6 ms·

It's amazing, really. You hear about "government overspending" all the time. You actually look into something in any detail and what you discover is a consisten

by moomin 1y ago

It's amazing, really. You hear about "government overspending" all the time. You actually look into something in any detail and what you discover is a consistent pattern of underspending. Call it mismanagement if you want, but it is consistently what we, as votes, and the executive, ask them to do.

alephnerd 1y ago
Most people see a number $6 Trillion and something breaks inside them. What they don't realize is maintaining infrastructure is expensive. Sure there are a lot of inefficiencies with need to be fixed, but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sadly, such is society, and this is a problem that happens everywhere - be they democracies or authoritarian states.
- imadierich 1y ago
  [dead]
- bombcar 1y ago
  With 3 million employees and about one cent a flush, the US government spends 100,000 or so a day just to flush. Assuming three bathroom breaks a working day.
  - Barrin92 1y ago
    >With 3 million employees that is, for context, about as high as it was in 1960 when the US population was half as large as it is today. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/HQ8pa/full.png https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/HQ8pa/full.png
    - cperciva 1y ago
      Does that include military?
      - Barrin92 1y ago
        It doesn't, but if it did the decline wouldn't just be relative but absolute because active military personnel is actually down almost 50% since its cold war peak. The US military is significantly leaner nowadays across the board. In terms of spending too, something like 8% of GDP at its peak compared to 3.x now. https://usafacts.org/articles/is-military-enlistment-down/ https://usafacts.org/articles/is-military-enlistment-down/
  - rad_gruchalski 1y ago
    Close down the toilets. Poof, problem gone. Think about applying to DOGE. They may like your ideas.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      Poop-from-home! Serious expense offloading.
- juujian 1y ago
  When people think wastage, they think bureaucrats wasting away in offices. Social security admin, air traffic control, and teachers are more like Amazon warehouses at this time in terms of utilization. Less than 1% of social security admin funding is overhead at this time. Any charity would be exhilarated to hit numbers like that.
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  "Most people see a number $6 Trillion and something breaks inside them. What they don't realize is maintaining infrastructure is expensive." It breaks all our brains too, because that $6 Trillion has very little to do with maintaining infrastructure. The bulk of it is just direct payouts (Social Security, Medicare and defense contracts). Pretty frustrating that this big number means the government is politically forced to do drastic austerity for things like keeping planes flying safely. Also, makes DOGE starting at USAID (<1% of budget) look especially incompetent.
RyJones 1y ago
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was a contractor for HHS for a year or so. When I started, there was a server farm built for a contract that was powered up and maintained; never used, it was broken up and sold for surplus. Just before I left, HHS thought they would like that program again, so us US taxpayers bought another tranche of computers to power up. I don't know the end of the story. I could type more, but it would be a long and boring story.
- newsclues 1y ago
  There is overspending. It’s a scam. There is mismanagement. There is also a misallocation and underfunding of essential services and infrastructure. This is the excuse for ever more funding.
Modified3019 1y ago
Came across this post, which perfectly encapsulates a sort of pathological inversion of sunk-cost fallacy, where some people I encounter would happily let infrastructure rot and countless people suffer if it saves them pennies on their taxes, and are incapable of re-evaluating their position because “taxes bad” has somehow become such an ingrained/religious value that anything else is unconsciously and immediately rejected no matter the consequences. https://old.reddit.com/r/goodnews/comments/1kuaasx/i_voted_for_trump_now_my_industrys_down_23_and/mu2all1/?context=10000 https://old.reddit.com/r/goodnews/comments/1kuaasx/i_voted_f... >>I posted this somewhere else ages ago, feel it's relevant >I remember having a conversation with my ex's sister and their mum a few years ago, around election time. I try to not talk politics with people because it's a fast way to lose friends, but the topic came up between my ex and them over dinner and I just listened in. >I remember them saying that the only thing they're interested in is tax cuts. More money for them. I had to chime in and ask what about the NHS, what about funding schools? They said they didn't care because they had private healthcare through their jobs (finance), so they don't need the NHS. The mum said her kids are through school so she doesn't care about funding schools, and the sister said she'll be sending her kids to private school one day. I was pretty gobsmacked at the brazen selfishness of it, and asked what if they lose their jobs - and therefore their private health care - or become unable to work, what if when you have kids you can't afford private school? Neither of them could grasp this hypothetical... it was as if I was speaking another language to them. They were just like 'but we do have jobs.' And what if you didn't? 'But we do.' It was just circular and they couldn't see themselves in any situation other than the one they were currently in. >I can quite see why empathy is a hard concept for right wingers to grasp, it was like they just simply couldn't understand the concept. They weren't stupid either, and nor were they rich - the mum worked in admin for a finance company in the city, and the sister was being paid by the same company (mum got her in the door) to train as an accountant. >I think about those two every now and then when I can't understand how the other side thinks. Because it seems we do literally think very differently.
J37T3R 1y ago
It's like tech debt. It's an ongoing cost in a one and done environment, it's hard to see problems from the outside until there's catastrophic failure, and if there's a slow niggling annoyance of things getting worse over time the point where people notice enough to care is usually past the point of needing a refactor. So we get underspending where it matters, overspending where it doesn't, and the solution is always a redo.
nxm 1y ago
Don't generalize. There was 0 underspending at the Department of Education or USAID.
cperciva 1y ago
The general pattern I see is that operating spending is too high while capital spending is too low.
- jagger27 1y ago
  Newark’s overworked controllers might argue differently. Of course in this forum the general suggestion will be to replace tired controllers with sleepless machines, and the technologists here have strong incentives to advocate for such solutions.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    (Shrug) ATC is no job for humans, and I'm tired of pretending it is. If we were building our aviation infrastructure from scratch starting today, you would get some really strange looks if you suggested employing humans to manage air traffic.
    - jagger27 1y ago
      It’s like I summoned you! Just be honest about your incentives if you care to make these arguments. Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails.
      - CamperBob2 1y ago
        My "incentive" is that I fly somewhere every once in a while, as do people that I care about, and I want the system to be as safe, reliable, efficient, resilient, and cost-effective as possible. Don't you?
      - sofixa 1y ago
        > Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails. Airplanes have gotten increasingly automated. Who is responsible when Airbus' excellent automations that have prevented countless upsets and accidents fail? Nobody, if it was an honest mistake, and lessons learned are applied to improve even further. The problem with modern ATC is that a lot of the safety systems are bolted and backported on top of existing extremely legacy tech. Ffs, the communications still happen over radio where transmissions are missed if more than one person talks at the same time. And people have died because of this, as well as controllers making a mistake or pilots and controllers misunderstanding each other. There's no reason to continue bolting more stuff on top. A very large part of ATC can be fully automated and made safer.
jjallen 1y ago
The US overspends on military and underspends on most other things. Not sure when this will ever change. Only when it has to I guess.
- sour-taste 1y ago
  In a pretty remarkable statement a month or so ago Trump actually said we were overspending on the military and suggested cuts. Then his budget comes out and proposes military expansion and Medicare cuts so like usual he was just bullshitting I guess.
  - jjallen 1y ago
    Exactly. The military-industrial complex is a very real thing, unfortunately.
readthenotes1 1y ago
Have been many billions of dollars spent over the years to "modernize" air traffic control. If my recollection is correct, most of it ended up being wasted. The current administration is asking for a lot of money to try to fix it again
ars 1y ago
> you discover is a consistent pattern of underspending No, what you discover is a pattern of wasted spending. Then they ask for more money to actually get the job done despite all the waste. People try to solve this by privatizing certain things, figuring that competition will help efficiency. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe we need competing governments, and whichever government is more efficient gets to rule. Seriously: Add a second FAA at some test airports, see if they can do better, with the understanding that if they can't, they get shut down.
- cycomanic 1y ago
  > Maybe we need competing governments, and whichever government is more efficient gets to rule. Seriously: Add a second FAA at some test airports, see if they can do better, with the understanding that if they can't, they get shut down. And you would be willing to be personally responsible if people die in this experiment? It's funny how people here always complain that any money government spends is wasted, but if you look at big companies they are "wasting" money as well. Just look at the number of projects that google killed. It's simply a function of large (and small) organizations that they don't get it right all the time, it's difficult to predict the future.
  - nobody9999 1y ago
    >It's funny how people here always complain that any money government spends is wasted, but if you look at big companies they are "wasting" money as well. Just look at the number of projects that google killed. It's simply a function of large (and small) organizations that they don't get it right all the time, it's difficult to predict the future. I worked at a Fortune 50 financial services company back in the 1990s and they designed, built and deployed a brand, spanking new customer service platform. They spent USD$200,000,000.00 building the system. It was ready for production when someone realized they'd spend USD$50,000,000+ per annum supporting the platform. The product roll out was scrapped, and tens of millions of dollars of equipment sat in warehouses. When trying to redeploy said equipment across the enterprise, group heads would purchase new equipment rather than using the equipment sitting in warehouses as it was "cheaper" on their budget lines to spend real money rather than put the depreciation of already purchased equipment on those budget lines. So yeah, big companies can be incredibly wasteful. Often more wasteful than government (e.g., US Medicare has ~3% overhead -- show me any private insurer that can top that) as well. It's all about the incentives. People (and consequently, organizations) respond to the incentives inherent in a situation. Sometimes those incentives promote efficient outcomes and sometimes not so much. The trick is to maximize the former and minimize the latter. Something easier said than done.

by moomin 1y ago

alephnerd 1y ago

Most people see a number $6 Trillion and something breaks inside them. What they don't realize is maintaining infrastructure is expensive. Sure there are a lot of inefficiencies with need to be fixed, but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sadly, such is society, and this is a problem that happens everywhere - be they democracies or authoritarian states.

imadierich 1y ago
[dead]
bombcar 1y ago
With 3 million employees and about one cent a flush, the US government spends 100,000 or so a day just to flush. Assuming three bathroom breaks a working day.
- Barrin92 1y ago
  >With 3 million employees that is, for context, about as high as it was in 1960 when the US population was half as large as it is today. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/HQ8pa/full.png https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/HQ8pa/full.png
  - cperciva 1y ago
    Does that include military?
    - Barrin92 1y ago
      It doesn't, but if it did the decline wouldn't just be relative but absolute because active military personnel is actually down almost 50% since its cold war peak. The US military is significantly leaner nowadays across the board. In terms of spending too, something like 8% of GDP at its peak compared to 3.x now. https://usafacts.org/articles/is-military-enlistment-down/ https://usafacts.org/articles/is-military-enlistment-down/
- rad_gruchalski 1y ago
  Close down the toilets. Poof, problem gone. Think about applying to DOGE. They may like your ideas.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    Poop-from-home! Serious expense offloading.
juujian 1y ago
When people think wastage, they think bureaucrats wasting away in offices. Social security admin, air traffic control, and teachers are more like Amazon warehouses at this time in terms of utilization. Less than 1% of social security admin funding is overhead at this time. Any charity would be exhilarated to hit numbers like that.
pj_mukh 1y ago
"Most people see a number $6 Trillion and something breaks inside them. What they don't realize is maintaining infrastructure is expensive." It breaks all our brains too, because that $6 Trillion has very little to do with maintaining infrastructure. The bulk of it is just direct payouts (Social Security, Medicare and defense contracts). Pretty frustrating that this big number means the government is politically forced to do drastic austerity for things like keeping planes flying safely. Also, makes DOGE starting at USAID (<1% of budget) look especially incompetent.

RyJones 1y ago

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was a contractor for HHS for a year or so. When I started, there was a server farm built for a contract that was powered up and maintained; never used, it was broken up and sold for surplus. Just before I left, HHS thought they would like that program again, so us US taxpayers bought another tranche of computers to power up. I don't know the end of the story. I could type more, but it would be a long and boring story.

newsclues 1y ago
There is overspending. It’s a scam. There is mismanagement. There is also a misallocation and underfunding of essential services and infrastructure. This is the excuse for ever more funding.

Modified3019 1y ago

Came across this post, which perfectly encapsulates a sort of pathological inversion of sunk-cost fallacy, where some people I encounter would happily let infrastructure rot and countless people suffer if it saves them pennies on their taxes, and are incapable of re-evaluating their position because “taxes bad” has somehow become such an ingrained/religious value that anything else is unconsciously and immediately rejected no matter the consequences. https://old.reddit.com/r/goodnews/comments/1kuaasx/i_voted_for_trump_now_my_industrys_down_23_and/mu2all1/?context=10000 https://old.reddit.com/r/goodnews/comments/1kuaasx/i_voted_f... >>I posted this somewhere else ages ago, feel it's relevant >I remember having a conversation with my ex's sister and their mum a few years ago, around election time. I try to not talk politics with people because it's a fast way to lose friends, but the topic came up between my ex and them over dinner and I just listened in. >I remember them saying that the only thing they're interested in is tax cuts. More money for them. I had to chime in and ask what about the NHS, what about funding schools? They said they didn't care because they had private healthcare through their jobs (finance), so they don't need the NHS. The mum said her kids are through school so she doesn't care about funding schools, and the sister said she'll be sending her kids to private school one day. I was pretty gobsmacked at the brazen selfishness of it, and asked what if they lose their jobs - and therefore their private health care - or become unable to work, what if when you have kids you can't afford private school? Neither of them could grasp this hypothetical... it was as if I was speaking another language to them. They were just like 'but we do have jobs.' And what if you didn't? 'But we do.' It was just circular and they couldn't see themselves in any situation other than the one they were currently in. >I can quite see why empathy is a hard concept for right wingers to grasp, it was like they just simply couldn't understand the concept. They weren't stupid either, and nor were they rich - the mum worked in admin for a finance company in the city, and the sister was being paid by the same company (mum got her in the door) to train as an accountant. >I think about those two every now and then when I can't understand how the other side thinks. Because it seems we do literally think very differently.

J37T3R 1y ago

It's like tech debt. It's an ongoing cost in a one and done environment, it's hard to see problems from the outside until there's catastrophic failure, and if there's a slow niggling annoyance of things getting worse over time the point where people notice enough to care is usually past the point of needing a refactor. So we get underspending where it matters, overspending where it doesn't, and the solution is always a redo.

nxm 1y ago

Don't generalize. There was 0 underspending at the Department of Education or USAID.

cperciva 1y ago

The general pattern I see is that operating spending is too high while capital spending is too low.

jagger27 1y ago
Newark’s overworked controllers might argue differently. Of course in this forum the general suggestion will be to replace tired controllers with sleepless machines, and the technologists here have strong incentives to advocate for such solutions.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  (Shrug) ATC is no job for humans, and I'm tired of pretending it is. If we were building our aviation infrastructure from scratch starting today, you would get some really strange looks if you suggested employing humans to manage air traffic.
  - jagger27 1y ago
    It’s like I summoned you! Just be honest about your incentives if you care to make these arguments. Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      My "incentive" is that I fly somewhere every once in a while, as do people that I care about, and I want the system to be as safe, reliable, efficient, resilient, and cost-effective as possible. Don't you?
    - sofixa 1y ago
      > Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails. Airplanes have gotten increasingly automated. Who is responsible when Airbus' excellent automations that have prevented countless upsets and accidents fail? Nobody, if it was an honest mistake, and lessons learned are applied to improve even further. The problem with modern ATC is that a lot of the safety systems are bolted and backported on top of existing extremely legacy tech. Ffs, the communications still happen over radio where transmissions are missed if more than one person talks at the same time. And people have died because of this, as well as controllers making a mistake or pilots and controllers misunderstanding each other. There's no reason to continue bolting more stuff on top. A very large part of ATC can be fully automated and made safer.

jjallen 1y ago

The US overspends on military and underspends on most other things. Not sure when this will ever change. Only when it has to I guess.

sour-taste 1y ago
In a pretty remarkable statement a month or so ago Trump actually said we were overspending on the military and suggested cuts. Then his budget comes out and proposes military expansion and Medicare cuts so like usual he was just bullshitting I guess.
- jjallen 1y ago
  Exactly. The military-industrial complex is a very real thing, unfortunately.

readthenotes1 1y ago

Have been many billions of dollars spent over the years to "modernize" air traffic control. If my recollection is correct, most of it ended up being wasted. The current administration is asking for a lot of money to try to fix it again

ars 1y ago

> you discover is a consistent pattern of underspending No, what you discover is a pattern of wasted spending. Then they ask for more money to actually get the job done despite all the waste. People try to solve this by privatizing certain things, figuring that competition will help efficiency. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe we need competing governments, and whichever government is more efficient gets to rule. Seriously: Add a second FAA at some test airports, see if they can do better, with the understanding that if they can't, they get shut down.

cycomanic 1y ago
> Maybe we need competing governments, and whichever government is more efficient gets to rule. Seriously: Add a second FAA at some test airports, see if they can do better, with the understanding that if they can't, they get shut down. And you would be willing to be personally responsible if people die in this experiment? It's funny how people here always complain that any money government spends is wasted, but if you look at big companies they are "wasting" money as well. Just look at the number of projects that google killed. It's simply a function of large (and small) organizations that they don't get it right all the time, it's difficult to predict the future.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  >It's funny how people here always complain that any money government spends is wasted, but if you look at big companies they are "wasting" money as well. Just look at the number of projects that google killed. It's simply a function of large (and small) organizations that they don't get it right all the time, it's difficult to predict the future. I worked at a Fortune 50 financial services company back in the 1990s and they designed, built and deployed a brand, spanking new customer service platform. They spent USD$200,000,000.00 building the system. It was ready for production when someone realized they'd spend USD$50,000,000+ per annum supporting the platform. The product roll out was scrapped, and tens of millions of dollars of equipment sat in warehouses. When trying to redeploy said equipment across the enterprise, group heads would purchase new equipment rather than using the equipment sitting in warehouses as it was "cheaper" on their budget lines to spend real money rather than put the depreciation of already purchased equipment on those budget lines. So yeah, big companies can be incredibly wasteful. Often more wasteful than government (e.g., US Medicare has ~3% overhead -- show me any private insurer that can top that) as well. It's all about the incentives. People (and consequently, organizations) respond to the incentives inherent in a situation. Sometimes those incentives promote efficient outcomes and sometimes not so much. The trick is to maximize the former and minimize the latter. Something easier said than done.