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Meaningfully reducing the size of government is a surprisingly rare occurrence throughout history. A counter question: how should it be done? Elon's strategy is

by nomilk 2y ago

Meaningfully reducing the size of government is a surprisingly rare occurrence throughout history. A counter question: how should it be done? Elon's strategy is bold; 'deleting' entire departments. But that decision seems somewhat rational, if you agree that it doesn't need ~450 departments. I don't claim to have answers, just that the Elon approach seems bold but, frankly, quite sound. What are the alternatives?

deleted 2y ago
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ty6853 2y ago
Milton Friedman seems to think ending tax deduction at payroll might work, since forcing people to write a fat check every year will get them screaming to their reps or electing frugal reps.
- jfengel 2y ago
  Lowering taxes isn't frugal. Frugality is on the spending side, not the revenue side. Such screaming never tells you how to cut the revenue side. (Except, of course, for the IRS, who generates orders of magnitude more revenue than they spend.) When asked, people will always say "Cut the spending on those people over there; spending on me is necessary and critical." I'd argue that's what's needed is less screaming and more coherent discussion of national priorities. But I suppose that just invoking somebody's ideological grudges and firing everybody in the vicinity of them is good, too.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    Milton Friedman painstakingly designed the income tax withholding precisely to facilitate increased spending. Given his great body of works and actual experience in implementation, I don't think his opinions are brushed away by your strawman fight about what frugality was said to be . He advocated for eliminating automatic withholding because he saw exactly how it manufactured assent for spending [0], an effect of his own mechanisms he helped design for the circa WW2 war era. https://archive.org/details/twoluckypeopleme00frie https://archive.org/details/twoluckypeopleme00frie
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computerthings 2y ago
> Meaningfully reducing the size of government is a surprisingly rare occurrence throughout history. "meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. This is saying nothing. And it's not as rare as oligarchs persecuting political enemies and slashing anything that doesn't benefit them, harming millions of people leading to anything but more bad things along the same rotten line; the rate there is 100%. It's not bold, much less "sound" to cut peanuts (compared to what will be taken in the form of tax cuts and govt contracts) while talking nonsense to an audience that understands and cares even less than him, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385
- nomilk 2y ago
  > "meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. You got me (I actually felt guilt writing that weaselly sentence!). The reason I still wrote it is because I'm reasonably confident it's correct (for some definition of 'meaningfully'). For example, in my lifetime, I can't recall any OECD country cutting its government spending by, say, 20% or more (I haven't looked it up, but I'd guess Greece during austerity might be the best example in the past 20 years, even then I doubt it was as much as 20% [0]). [0] There's another annoyingly confounding factor, which is Keynesian economics suggests governments should not cut spending during a crisis (or at a time when private spending is likely to be too low), which creates a 'capture' all of its own! (a bit like 'too big to fail' did for banks).
xracy 2y ago
Elon's 'Strategy' looks a lot more like consolidating the power of government in the executive branch than actually reducing the size of government. That actually makes government bigger and scarier in my view. I would now consider if anyone else gets the chance to govern, they should meaningfully reduce the power of the executive branch aggressively in order to avoid this kind of consolidation in the future. But good luck with that and also having a functioning gov't.

by nomilk 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ty6853 2y ago

Milton Friedman seems to think ending tax deduction at payroll might work, since forcing people to write a fat check every year will get them screaming to their reps or electing frugal reps.

jfengel 2y ago
Lowering taxes isn't frugal. Frugality is on the spending side, not the revenue side. Such screaming never tells you how to cut the revenue side. (Except, of course, for the IRS, who generates orders of magnitude more revenue than they spend.) When asked, people will always say "Cut the spending on those people over there; spending on me is necessary and critical." I'd argue that's what's needed is less screaming and more coherent discussion of national priorities. But I suppose that just invoking somebody's ideological grudges and firing everybody in the vicinity of them is good, too.
- ty6853 2y ago
  Milton Friedman painstakingly designed the income tax withholding precisely to facilitate increased spending. Given his great body of works and actual experience in implementation, I don't think his opinions are brushed away by your strawman fight about what frugality was said to be . He advocated for eliminating automatic withholding because he saw exactly how it manufactured assent for spending [0], an effect of his own mechanisms he helped design for the circa WW2 war era. https://archive.org/details/twoluckypeopleme00frie https://archive.org/details/twoluckypeopleme00frie

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

computerthings 2y ago

> Meaningfully reducing the size of government is a surprisingly rare occurrence throughout history. "meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. This is saying nothing. And it's not as rare as oligarchs persecuting political enemies and slashing anything that doesn't benefit them, harming millions of people leading to anything but more bad things along the same rotten line; the rate there is 100%. It's not bold, much less "sound" to cut peanuts (compared to what will be taken in the form of tax cuts and govt contracts) while talking nonsense to an audience that understands and cares even less than him, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385

nomilk 2y ago
> "meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. You got me (I actually felt guilt writing that weaselly sentence!). The reason I still wrote it is because I'm reasonably confident it's correct (for some definition of 'meaningfully'). For example, in my lifetime, I can't recall any OECD country cutting its government spending by, say, 20% or more (I haven't looked it up, but I'd guess Greece during austerity might be the best example in the past 20 years, even then I doubt it was as much as 20% [0]). [0] There's another annoyingly confounding factor, which is Keynesian economics suggests governments should not cut spending during a crisis (or at a time when private spending is likely to be too low), which creates a 'capture' all of its own! (a bit like 'too big to fail' did for banks).

xracy 2y ago

Elon's 'Strategy' looks a lot more like consolidating the power of government in the executive branch than actually reducing the size of government. That actually makes government bigger and scarier in my view. I would now consider if anyone else gets the chance to govern, they should meaningfully reduce the power of the executive branch aggressively in order to avoid this kind of consolidation in the future. But good luck with that and also having a functioning gov't.