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One might think that people who claim their priority is "law and order" would strongly support enforcing existing laws without fear or favor. One might think t

One might think that people who claim their priority is "law and order" would strongly support enforcing existing laws without fear or favor. One might think that people who claim their priority is reducing the budget deficit would strongly support spending tens of billions to increase revenues by hundreds of billions. But when we observe that people's actions contradict their claims, we should stop believing their claims.

vuln 3y ago
Yeah it’s wild that people getting rich off insider trading don’t want to raise taxes on themselves. How many millionaires are in the Senate and House? How many made their millions in their government position?
edgyquant 3y ago
We have a spending problem, not an income problem. Taking more of people’s money isn’t going to solve the core problem that our spending needs serious cuts. You think your political opponents are bad faith actors because you’ve never actually listened to their core beliefs and only know about them through a lense painted by their opposition who favor bigger government. Conservatives want the government cut down significantly, not to find creative ways to get more money.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Perhaps we can derive the core beliefs of the Republican party from their 2020 platform. Given that that is how political parties typically express such things, it seems reasonable.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    The joke here being that they didn't have a 2020 platform. “RESOLVED, That the Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.” https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202... Strictly, that meant that the 2016 platform remained in force, and they blamed the inability to derive a new one on COVID. But it doesn't speak particularly well of them not to be seriously considering the fundamental statement of what it is the party wants to do.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  I'm gonna have to push back a bit on that. I've had major frustrations precisely because conservatives do not cut down on the government when they finally get elected. Spending always goes up. What we have, at least in the US, are tax and spend big "liberals" on one side. And don't tax, but spend even bigger anyway "conservatives" on the other. Please don't try to sell us on the myth of conservatives being good financial stewards because the recent historical data clearly bears all that out to be nonsense. There is currently no option in the US for you to vote for if you believe we need, for instance, a drawdown in spending.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Yeah you’re right that when it comes to execution the actual cutting of programs rarely happens. This past year has been the first time we’ve seen a GOP that’s actually forcing cuts in my lifetime. It’s also worth noting this has been at the behest of a minority of the party and that most of them do seem okay with the status quo. Still these politicians are elected on platforms of doing this it’s just that A. A lot of them definitely are grifters B. The ones that aren’t have to deal with political realities that make slashing income easier than slashing spending.
- jfengel 3y ago
  If they want to cut the spending, then they have to actually cut the spending. Cutting the revenue-generating portion of the government doesn't reduce spending, outside of the comparatively trivial sum spent on revenue collection. Actually cutting spending is hard. It's easy to decry the overall number, but you have to cut actual programs. The vast majority of it goes to things like social security, medicare, and the military -- things people are reluctant to cut. Of what's left, it's a lot harder to find "waste" than people think. At most they zero in on programs that matter a lot to other people... and comprise a trivial fraction of the overall budget. The budget is big because people want it to be big. Actually reducing the size of it is hard. Meantime, there is zero reason why we should allow people to break the law to avoid paying for the money that Congress appropriates.
- 303uru 3y ago
  They are bad faith actors. They pass no legislation to reduce spending, in fact, they just keep spending more and more. You don't buy a $1M house and then make payments like it was $500K, that's just flat out stupid.
- panarky 3y ago
  > want the government cut down significantly Yet another claim trivially refuted by actions. We should stop repeating transparently bogus claims like this.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    You should stop thinking your partisan view points are facts. This is the core doctrine of every American conservative, it isn’t a refutable claim. You can make the case that the elected politicians are corrupt and do not follow through on promises, in which case you won’t find many conservatives that disagree.
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      It is a refutable claim. Those voters continue to vote the same people in. We can derive from their action, that politicians not reducing spending isn’t a concern they hold highly.
      - edgyquant 3y ago
        No you can derive that they find those politicians better than the alternative and nothing more. Republicans not cutting spending as voters would like isn’t going to make them democrats no matter how much you’d like that to be the case. The fact is they have been very successful at stopping democratic policy over the years and just this year they have forced concessions on spending out of democrats, including the president after he stated that wouldn’t happen.
        nickthegreek 3y ago
        If the dem party kept saying they were pro-choice but then started filling seats with mostly pro-life judges, they would lose voters. Some things are a bridge too far for people. Republican voters don’t think spending is an important enough issue to put their foot down and say enough is enough.
jfengel 3y ago
I don't expect people to be fully consistent in their actions. The world is a complicated place, and people will have conflicting motives. There's a strong belief that somehow rich people are uniquely capable of "creating jobs", while jobs the government creates don't count. Surely if we let the rich get richer, that money will trickle down on the rest of us. It's not totally inconsistent, if you overlook the fact that it never actually works that way. Still... this one does have a strong note of "laws for thee, but not for me". Or even more weirdly, "... but not for the person I imagine I'm going to be some day, even if it's worse for the person I actually am and almost certainly will remain."
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jandrewrogers 3y ago
I worked for a major US Federal agency that audits the private sector. The amount of money we recovered for the government significantly exceeded our budget. However, most people have a naive model of the cost-benefit relationship that greatly overestimates the benefit of increasing the auditing budget. First, even if the recovered money exceeds the budget, the amount of recoverable money tends to be fixed to a first approximation. Audits already tend to follow the 80/20 rule. The marginal increase in recovered money quickly becomes less than the marginal increase in budget. You might find a new seam of recoverable money but those tend to dry up quickly while agency budget increases are forever. Second, the indirect compliance costs to the government can exceed the directly recovered money, even ignoring the economy at large. The government may find $75M in new money for an audit cost of $25M if they start auditing something they have historically ignored and therefore tends to have sloppy compliance. This will create a lot of compliance activity in the private sector. On the surface, this looks like a free $50M to the government. However, these compliance costs can increase government procurement costs in excess of the direct recovery. The US government is aware of this and is therefore circumspect about over-auditing for diminishing returns as that can show up as a net cost elsewhere in the budget. Most money recovered in audits is from sloppy record-keeping, ignorance, ambiguity, etc and not fraudulent intent at scale. There is always some fraud but that isn't the meat-and-potatoes of it. Increases in auditing incentivizes more rigorous processes in the private sector, which comes at a cost to the economy, but also reduces future audit recoveries. Increasing audits isn't an infinite money glitch.

vuln 3y ago

Yeah it’s wild that people getting rich off insider trading don’t want to raise taxes on themselves. How many millionaires are in the Senate and House? How many made their millions in their government position?

edgyquant 3y ago

We have a spending problem, not an income problem. Taking more of people’s money isn’t going to solve the core problem that our spending needs serious cuts. You think your political opponents are bad faith actors because you’ve never actually listened to their core beliefs and only know about them through a lense painted by their opposition who favor bigger government. Conservatives want the government cut down significantly, not to find creative ways to get more money.

hotpotamus 3y ago
Perhaps we can derive the core beliefs of the Republican party from their 2020 platform. Given that that is how political parties typically express such things, it seems reasonable.
- jfengel 3y ago
  The joke here being that they didn't have a 2020 platform. “RESOLVED, That the Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.” https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202... Strictly, that meant that the 2016 platform remained in force, and they blamed the inability to derive a new one on COVID. But it doesn't speak particularly well of them not to be seriously considering the fundamental statement of what it is the party wants to do.
bilbo0s 3y ago
I'm gonna have to push back a bit on that. I've had major frustrations precisely because conservatives do not cut down on the government when they finally get elected. Spending always goes up. What we have, at least in the US, are tax and spend big "liberals" on one side. And don't tax, but spend even bigger anyway "conservatives" on the other. Please don't try to sell us on the myth of conservatives being good financial stewards because the recent historical data clearly bears all that out to be nonsense. There is currently no option in the US for you to vote for if you believe we need, for instance, a drawdown in spending.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Yeah you’re right that when it comes to execution the actual cutting of programs rarely happens. This past year has been the first time we’ve seen a GOP that’s actually forcing cuts in my lifetime. It’s also worth noting this has been at the behest of a minority of the party and that most of them do seem okay with the status quo. Still these politicians are elected on platforms of doing this it’s just that A. A lot of them definitely are grifters B. The ones that aren’t have to deal with political realities that make slashing income easier than slashing spending.
jfengel 3y ago
If they want to cut the spending, then they have to actually cut the spending. Cutting the revenue-generating portion of the government doesn't reduce spending, outside of the comparatively trivial sum spent on revenue collection. Actually cutting spending is hard. It's easy to decry the overall number, but you have to cut actual programs. The vast majority of it goes to things like social security, medicare, and the military -- things people are reluctant to cut. Of what's left, it's a lot harder to find "waste" than people think. At most they zero in on programs that matter a lot to other people... and comprise a trivial fraction of the overall budget. The budget is big because people want it to be big. Actually reducing the size of it is hard. Meantime, there is zero reason why we should allow people to break the law to avoid paying for the money that Congress appropriates.
303uru 3y ago
They are bad faith actors. They pass no legislation to reduce spending, in fact, they just keep spending more and more. You don't buy a $1M house and then make payments like it was $500K, that's just flat out stupid.
panarky 3y ago
> want the government cut down significantly Yet another claim trivially refuted by actions. We should stop repeating transparently bogus claims like this.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  You should stop thinking your partisan view points are facts. This is the core doctrine of every American conservative, it isn’t a refutable claim. You can make the case that the elected politicians are corrupt and do not follow through on promises, in which case you won’t find many conservatives that disagree.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    It is a refutable claim. Those voters continue to vote the same people in. We can derive from their action, that politicians not reducing spending isn’t a concern they hold highly.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      No you can derive that they find those politicians better than the alternative and nothing more. Republicans not cutting spending as voters would like isn’t going to make them democrats no matter how much you’d like that to be the case. The fact is they have been very successful at stopping democratic policy over the years and just this year they have forced concessions on spending out of democrats, including the president after he stated that wouldn’t happen.
      - nickthegreek 3y ago
        If the dem party kept saying they were pro-choice but then started filling seats with mostly pro-life judges, they would lose voters. Some things are a bridge too far for people. Republican voters don’t think spending is an important enough issue to put their foot down and say enough is enough.

jfengel 3y ago

I don't expect people to be fully consistent in their actions. The world is a complicated place, and people will have conflicting motives. There's a strong belief that somehow rich people are uniquely capable of "creating jobs", while jobs the government creates don't count. Surely if we let the rich get richer, that money will trickle down on the rest of us. It's not totally inconsistent, if you overlook the fact that it never actually works that way. Still... this one does have a strong note of "laws for thee, but not for me". Or even more weirdly, "... but not for the person I imagine I'm going to be some day, even if it's worse for the person I actually am and almost certainly will remain."

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jandrewrogers 3y ago

I worked for a major US Federal agency that audits the private sector. The amount of money we recovered for the government significantly exceeded our budget. However, most people have a naive model of the cost-benefit relationship that greatly overestimates the benefit of increasing the auditing budget. First, even if the recovered money exceeds the budget, the amount of recoverable money tends to be fixed to a first approximation. Audits already tend to follow the 80/20 rule. The marginal increase in recovered money quickly becomes less than the marginal increase in budget. You might find a new seam of recoverable money but those tend to dry up quickly while agency budget increases are forever. Second, the indirect compliance costs to the government can exceed the directly recovered money, even ignoring the economy at large. The government may find $75M in new money for an audit cost of $25M if they start auditing something they have historically ignored and therefore tends to have sloppy compliance. This will create a lot of compliance activity in the private sector. On the surface, this looks like a free $50M to the government. However, these compliance costs can increase government procurement costs in excess of the direct recovery. The US government is aware of this and is therefore circumspect about over-auditing for diminishing returns as that can show up as a net cost elsewhere in the budget. Most money recovered in audits is from sloppy record-keeping, ignorance, ambiguity, etc and not fraudulent intent at scale. There is always some fraud but that isn't the meat-and-potatoes of it. Increases in auditing incentivizes more rigorous processes in the private sector, which comes at a cost to the economy, but also reduces future audit recoveries. Increasing audits isn't an infinite money glitch.