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The problem now is that the government is large and it is nearly impossible to shed the cruft that has accumulated.
by carom 3y ago
The problem now is that the government is large and it is nearly impossible to shed the cruft that has accumulated.
- datavirtue 3y agoNothing ever gets shed or revised. The stale regulatory agencies are captured, corrupted, and stale/weak. OSHA has no teeth (they are just a nuisance to the scofflaws) FTC is underpowered EPA needs shut down FDA is on record for enabling very harmful medical devices I remember something about Boeing colluding with regulators to put people in harms way. I could hop on a search engine and dig up a tome-worth of completely unacceptable shit from the last 40 yrs in this regard.
- rnk 3y agoWe'd be so much better if there were no environmental rules, wouldn't we? Medical regulation, who needs it?
- rvba 3y ago"Starve the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending by cutting taxes, to deprive the federal government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force it to reduce spending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
- fwungy 3y agoThe most dangerous, murderous things in history are powerful central governments. They are like the Ring of Power, everyone thinks they can wield it for good, but it doesn't work out that way.
- flangola7 3y agoPowerful and authoritarian are two different things. I want a powerful but democratically controlled via popular vote government. Power abhors a vacuum. I would rather that power be in the hands of the citizen votes.
- throwaway173738 3y agoThat’s a nice general principle but you didn’t provide evidence of specific harm. I think arguing past each other from first principles is exactly why the US is in this mess in the first place. The fact is that all these government agencies are preventing specific harms. Throwing them out because of some vague “big government is bad because it might turn into a tyrrany later” isn’t an argument that the harms being prevented don’t exist. It’s a non-sequitor, like saying the sky is blue when someone complains about airplane noise.
- notch898c 3y agoAnd what does spending indicate. Has the beast been starved?
- rvba 3y agoI dont live in USA so I dont know. But here the ruling party is losing in local elections in town, so they cut the amount of taxes aplocated to muncipialities while at the same time they ask them to deal with more issues. So muncipialities are forced to degrade the quality of their services - since they dont have enough money. Then the ruling party claims that the local politicians cannot rule properly. What is just a lie. But this lie works.
- notch898c 3y agoI believe it is possible it is happening at some municipal levels but my question was more directed towards your statement >employed by American conservatives ... to deprive the federal government of revenue which appears to refer to federal level. The general trend of federal receipts have been fairly flat above 15% for decades (except during great recession circa 2009), and the spending slightly different rising a bit above and funded by debt and/or inflationary effects. My takeaway is here the beast has not been starved, although the beast is spending more of our children's future incomes in the form of increasing debt. https://stats.areppim.com/ressources/us_spendxrevxgdp_29x10_800x437.png https://stats.areppim.com/ressources/us_spendxrevxgdp_29x10_...
- yamtaddle 3y agoThe size is less a problem than our system stabilizing at two viable parties, both of which would stand to lose a great deal of power if they actually fixed some of the core problems with the Constitution.
- rjmunro 3y agoIt's not that the government is "large". It's that the representatives from different parties are unable to work together to get stuff done. I think it's mostly the way the media cover politics - they can't be seen to be weak.