4 ms·
Governments are bigger than ever. They are also more useless
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- creer 2y agohttps://archive.ph/p0bG4 https://archive.ph/p0bG4
- MattGaiser 2y agoBefore the Conservatives jump all over the article, the full article has a few key caveats. 1. Spending on stuff, like infrastructure and public services, is substantially down. In the chart, the US has never spent less as a percentage of GDP providing public services. 2. Public sector employment has long been in decline. 3. Entitlements are crowding out everything else.
- jollyllama 2y ago> 2. Public sector employment has long been in decline. Not counting contractors, presumably.
- creer 2y agoImportant dimension (also covered) is that high spending does not necessarily get things done. At least in appearance - but most likely in reality also. On the contrary, occasionally an urgent matter (say, a bridge replacement) gets a spending push and amazement ensues that it can actually be done. i.e. cases of both high spending and fast result.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- null_investor 2y agoThe economist has said this for decades. Meanwhile the US life expectancy has been decreasing. And countries with huge governments like France have been doing just fine. Also running a similar deficit than US. Even being libertarian, I have common sense to acknowledge that those takes are plain stupid. It's all about how the money is spent, not if it's public or private. I bet most money spent by the government in the US is in entitlements, not infra or any kind of subsidies to key industries. So yeah, very inefficient!
- creer 2y agoMy impression of The Economist is more of "never enough taxes". The article shows some US graphs but is not US-centric. A quick search showed an equivalent article (w much more graphs) for the UK. And France "doing just fine"... is problematic - in particular ever more despairing to find places to control its government budgets.
- MattGaiser 2y agoThe overall article actually agrees on many of these points. The title and intro blurb is poor.
- wumeow 2y ago> Meanwhile the US life expectancy has been decreasing. That was a blip due to covid and has been slowly recovering to pre-pandemic levels. https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/19/health/us-life-expectancy-2023/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/19/health/us-life-expectancy-202...
- jschveibinz 2y ago"COVID-19, drug overdoses (opioid crisis), and accidental injury accounted for about two-thirds of the decline in life expectancy" in the U.S. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-t...
- derbOac 2y agoIt was stagnant for years prior to the pandemic. So yes the pandemic had a huge impact but it wasn't exactly a great trend.