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Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste

Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste is staggering. On any given night 4000 people are sleeping on San Francisco's streets and the government can't solve that with a $636 million a year budget? The US spends more per student than any other nation and somehow we have worse educational outcomes?

dhbradshaw 3y ago
Libraries, roads, firefighters, police, utilities, national parks, local parks.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  Taxes don't pay for utilities, I can't personally use libraries anymore because they've become defacto homeless shelters, the police suck. So now we are left with firefighters, national parks and local parks which I guess are not good targets for power hungry and incompetent politicians.
  - afavour 3y ago
    > I can't personally use libraries anymore because they've become defacto homeless shelters I’m sorry, I can’t take any of this seriously. I use my neighbourhood library regularly, take my kids there, it’s a wonderful place. I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences (have you? Or did you just read online that libraries are full of homeless people?) but don’t extrapolate your experience out to a universal one.
    - prepend 3y ago
      For me libraries vary substantially. My local library in the burbs was nice, but they decided to close every Sunday and only open from 12-5 on Saturday. And oddly, 4 libraries about 10 miles apart from each other all closed after a storm due to rain damage. Even though they are different buildings build many years apart in different styles. It seems odd they wild all have water damage. And while they are closed to the public, the employees are still working, they are just working from home. Every week. So their plan is to have remote workers doing library work on Sunday. But when they are open, they are very nice places. But drive 30 minutes into the major city and it’s not a nice place. There are many homeless inside so it is messy and not a very safe place, if you don’t want someone yelling at your kid. I think it’s appropriate to use our own experiences with libraries to form judgements. I’m glad you (and I) have good experiences, but should we extrapolate our experiences into universal ones? What makes you think all libraries are great like yours?
      - afavour 3y ago
        > should we extrapolate our experiences into universal ones? What makes you think all libraries are great like yours? I’m specifically saying we should not do that! The OP asked for examples of competent public spending. I consider my local library to be one such example. Someone else’s library being awful doesn’t make mine an invalid example of competent spending, they’re two separate things.
        prepend 3y ago
        But then you shouldn’t extrapolate your local library spending well any more than you don’t want GP extrapolating that his local library spends poorly. What makes you think all libraries are run as well as yours? It seems the question is “does government do well, in general, at managing money?” And having an example of your local library isn’t very helpful for predicting whether government is good or bad. I don’t think the sentiment is “every single government in existence is horrible at managing money” and more so “in general, government is inefficient at management so is not a good investment for optimal social benefit.”
        afavour 3y ago
        > What makes you think all libraries are run as well as yours? I feel like I’m going crazy, I’ve said two times that I don’t think we should be talking in universalities. Statement #1: my local library is great and is an effective use of public funds Statement #2: my local library is awful and a waste of public money Both of these statements can be true and neither contradicts the other. There is no need to come to some universal conclusion here. The broader point is that you often see this approach taken when talking about public spending: one example of waste somehow invalidates the whole concept. Yet you never see someone say “invest in a private company? Did you not see what happened with Enron?!”
    - mptest 3y ago
      My library has fricken 3d printers. It's quite obvious that guys' politics. "All taxes are theft" isn't the mature political position he believes it is... He was never serious lol. "Get rid of all taxes except road maintence and reduce everyone's taxes by 20%"
afavour 3y ago
Think about how important roads are to just about every facet of keeping the country running. I also think the relevant question here is “compared to what?”. The built in assumption is that the public sector is extremely wasteful compared to private but large private companies are also extraordinarily wasteful. Think of the amount of money Meta pisses away every year on frivolous stuff that goes nowhere.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  Our roads suck and they were created 100 years ago. Can we talk about effective use of government money from the past half century at least? And can we at least show a pattern of competency rather than a pattern of waste?
  - afavour 3y ago
    You’re obviously coming into this discussion with a pre-existing viewpoint and have no actual interest in hearing alternatives. Why does it matter when roads were created? They require near constant maintenance, something public funds do. And “our roads suck” is just an absurd generalisation and is obviously not true. Of course parts of the road system suck but it’s an integral part of keeping the country running and by and large works fine.
    - brigadier132 3y ago
      > Why does it matter when roads were created? Because we are talking about how our money will be spent now. > And “our roads suck” is just an absurd generalisation and is obviously not true. I disagree and I believe that "terrible roads" is public sentiment. I've never heard anyone praise our roads. > You’re obviously coming here with a perspective and you have no actual interest in hearing counterpoints I have a very strong opinion obviously and am open to being proven wrong but I am not going to just accept terrible arguments. The political class of this country is just completely inept. Everyone thinks in terms of "taxing the rich" as if some billionaires are going to be fund all these public mega projects. The billionaires do not have enough cash, the people that will get hammered with taxes are the middle and upper middle class.
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste is staggering. This is not universally agreed upon. Military spending has been a deeply controversial topic along political lines given its overall amount and lack of transparency. As far as examples of competent spending goes, there are plenty but they tend not to get as much attention as the failures do. A big example that most aren’t aware of are the government backed small business loans granted by SBA. Clean energy subsidies are another (Tesla was originally capitalized by a government clean energy grant). You might not have known that about Tesla, but you’re more likely to have heard about Solyndra, which was funded by the same initiative and tarred in the press as an example of wasteful spending. US gov stimulates a ton of business investment behind the scenes that often goes unnoticed.
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  Soooo, yet more rich folks using government money to grow their own riches?
  - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    If you want to be overly reductionist about it, that’s up to you. The reality that there’s never been a time in human history where this hasn’t been true. Why make perfect the enemy of good? Lots of rich people exploited PPP during the pandemic, does that mean the government shouldn’t ever hand out life-saving subsidies like that?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  > tarred in the press as an example of wasteful spending umm... they WERE wasteful spending, in that they went bankrupt. You can drive past that building on the 880 freeway.
  - 3y ago
redserk 3y ago
Can you elaborate on what is competent spending? The theory of privatization solving problems is predicated on the assumption that competition will exist. Competition in the private sector cannot be assumed to always exist.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  I'm not advocating for privatization. I'm advocating for decreased government spending and lower taxes. Privatization means the government gives money to private entities to do supposedly necessary functions of the government.
camgunz 3y ago
I mean I think the tougher claim would be "there is no competent public spending in the US". The US across the Federal, State, and local governments alone spends a lot. It's pretty likely that some of it is competent. But separately, what does "competent" mean? Is it a measure of waste, as in we could've done what the DoD does for less? Is it a measure of useless spending, as in we shouldn't have spent money on X because X doesn't work? I don't think the (narrowing to the federal government here) the US has a monopoly on wasteful or misguided spending. I think anyone here who's worked for a company can come up with plenty of examples of incompetent spending by their employer. I think "the US is bad at spending money so it should spend as little money as possible" argument is really weird framing, because it implies that there's some entity out there that's actually good at spending money. But if anyone can find one at a large scale, or even define what "good" means, I'm interested. Or, I'm sympathetic to a "large entities are necessarily bad at spending" argument, but then I think we need to assail big corporations with the same zeal we assail big government.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  > because it implies that there's some entity out there that's actually good at spending money No, this is the weird framing. As if the money has to go to some entity other than the individual that earned it. The government is taking money from individuals for their supposed benefit.
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    Why take your property taxes to educate our nation's children when you don't even have children? Am I unfairly framing your argument? Society (that's us) want things for society and it turns out they cost money. We would love to pay for these things with razor-like efficiency but we live in an imperfect world. (The "waste" however still goes into someone's wallet and can be in turn spent at a local restaurant or on groceries.) The only real issue I see is how we balance the tax burden in a fair and equitable way that also benefits society. (And here the increasing wealth disparity we have been seeing is almost certainly bad for societies health.)
rz2k 3y ago
The Post Office and the DMV are always given as examples of how terrible the government is at providing services. Have these people not visited either one in the last 15 years? Maybe they used to be terrible, but I’m always in and out with whatever I needed done, and the people working there and friendly and competent. Parks and libraries are pretty well managed, too.
- pixelatedindex 3y ago
  The post office has never not been amazing, I don’t understand the people who rally against that. I hate FedEx and UPS far far more.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
NM state tax online services are outright phenomenal. Filing my state taxes (after the first year) takes me less than 8 minutes, and the refund shows up in my bank account about 3 days later. Everything about it is precisely as it should be.
drewcoo 3y ago
> Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? That question, without an agreed-upon definition of "competent," has built-in Schrödinger goalposts. Is it competent? Is it not? Is it the superposition of both?
rapnie 3y ago
> Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? You have to weigh that against the negative effects of profit maximisation of commercial entities for the consumer. To what extent is "Can I get away with making this product/service shittier and increase profit margins?" cause of a life getting more expensive and difficult for the average person? Take healthcare. It is getting more expensive with an aging population needing more care. But also large chunks of the healthcare supply chain become ever more commercial, with companies exploiting their cozy niche for every penny.

dhbradshaw 3y ago

Libraries, roads, firefighters, police, utilities, national parks, local parks.

brigadier132 3y ago
Taxes don't pay for utilities, I can't personally use libraries anymore because they've become defacto homeless shelters, the police suck. So now we are left with firefighters, national parks and local parks which I guess are not good targets for power hungry and incompetent politicians.
- afavour 3y ago
  > I can't personally use libraries anymore because they've become defacto homeless shelters I’m sorry, I can’t take any of this seriously. I use my neighbourhood library regularly, take my kids there, it’s a wonderful place. I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences (have you? Or did you just read online that libraries are full of homeless people?) but don’t extrapolate your experience out to a universal one.
  - prepend 3y ago
    For me libraries vary substantially. My local library in the burbs was nice, but they decided to close every Sunday and only open from 12-5 on Saturday. And oddly, 4 libraries about 10 miles apart from each other all closed after a storm due to rain damage. Even though they are different buildings build many years apart in different styles. It seems odd they wild all have water damage. And while they are closed to the public, the employees are still working, they are just working from home. Every week. So their plan is to have remote workers doing library work on Sunday. But when they are open, they are very nice places. But drive 30 minutes into the major city and it’s not a nice place. There are many homeless inside so it is messy and not a very safe place, if you don’t want someone yelling at your kid. I think it’s appropriate to use our own experiences with libraries to form judgements. I’m glad you (and I) have good experiences, but should we extrapolate our experiences into universal ones? What makes you think all libraries are great like yours?
    - afavour 3y ago
      > should we extrapolate our experiences into universal ones? What makes you think all libraries are great like yours? I’m specifically saying we should not do that! The OP asked for examples of competent public spending. I consider my local library to be one such example. Someone else’s library being awful doesn’t make mine an invalid example of competent spending, they’re two separate things.
      - prepend 3y ago
        But then you shouldn’t extrapolate your local library spending well any more than you don’t want GP extrapolating that his local library spends poorly. What makes you think all libraries are run as well as yours? It seems the question is “does government do well, in general, at managing money?” And having an example of your local library isn’t very helpful for predicting whether government is good or bad. I don’t think the sentiment is “every single government in existence is horrible at managing money” and more so “in general, government is inefficient at management so is not a good investment for optimal social benefit.”
        afavour 3y ago
        > What makes you think all libraries are run as well as yours? I feel like I’m going crazy, I’ve said two times that I don’t think we should be talking in universalities. Statement #1: my local library is great and is an effective use of public funds Statement #2: my local library is awful and a waste of public money Both of these statements can be true and neither contradicts the other. There is no need to come to some universal conclusion here. The broader point is that you often see this approach taken when talking about public spending: one example of waste somehow invalidates the whole concept. Yet you never see someone say “invest in a private company? Did you not see what happened with Enron?!”
  - mptest 3y ago
    My library has fricken 3d printers. It's quite obvious that guys' politics. "All taxes are theft" isn't the mature political position he believes it is... He was never serious lol. "Get rid of all taxes except road maintence and reduce everyone's taxes by 20%"

afavour 3y ago

Think about how important roads are to just about every facet of keeping the country running. I also think the relevant question here is “compared to what?”. The built in assumption is that the public sector is extremely wasteful compared to private but large private companies are also extraordinarily wasteful. Think of the amount of money Meta pisses away every year on frivolous stuff that goes nowhere.

brigadier132 3y ago
Our roads suck and they were created 100 years ago. Can we talk about effective use of government money from the past half century at least? And can we at least show a pattern of competency rather than a pattern of waste?
- afavour 3y ago
  You’re obviously coming into this discussion with a pre-existing viewpoint and have no actual interest in hearing alternatives. Why does it matter when roads were created? They require near constant maintenance, something public funds do. And “our roads suck” is just an absurd generalisation and is obviously not true. Of course parts of the road system suck but it’s an integral part of keeping the country running and by and large works fine.
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    > Why does it matter when roads were created? Because we are talking about how our money will be spent now. > And “our roads suck” is just an absurd generalisation and is obviously not true. I disagree and I believe that "terrible roads" is public sentiment. I've never heard anyone praise our roads. > You’re obviously coming here with a perspective and you have no actual interest in hearing counterpoints I have a very strong opinion obviously and am open to being proven wrong but I am not going to just accept terrible arguments. The political class of this country is just completely inept. Everyone thinks in terms of "taxing the rich" as if some billionaires are going to be fund all these public mega projects. The billionaires do not have enough cash, the people that will get hammered with taxes are the middle and upper middle class.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago

> The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste is staggering. This is not universally agreed upon. Military spending has been a deeply controversial topic along political lines given its overall amount and lack of transparency. As far as examples of competent spending goes, there are plenty but they tend not to get as much attention as the failures do. A big example that most aren’t aware of are the government backed small business loans granted by SBA. Clean energy subsidies are another (Tesla was originally capitalized by a government clean energy grant). You might not have known that about Tesla, but you’re more likely to have heard about Solyndra, which was funded by the same initiative and tarred in the press as an example of wasteful spending. US gov stimulates a ton of business investment behind the scenes that often goes unnoticed.

seanp2k2 3y ago
Soooo, yet more rich folks using government money to grow their own riches?
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  If you want to be overly reductionist about it, that’s up to you. The reality that there’s never been a time in human history where this hasn’t been true. Why make perfect the enemy of good? Lots of rich people exploited PPP during the pandemic, does that mean the government shouldn’t ever hand out life-saving subsidies like that?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
AlbertCory 3y ago
> tarred in the press as an example of wasteful spending umm... they WERE wasteful spending, in that they went bankrupt. You can drive past that building on the 880 freeway.
- 3y ago

redserk 3y ago

Can you elaborate on what is competent spending? The theory of privatization solving problems is predicated on the assumption that competition will exist. Competition in the private sector cannot be assumed to always exist.

brigadier132 3y ago
I'm not advocating for privatization. I'm advocating for decreased government spending and lower taxes. Privatization means the government gives money to private entities to do supposedly necessary functions of the government.

camgunz 3y ago

I mean I think the tougher claim would be "there is no competent public spending in the US". The US across the Federal, State, and local governments alone spends a lot. It's pretty likely that some of it is competent. But separately, what does "competent" mean? Is it a measure of waste, as in we could've done what the DoD does for less? Is it a measure of useless spending, as in we shouldn't have spent money on X because X doesn't work? I don't think the (narrowing to the federal government here) the US has a monopoly on wasteful or misguided spending. I think anyone here who's worked for a company can come up with plenty of examples of incompetent spending by their employer. I think "the US is bad at spending money so it should spend as little money as possible" argument is really weird framing, because it implies that there's some entity out there that's actually good at spending money. But if anyone can find one at a large scale, or even define what "good" means, I'm interested. Or, I'm sympathetic to a "large entities are necessarily bad at spending" argument, but then I think we need to assail big corporations with the same zeal we assail big government.

brigadier132 3y ago
> because it implies that there's some entity out there that's actually good at spending money No, this is the weird framing. As if the money has to go to some entity other than the individual that earned it. The government is taking money from individuals for their supposed benefit.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Why take your property taxes to educate our nation's children when you don't even have children? Am I unfairly framing your argument? Society (that's us) want things for society and it turns out they cost money. We would love to pay for these things with razor-like efficiency but we live in an imperfect world. (The "waste" however still goes into someone's wallet and can be in turn spent at a local restaurant or on groceries.) The only real issue I see is how we balance the tax burden in a fair and equitable way that also benefits society. (And here the increasing wealth disparity we have been seeing is almost certainly bad for societies health.)

rz2k 3y ago

The Post Office and the DMV are always given as examples of how terrible the government is at providing services. Have these people not visited either one in the last 15 years? Maybe they used to be terrible, but I’m always in and out with whatever I needed done, and the people working there and friendly and competent. Parks and libraries are pretty well managed, too.

pixelatedindex 3y ago
The post office has never not been amazing, I don’t understand the people who rally against that. I hate FedEx and UPS far far more.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

NM state tax online services are outright phenomenal. Filing my state taxes (after the first year) takes me less than 8 minutes, and the refund shows up in my bank account about 3 days later. Everything about it is precisely as it should be.

drewcoo 3y ago

> Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? That question, without an agreed-upon definition of "competent," has built-in Schrödinger goalposts. Is it competent? Is it not? Is it the superposition of both?

rapnie 3y ago

> Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? You have to weigh that against the negative effects of profit maximisation of commercial entities for the consumer. To what extent is "Can I get away with making this product/service shittier and increase profit margins?" cause of a life getting more expensive and difficult for the average person? Take healthcare. It is getting more expensive with an aging population needing more care. But also large chunks of the healthcare supply chain become ever more commercial, with companies exploiting their cozy niche for every penny.