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I mean, I sympathize with the "burn it all down" attitude because the (US) government needs to be culled. Education costs exploded in the last 50 years because

I mean, I sympathize with the "burn it all down" attitude because the (US) government needs to be culled. Education costs exploded in the last 50 years because the government got involved. Fiscal irresponsibility is the new normal because the government will get involved to bail out the banks; why not give out credit like candy? Housing costs are insane because governments get involved via zoning to artificially reduce supply. US military spending today is (inflation adjusted) almost as high as during WW2. Federal government spending is 37% of our annual GDP which is almost certainly slowing our economic growth. Someone needs to take an axe to the US fed. If we reduce federal spending by 75%, do you honestly think that would be a bad thing? The US has produced all the innovation and prosperity and our government was founded on the principle of "fuck the government". Government overgrowth is the problem.

naremu 3y ago
It's comments like these that make wanting a better world feel like a truly thankless, sisyphean task. All I can say without wasting too much of my own personal time is: in the world of federal spending you suggested > US military spending today is (inflation adjusted) almost as high as during WW2. would be unchanged, if not exacerbated (to continue exerting military/police control on a populace who's tax dollars aren't returned to them in the form of non-private, non-profit entities but now live in literally Bladerunner) and the privately owned companies that lobbied to have that considerable amount of society's tax dollars spent on their products will certainly not be displaced. See also: basically every other industry Sometimes I'm jealous of the uber wealthy not because they have nicer bathrooms or destroyed entire generation's qualities of lives and the reliable longevity of the future...but because of how many people seem eager to step up to bat for them, for nothing more than a thin veneer of "yeah well, fuck that other guy, amirite?" Our social instincts are still tied to old institutional forms. Individuals with economic empires without borders seem to escape our otherwise commonly more organized criticisms. This makes it painfully easy to get people to rally against "the state", but rallying against the vague, shadowy amalgamation/political party of wealth concentration proves elusive, I suppose. Like rallying against feudalism as a whole. Where do you start or end is the only real question.
IX-103 3y ago
"Education costs exploded in the last 50 years because the government got involved" You do realize that the reason costs have increased is that State funding for public Universities has been significantly cut over that period? This "government can't do anything right" attitude has been a major driver in this increased cost? Yes, the availability of some grants and guaranteed loans to people barely old enough to sign contracts did't help, but the big driver of the cost increases is the reduction of public funding. State funding for secondary education has been continuously reduced in the name of lower taxes and "fiscal responsibility". As for Federal spending, it depends on how you slice it. If you count Social Security and Medicare and other "entitlements"* then SS and Medicare are huge. If you don't, then the Military is the biggest expenditure. That's a little misleading though, since a large amount of basic and applied research is funded through the military (such as through DARPA and other agencies). If we reduce here we'd need corresponding increases elsewhere to avoid starving basic research. There are some expenditures that are wasteful there (I'm not sure how well the F-22 will handle the shift to drone warfare), so we could back there if we wanted to. Funding for many other agencies is actually too low to accomplish their stated mission. We either need to reduce the scope of what they are legally required to do or increase funding. For the IRS, one thing we could do is to simplify the tax code to make audits less expensive. Similar changes could be made for the INS. As for wastefulness, if you compare the government to private companies to implement the same standards, government is always cheaper. The only way private companies get cheaper is to provide less or offset the cost in some other way (unexpected externalities). The real reason expenses are so high is that the government is big -- it provides services to every person in the US and many others around the world. It covers a large number of markets from healthcare, security, finance, etc. There is literally no company comparable to the Federal government in totality. But if you compare just the pieces you still find government usually comes out ahead. *"Entitlements" really should be considered contractual obligations and treated separately from the budget -- after all, would we allow a private company to include disbursements from their pension fund as part of their budget? Fuck no, that's a separate pile of money that doesn't belong to you. The entire framing around "entitlements" is designed to trick people out of their money.
habinero 3y ago
It's 23% of GDP, not 37%. [0] Anyone who says "we need to cull the feds" doesn't understand what we actually spend money on. 25% of our spending is Social Security, and 20% is the military. That's 45% right there. Old people vote. Social Security is going nowhere. You literally can't cut the budget by 75%. [0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
boxed 3y ago
> US military spending today is (inflation adjusted) almost as high as during WW2. Not in % of GDP.

naremu 3y ago

It's comments like these that make wanting a better world feel like a truly thankless, sisyphean task. All I can say without wasting too much of my own personal time is: in the world of federal spending you suggested > US military spending today is (inflation adjusted) almost as high as during WW2. would be unchanged, if not exacerbated (to continue exerting military/police control on a populace who's tax dollars aren't returned to them in the form of non-private, non-profit entities but now live in literally Bladerunner) and the privately owned companies that lobbied to have that considerable amount of society's tax dollars spent on their products will certainly not be displaced. See also: basically every other industry Sometimes I'm jealous of the uber wealthy not because they have nicer bathrooms or destroyed entire generation's qualities of lives and the reliable longevity of the future...but because of how many people seem eager to step up to bat for them, for nothing more than a thin veneer of "yeah well, fuck that other guy, amirite?" Our social instincts are still tied to old institutional forms. Individuals with economic empires without borders seem to escape our otherwise commonly more organized criticisms. This makes it painfully easy to get people to rally against "the state", but rallying against the vague, shadowy amalgamation/political party of wealth concentration proves elusive, I suppose. Like rallying against feudalism as a whole. Where do you start or end is the only real question.

IX-103 3y ago

"Education costs exploded in the last 50 years because the government got involved" You do realize that the reason costs have increased is that State funding for public Universities has been significantly cut over that period? This "government can't do anything right" attitude has been a major driver in this increased cost? Yes, the availability of some grants and guaranteed loans to people barely old enough to sign contracts did't help, but the big driver of the cost increases is the reduction of public funding. State funding for secondary education has been continuously reduced in the name of lower taxes and "fiscal responsibility". As for Federal spending, it depends on how you slice it. If you count Social Security and Medicare and other "entitlements"* then SS and Medicare are huge. If you don't, then the Military is the biggest expenditure. That's a little misleading though, since a large amount of basic and applied research is funded through the military (such as through DARPA and other agencies). If we reduce here we'd need corresponding increases elsewhere to avoid starving basic research. There are some expenditures that are wasteful there (I'm not sure how well the F-22 will handle the shift to drone warfare), so we could back there if we wanted to. Funding for many other agencies is actually too low to accomplish their stated mission. We either need to reduce the scope of what they are legally required to do or increase funding. For the IRS, one thing we could do is to simplify the tax code to make audits less expensive. Similar changes could be made for the INS. As for wastefulness, if you compare the government to private companies to implement the same standards, government is always cheaper. The only way private companies get cheaper is to provide less or offset the cost in some other way (unexpected externalities). The real reason expenses are so high is that the government is big -- it provides services to every person in the US and many others around the world. It covers a large number of markets from healthcare, security, finance, etc. There is literally no company comparable to the Federal government in totality. But if you compare just the pieces you still find government usually comes out ahead. *"Entitlements" really should be considered contractual obligations and treated separately from the budget -- after all, would we allow a private company to include disbursements from their pension fund as part of their budget? Fuck no, that's a separate pile of money that doesn't belong to you. The entire framing around "entitlements" is designed to trick people out of their money.

habinero 3y ago

It's 23% of GDP, not 37%. [0] Anyone who says "we need to cull the feds" doesn't understand what we actually spend money on. 25% of our spending is Social Security, and 20% is the military. That's 45% right there. Old people vote. Social Security is going nowhere. You literally can't cut the budget by 75%. [0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

boxed 3y ago

> US military spending today is (inflation adjusted) almost as high as during WW2. Not in % of GDP.