programs and the like were when agencies were run by actual folks in that career, social programs run by social workers, environmental programs run by scientists... An example they used was the EPA during the ozone crisis. The EPA tried to set something like "we should set maximum allowable ozone to a level where 95% of americans wouldn't be affected" vs the economists at the time arguing they should look at the marginal cost of saving american lives and go for the efficient tradeoff between lives and economic production of more ozone.

hgsgm 4y ago
bumby 4y ago
I’m inclined to agree with your point, but I think there is a downside that has to be acknowledged. For somebody very close a problem, that problem is always The Most Important Thing. Sometimes it takes someone further out to put it in the proper perspective.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  Yes, there's something to be said that for economists, economics is always The Most Important Thing and that results in incentives like arguing for increased ozone destruction because it works out to be more efficient economically than not destroying the ozone layer, lol.
  - bumby 4y ago
    This is why leaders have to balance all the perspectives of their different consultants, economists and environmentalists alike.