4 ms·

Except that we’ve had one of the greatest economic booms in history and the deficit has exploded. The government has lost sight of fiscal responsibility and soc

by dkrich 4y ago

Except that we’ve had one of the greatest economic booms in history and the deficit has exploded. The government has lost sight of fiscal responsibility and society is completely addicted to easy money.

pas 4y ago
Investments that have a positive ROI are worth doing. Deficit spending is never bad per se. Arguing about the ROI of a road, education, a new shiny F35 feature, foos stamps, etc. are of course completely valid. Neither society nor the government is one big hivemind. There are small government advocates (who usually turn out to be cruel totalitarian dickheads), there's a new wave of young people who parrot "eat the rich" and usually turn out to be clueless idiots cosplaying as leftists, who also say things like "just pay for everything out of thin air". It's big, it's completex, it's hard, emotions run high, there's a chance of things turning for the worse, while a lot of things are inching toward the better.
- zpeti 4y ago
  Except there are almost no programs where the government can actually deliver positive ROI, and the government never has any motivation to actually do this and report on it. I think in almost all cases except where private markets can’t deliver (for example police, army, possibly roads), private markets will almost always use money (or resources) much better.
  - bolanyo 4y ago
    I don't think this is true. If you look at the projects funded by the Roosevelt New Deal (where the stated purpose of the spending was to reboot the economy and create employment, rather than chasing a particular return), a lot of them returned many, many times the government's investment. For example, the Tri-Borough Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the paintings of Jackson Pollock.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Infrastructure and education are two fields where it is often easy to demonstrate positive ROI. Of course not every project is good, but in general both drastically increase the productivity of their society. Food stamps and pension funds are a bit harder, since they mostly boil down to three arguments: ethics, crime and stability. People tend to turn to crime when they have no viable other means, so feeding them is a way to reduce crime, and crime would cost more. Also people who are desperate are more likely to revolt, which is either very costly to the government or entirely prevents them from doing other activities with positive ROI in the future. So they are cost centers, but arguably necessary. Postal service, telephone, internet and public transit would also fall in the infrastructure category. Societal benefit is often much larger than the willingness of the individual to pay for it, so it makes sense to have them either run or subsidized by the state. Universal healthcare can deliver positive ROI by being more effective than the private alternative. As a society we want citizens to be healthy, because healthy people are happy and productive, and don't infect other healthy people. I completely agree that governments should regularly run and publish ROI calculations, or maybe there should be an independent watchdog that does this. And a lot of money seems to be wasted because people on all levels of government have the wrong incentives. On the other hand, one of the major reasons why the idea of governments is so widespread is that they regularly do provide positive ROI overall.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    In what countries is healthcare "better" when private markets deliver it? Here, the term "better" has multiple meanings: cost vs quality/outcomes. Example: Some people say that the US has the "world's greatest healthcare" (whatever that really means), but most people can agree that the US poor cost performance (high cost, poor outcomes). To editorialise for a moment, as I read about various public healthcare systems around the world, the diversity of systems is large, including outcomes. Almost none of them in highly developed countries are good and cheap. In these countries, healthcare is damn expensive, no matter how you do it. It's very difficult to spend less than 10% of GDP (that is huge for these countries) and have "good" healthcare. Another topic about which academics have debated for decades: Same question as above, except primary/secondary/tertiary education.
    - lumb63 4y ago
      Let’s look at actual problems with the US healthcare system. I’ll propose ways that if the market for healthcare were actually free, it would be better. It is not actually free because in the US, employers typically provide healthcare, and if you do not have an employer who does, the plans are prohibitively expensive. Issue: People lose healthcare when they switch their jobs. Solution: Have people purchase their own healthcare rather than receive it through their employer. Issue: People don’t like their healthcare plan. Solution: Allow individuals to choose their own healthcare plans. They know what they need far better than their employer does. Issue: People cannot afford the healthcare plan they want. Solutions: Stop throttling the amount of doctors who can attend medical school so that there is a sufficient supply of doctors. Higher supply will lower prices and improve outcomes. Institute outcome-based pricing schemes, i.e. providers get paid when they fix your problem. This will fix insurance companies’ and providers’ misaligned incentives; right now, their goal is to charge you as much as they can for health care and provide you as little as they can. That maximizes their margins. If they were only paid when they solved issues, I’m sure they would prioritize that. IMO, the debate over “public” vs. “private” healthcare is a false dichotomy. The US does not have a private, free market healthcare system today, but proponents of public healthcare use the current state of it to argue against private systems, since it isn’t public. Proponents of private healthcare ignore anything that could improve the state of healthcare because they do not want to see it socialized and assume all suggestions will come in this form. The people in need of healthcare are left with poor healthcare as politicians fight imaginary healthcare dragons. There is also a secondary issue in the healthcare discussion: prevention. Why do we have to spend so much on healthcare? It’s not like the human body spontaneously breaks down at such a fast rate. The actions we take as individuals, and as a society, cause a lot of disease. If we are concerned about healthcare prices, it is disingenuous and negligent of us to not look at what is driving our healthcare costs.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > Except there are almost no programs where the government can actually deliver positive ROI, and the government never has any motivation to actually do this and report on it. This is sharply contrary to figures I've seen on the outcomes of government spending. Got a citation?
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  The problem with deficit spending is the interest. It gets paid by the taxpayers. But they get no value from paying the interest. And it goes to the bankers, who already have more money than they need. Occasionally short term deficits and endless bottomless deficits are not the same beast. The latter is simply a lazy political tool used to buy votes and further enrich the bankers.
  - kasey_junk 4y ago
    Almost a third of the US debt is held by federal agencies that manage benefits programs on behalf of US citizens (e.g Social Security). Another third is owned by state and local governments, mutual funds, pensions, private citizens etc. That is, other US tax payers that receive benefits from the interest. Only the last third is held by banks and foreign debt holders. Large deficit spending may or may not be a problem. Economists and politicians are divided on the issue, but the interest generated from the debt largely goes to US taxpayers and it’s pretty well mixed across the economic spectrum (at least compared to other government economic policies).
    - sfifs 4y ago
      Exactly this. In a significant chunk of the cases, debt is just left pocket/right pocket accounting within the local economy when aggregating across government sector, private sector and individuals. If these deficits creates positive externalities (eg. Jobs through expansion of business, new deal program, or even as we've seen in massive programs like NREGA - increasing purchasing power through direct cash deposits). If the deficit spending puts wealth in the pockets of financial speculators, this is often a problem. Even for external debt denominated in local currency, devaluation is always an option (though may not be attractive). It's only foreign currency denominated debt which is a problem.
      - chiefalchemist 4y ago
        > If these deficits... If. And if they did there would be endless piles of political fodder. Politicians patting themselves on the back praising their genius. Etc. That's not happening. Conclusion? If is generally closer to highly unlikely. As for left pocket / right pocket those shifts have overhead. A program(s) to manage the programs. Let's consider that interest. Let's consider that too little value added to the taxpayers. In other words, the deficit is being used to perpetuate the government and the status quo, and not much more. In theory I agree with you. Unfortunately, the reality is much different. The fact it has been normalized doesn't mean we should accept it.
smallerfish 4y ago
Don't think of "government" as one entity. It's helpful to think of "government" and "politicians" (yes yes, branches of gov, but go with it.) Politicians have no incentive to be fiscally responsible; government does.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  I have seldom seen government incentivized to be fiscally responsible. It comes in extremely unnatural shocks. With one hand you're doing flashy multimillion dollar upgrades to the shiny new training simulator/science lab/whatever; with the other you're telling everyone to stop printing so many pages of materials for students.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  This kind of "double think" is by this point classical. I can't begin to count the amount of people I've met who are absolutely sure that the majority of their countrymen are too irresponsible to rule their own life, by virtue of them being mere humans, and that politicians are a bunch of crooks. Then they turn around and say the "government" and "authorities" should rule people's life. Clearly the politicians have no influence on the holy "government" and the "authorities" are of course not manned by those mere humans?

by dkrich 4y ago

pas 4y ago

Investments that have a positive ROI are worth doing. Deficit spending is never bad per se. Arguing about the ROI of a road, education, a new shiny F35 feature, foos stamps, etc. are of course completely valid. Neither society nor the government is one big hivemind. There are small government advocates (who usually turn out to be cruel totalitarian dickheads), there's a new wave of young people who parrot "eat the rich" and usually turn out to be clueless idiots cosplaying as leftists, who also say things like "just pay for everything out of thin air". It's big, it's completex, it's hard, emotions run high, there's a chance of things turning for the worse, while a lot of things are inching toward the better.

zpeti 4y ago
Except there are almost no programs where the government can actually deliver positive ROI, and the government never has any motivation to actually do this and report on it. I think in almost all cases except where private markets can’t deliver (for example police, army, possibly roads), private markets will almost always use money (or resources) much better.
- bolanyo 4y ago
  I don't think this is true. If you look at the projects funded by the Roosevelt New Deal (where the stated purpose of the spending was to reboot the economy and create employment, rather than chasing a particular return), a lot of them returned many, many times the government's investment. For example, the Tri-Borough Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the paintings of Jackson Pollock.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Infrastructure and education are two fields where it is often easy to demonstrate positive ROI. Of course not every project is good, but in general both drastically increase the productivity of their society. Food stamps and pension funds are a bit harder, since they mostly boil down to three arguments: ethics, crime and stability. People tend to turn to crime when they have no viable other means, so feeding them is a way to reduce crime, and crime would cost more. Also people who are desperate are more likely to revolt, which is either very costly to the government or entirely prevents them from doing other activities with positive ROI in the future. So they are cost centers, but arguably necessary. Postal service, telephone, internet and public transit would also fall in the infrastructure category. Societal benefit is often much larger than the willingness of the individual to pay for it, so it makes sense to have them either run or subsidized by the state. Universal healthcare can deliver positive ROI by being more effective than the private alternative. As a society we want citizens to be healthy, because healthy people are happy and productive, and don't infect other healthy people. I completely agree that governments should regularly run and publish ROI calculations, or maybe there should be an independent watchdog that does this. And a lot of money seems to be wasted because people on all levels of government have the wrong incentives. On the other hand, one of the major reasons why the idea of governments is so widespread is that they regularly do provide positive ROI overall.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  In what countries is healthcare "better" when private markets deliver it? Here, the term "better" has multiple meanings: cost vs quality/outcomes. Example: Some people say that the US has the "world's greatest healthcare" (whatever that really means), but most people can agree that the US poor cost performance (high cost, poor outcomes). To editorialise for a moment, as I read about various public healthcare systems around the world, the diversity of systems is large, including outcomes. Almost none of them in highly developed countries are good and cheap. In these countries, healthcare is damn expensive, no matter how you do it. It's very difficult to spend less than 10% of GDP (that is huge for these countries) and have "good" healthcare. Another topic about which academics have debated for decades: Same question as above, except primary/secondary/tertiary education.
  - lumb63 4y ago
    Let’s look at actual problems with the US healthcare system. I’ll propose ways that if the market for healthcare were actually free, it would be better. It is not actually free because in the US, employers typically provide healthcare, and if you do not have an employer who does, the plans are prohibitively expensive. Issue: People lose healthcare when they switch their jobs. Solution: Have people purchase their own healthcare rather than receive it through their employer. Issue: People don’t like their healthcare plan. Solution: Allow individuals to choose their own healthcare plans. They know what they need far better than their employer does. Issue: People cannot afford the healthcare plan they want. Solutions: Stop throttling the amount of doctors who can attend medical school so that there is a sufficient supply of doctors. Higher supply will lower prices and improve outcomes. Institute outcome-based pricing schemes, i.e. providers get paid when they fix your problem. This will fix insurance companies’ and providers’ misaligned incentives; right now, their goal is to charge you as much as they can for health care and provide you as little as they can. That maximizes their margins. If they were only paid when they solved issues, I’m sure they would prioritize that. IMO, the debate over “public” vs. “private” healthcare is a false dichotomy. The US does not have a private, free market healthcare system today, but proponents of public healthcare use the current state of it to argue against private systems, since it isn’t public. Proponents of private healthcare ignore anything that could improve the state of healthcare because they do not want to see it socialized and assume all suggestions will come in this form. The people in need of healthcare are left with poor healthcare as politicians fight imaginary healthcare dragons. There is also a secondary issue in the healthcare discussion: prevention. Why do we have to spend so much on healthcare? It’s not like the human body spontaneously breaks down at such a fast rate. The actions we take as individuals, and as a society, cause a lot of disease. If we are concerned about healthcare prices, it is disingenuous and negligent of us to not look at what is driving our healthcare costs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > Except there are almost no programs where the government can actually deliver positive ROI, and the government never has any motivation to actually do this and report on it. This is sharply contrary to figures I've seen on the outcomes of government spending. Got a citation?
chiefalchemist 4y ago
The problem with deficit spending is the interest. It gets paid by the taxpayers. But they get no value from paying the interest. And it goes to the bankers, who already have more money than they need. Occasionally short term deficits and endless bottomless deficits are not the same beast. The latter is simply a lazy political tool used to buy votes and further enrich the bankers.
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  Almost a third of the US debt is held by federal agencies that manage benefits programs on behalf of US citizens (e.g Social Security). Another third is owned by state and local governments, mutual funds, pensions, private citizens etc. That is, other US tax payers that receive benefits from the interest. Only the last third is held by banks and foreign debt holders. Large deficit spending may or may not be a problem. Economists and politicians are divided on the issue, but the interest generated from the debt largely goes to US taxpayers and it’s pretty well mixed across the economic spectrum (at least compared to other government economic policies).
  - sfifs 4y ago
    Exactly this. In a significant chunk of the cases, debt is just left pocket/right pocket accounting within the local economy when aggregating across government sector, private sector and individuals. If these deficits creates positive externalities (eg. Jobs through expansion of business, new deal program, or even as we've seen in massive programs like NREGA - increasing purchasing power through direct cash deposits). If the deficit spending puts wealth in the pockets of financial speculators, this is often a problem. Even for external debt denominated in local currency, devaluation is always an option (though may not be attractive). It's only foreign currency denominated debt which is a problem.
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      > If these deficits... If. And if they did there would be endless piles of political fodder. Politicians patting themselves on the back praising their genius. Etc. That's not happening. Conclusion? If is generally closer to highly unlikely. As for left pocket / right pocket those shifts have overhead. A program(s) to manage the programs. Let's consider that interest. Let's consider that too little value added to the taxpayers. In other words, the deficit is being used to perpetuate the government and the status quo, and not much more. In theory I agree with you. Unfortunately, the reality is much different. The fact it has been normalized doesn't mean we should accept it.

smallerfish 4y ago

Don't think of "government" as one entity. It's helpful to think of "government" and "politicians" (yes yes, branches of gov, but go with it.) Politicians have no incentive to be fiscally responsible; government does.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
I have seldom seen government incentivized to be fiscally responsible. It comes in extremely unnatural shocks. With one hand you're doing flashy multimillion dollar upgrades to the shiny new training simulator/science lab/whatever; with the other you're telling everyone to stop printing so many pages of materials for students.
carlosjobim 4y ago
This kind of "double think" is by this point classical. I can't begin to count the amount of people I've met who are absolutely sure that the majority of their countrymen are too irresponsible to rule their own life, by virtue of them being mere humans, and that politicians are a bunch of crooks. Then they turn around and say the "government" and "authorities" should rule people's life. Clearly the politicians have no influence on the holy "government" and the "authorities" are of course not manned by those mere humans?