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Why is the default to tax more and not spend less? Is there really no limit to the amount of spending the government should do? You see no possible use of res

Why is the default to tax more and not spend less? Is there really no limit to the amount of spending the government should do? You see no possible use of resources that would be wasteful?

dehrmann 1y ago
The default depends on your party and which party is in power.
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
Problem is, there’s a lot of needs that private industry will not fill (or cannot be trusted to fill well). We’ve seen this play out repeatedly. If you want a functioning society, a certain degree of government spending is unavoidable. Now there is something to be said for making sure that spending is effective, but this must be engaged with in good faith; that is, changes should be made with a scalpel after gathering plenty of data supporting the change in question. Proclaiming ineffectiveness without data to ground the claim and then using that as an excuse to make broad cuts is a great way to make any dysfunction even worse.
- nullc 1y ago
  FY2024 federal spend 6.75 trillion. FY2019 was 4.4 trillion. FY2009 was 3.1 trillion. Twice the growth in half the time. Was there so much more that private industry "will not fill" in 2024 vs 2009? How about vs 1999? (1.7 trillion budget). We can't attribute the difference to inflation: the US government's inflation calculator says 1.7 trillion in 1999 is 3.3 trillion today. No one is arguing that the federal government doesn't need to spend some money. But this truth has no relevance to the absurd out of control spending we're witnessing today.
  - bigbadfeline 1y ago
    > FY2024 federal spend 6.75 trillion. That's selective apples to oranges Deficit as % of GDP: 2009 - 10%, 2011 - 8.6%, 2012 - 6.7%, 2013 - 4% ... 2019 - 4.6%, 2020 - 15%, 2021 - 12%, 2022 - 5.4%, 2023 - 6%.
    - nullc 1y ago
      I don't think _deficit_ is at all a useful metric about the appropriate level of spending by the federal government-- Outside of emergencies deficit is merely a measure of gross financial incompetence in our elected officials.
- soraminazuki 1y ago
  It's a neoliberal scam. Claim government programs are ineffective, destroy the institutions behind those programs, and point to the resulting chaos as proof that the initial claims are true. Rinse and repeat.
medvezhenok 1y ago
It's because of the effects of technological progress on wealth accumulation. Tech allows winner-takes-all effects in many different markets (and runaway situations where labor cannot catch up at all) - you either have to have very strong antitrust (which is still not possible in some places), or basically strong redistribution (i.e. taxation of wealth in order to redistribute) to maintain a reasonable (note: not equal, but a reasonable degree of inequality - closer to the model that existed from the 1940s-1970s) distribution of wealth in society.
const_cast 1y ago
I'm sure some of it is wasteful, but that last guys who tried to find it where scam artists. And then, despite gutting multiple services including Medicaid for US citizens, we're raising the deficit. By 2 Trillion dollars. So the whole "cutting wasteful spending" thing... ssss yeah... not really working out I'd say.

Why is the default to tax more and not spend less? Is there really no limit to the amount of spending the government should do? You see no possible use of resources that would be wasteful?

dehrmann 1y ago

The default depends on your party and which party is in power.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

Problem is, there’s a lot of needs that private industry will not fill (or cannot be trusted to fill well). We’ve seen this play out repeatedly. If you want a functioning society, a certain degree of government spending is unavoidable. Now there is something to be said for making sure that spending is effective, but this must be engaged with in good faith; that is, changes should be made with a scalpel after gathering plenty of data supporting the change in question. Proclaiming ineffectiveness without data to ground the claim and then using that as an excuse to make broad cuts is a great way to make any dysfunction even worse.

nullc 1y ago
FY2024 federal spend 6.75 trillion. FY2019 was 4.4 trillion. FY2009 was 3.1 trillion. Twice the growth in half the time. Was there so much more that private industry "will not fill" in 2024 vs 2009? How about vs 1999? (1.7 trillion budget). We can't attribute the difference to inflation: the US government's inflation calculator says 1.7 trillion in 1999 is 3.3 trillion today. No one is arguing that the federal government doesn't need to spend some money. But this truth has no relevance to the absurd out of control spending we're witnessing today.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago
  > FY2024 federal spend 6.75 trillion. That's selective apples to oranges Deficit as % of GDP: 2009 - 10%, 2011 - 8.6%, 2012 - 6.7%, 2013 - 4% ... 2019 - 4.6%, 2020 - 15%, 2021 - 12%, 2022 - 5.4%, 2023 - 6%.
  - nullc 1y ago
    I don't think _deficit_ is at all a useful metric about the appropriate level of spending by the federal government-- Outside of emergencies deficit is merely a measure of gross financial incompetence in our elected officials.
soraminazuki 1y ago
It's a neoliberal scam. Claim government programs are ineffective, destroy the institutions behind those programs, and point to the resulting chaos as proof that the initial claims are true. Rinse and repeat.

medvezhenok 1y ago

It's because of the effects of technological progress on wealth accumulation. Tech allows winner-takes-all effects in many different markets (and runaway situations where labor cannot catch up at all) - you either have to have very strong antitrust (which is still not possible in some places), or basically strong redistribution (i.e. taxation of wealth in order to redistribute) to maintain a reasonable (note: not equal, but a reasonable degree of inequality - closer to the model that existed from the 1940s-1970s) distribution of wealth in society.

const_cast 1y ago

I'm sure some of it is wasteful, but that last guys who tried to find it where scam artists. And then, despite gutting multiple services including Medicaid for US citizens, we're raising the deficit. By 2 Trillion dollars. So the whole "cutting wasteful spending" thing... ssss yeah... not really working out I'd say.