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Could you (or anyone else reading this) define "gut funding" in quantitative terms? I'm asking because I've noticed newspapers have somehow acquired the abilit

Could you (or anyone else reading this) define "gut funding" in quantitative terms? I'm asking because I've noticed newspapers have somehow acquired the ability to imply that spending on this or that program is being cut, when in fact it isn't. Often simply refusing to let a program grow at an exponential rate is supposed to be a "spending cut". And sometimes mere exponential growth is not enough. To give an example, if one trusts the newspapers of the United Kingdom, the NHS is supposed to have been "underfunded" ever since Cameron became prime minister in 2010. The reality is that expenditures on that system have remained at around 9.7% of GDP until COVID when they rose to 12%, remaining at that level since then. And GDP is a quantity that's growing every year. If "properly funding" hard drug legalization would require expenditures on rehab programs that steadily grow until they reach a third of all government revenues, that in and of itself makes legalization a horrible policy.

inferiorhuman 3y ago
Sure. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-cuts-nhs-funding-260519 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-cuts-nhs... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9722661/David-Cameron-ordered-to-stop-saying-NHS-spending-is-up.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9722661/David-Came... https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-set-to-break-promise-on-nhs-cuts https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-se... Cameron effectively cut £500 million from the NHS budget by redefining what the budget was and then claiming the budget increased. The result is that Cameron was ordered to stop claiming that he increased NHS funding.
- swores 3y ago
  Good links thanks, and I'll add: the % of NHS's budget being pushed to private providers has been steadily increasing every year for over a decade. If you have £x to pay nurses (or CT scanning machine operating costs, or cleaning crews, or...) and nurses typical pay is £y, and your budget goes up to £2x but you also switch to using agency nurses who charge £3y while paying the nurses £1.5y, the nurses have had a 50% pay rise, but the NHS budget is effectively worth 2/3rds what it was before despite being technically double. Obviously it's not as simple as X and 2X, but constant real-term pay drops have led to lower staff levels leading to more agency staffing (where a private company takes a tidy slice of profit for every hour worked), policies such as selling off NHS buildings for NHS Trusts to have to rent them back have been put in place, and shit like that has happened across the board. Ultimately, the tory party hates that the NHS is public not privately run, have gradually been pushing to change that, and have excellent PR that's persuaded many people that it's the useless NHS's fault for all of this. Those pesky doctors who don't care about people!
chrisbolt 3y ago
From the Washington Post article: > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.
- remarkEon 3y ago
  >outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups The only groups in this merrygoround of policy torture that have a vested financial interest in not solving drug use problems.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    nonprofit groups have a vested financial interest in not solving the issues they are working on?
    - remarkEon 3y ago
      Yes. That is the definition of the nonprofit structure. These entities don't exist if they actually solve the problems that they pretend to try to solve. If some nonprofit came up with a magical solution to the opioid crisis, that ended it tomorrow, the grants would dry up and they'd all be out of work. Perhaps you pretend that everyone who works for nonprofits are completely altruistic in nature, and if that's the case may I suggest that you have not met enough of these people.
    - ryathal 3y ago
      Yes. if a non-profit receives most of its finding to end homelessness for example, the last thing they want to actually do is end homelessness, because their funding then goes away. What they want is homelessness to remain somewhat constant and claim reduction in growth, or appearance as a success.
hogepiyo 3y ago
>To give an example, if one trusts the newspapers of the United Kingdom, the NHS is supposed to have been "underfunded" ever since Cameron became prime minister in 2010. The reality is that expenditures on that system have remained at around 9.7% of GDP until COVID when they rose to 12%, remaining at that level since then. And GDP is a quantity that's growing every year. The reality is that they cut the things that add cumulative pressure to the NHS itself. E.g - social care cuts meant that thousands of beds occupied by medically fit people were occupied because they had nowhere to send those people to. The "underfunded" thing is a simplistic and borderline misleading way of phrasing it but with the attention economy that we're in I can see why they'd phrase it that way
8note 3y ago
Can you also quantify "having doubts" And "successful program" ? Your UK example doesnt include the denominator -- the number of people needing care. GDP growth is not correlated to the number of people needing care, so using it to normalize spend isn't right. The %GDP needs to be going up to maintain funding levels
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  Is the the number of people needing care rising because the number of elderly people is rising? Or something else that I cannot see.

inferiorhuman 3y ago

Sure. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-cuts-nhs-funding-260519 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-cuts-nhs... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9722661/David-Cameron-ordered-to-stop-saying-NHS-spending-is-up.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9722661/David-Came... https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-set-to-break-promise-on-nhs-cuts https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-se... Cameron effectively cut £500 million from the NHS budget by redefining what the budget was and then claiming the budget increased. The result is that Cameron was ordered to stop claiming that he increased NHS funding.

swores 3y ago
Good links thanks, and I'll add: the % of NHS's budget being pushed to private providers has been steadily increasing every year for over a decade. If you have £x to pay nurses (or CT scanning machine operating costs, or cleaning crews, or...) and nurses typical pay is £y, and your budget goes up to £2x but you also switch to using agency nurses who charge £3y while paying the nurses £1.5y, the nurses have had a 50% pay rise, but the NHS budget is effectively worth 2/3rds what it was before despite being technically double. Obviously it's not as simple as X and 2X, but constant real-term pay drops have led to lower staff levels leading to more agency staffing (where a private company takes a tidy slice of profit for every hour worked), policies such as selling off NHS buildings for NHS Trusts to have to rent them back have been put in place, and shit like that has happened across the board. Ultimately, the tory party hates that the NHS is public not privately run, have gradually been pushing to change that, and have excellent PR that's persuaded many people that it's the useless NHS's fault for all of this. Those pesky doctors who don't care about people!

chrisbolt 3y ago

From the Washington Post article: > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.

remarkEon 3y ago
>outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups The only groups in this merrygoround of policy torture that have a vested financial interest in not solving drug use problems.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  nonprofit groups have a vested financial interest in not solving the issues they are working on?
  - remarkEon 3y ago
    Yes. That is the definition of the nonprofit structure. These entities don't exist if they actually solve the problems that they pretend to try to solve. If some nonprofit came up with a magical solution to the opioid crisis, that ended it tomorrow, the grants would dry up and they'd all be out of work. Perhaps you pretend that everyone who works for nonprofits are completely altruistic in nature, and if that's the case may I suggest that you have not met enough of these people.
  - ryathal 3y ago
    Yes. if a non-profit receives most of its finding to end homelessness for example, the last thing they want to actually do is end homelessness, because their funding then goes away. What they want is homelessness to remain somewhat constant and claim reduction in growth, or appearance as a success.

hogepiyo 3y ago

>To give an example, if one trusts the newspapers of the United Kingdom, the NHS is supposed to have been "underfunded" ever since Cameron became prime minister in 2010. The reality is that expenditures on that system have remained at around 9.7% of GDP until COVID when they rose to 12%, remaining at that level since then. And GDP is a quantity that's growing every year. The reality is that they cut the things that add cumulative pressure to the NHS itself. E.g - social care cuts meant that thousands of beds occupied by medically fit people were occupied because they had nowhere to send those people to. The "underfunded" thing is a simplistic and borderline misleading way of phrasing it but with the attention economy that we're in I can see why they'd phrase it that way

8note 3y ago

Can you also quantify "having doubts" And "successful program" ? Your UK example doesnt include the denominator -- the number of people needing care. GDP growth is not correlated to the number of people needing care, so using it to normalize spend isn't right. The %GDP needs to be going up to maintain funding levels

throwaway2037 3y ago
Is the the number of people needing care rising because the number of elderly people is rising? Or something else that I cannot see.