Wall Street Journal - McCain's Health plan is sound!

[Darth Wong]

If asked in a different context and answering honestly, most people living in the U.S. would say they didn't notice jack shit for extra benefit from 2008 levels of government spending per person compared to 1992 levels.

Is that not because most of the increase in government spending has actually been put into the hands of corporations, particularly government contractors? How does this support a blanket argument that smaller government is better? It's like saying "less money used is better" as a blanket statement, with no regard for whether it is being wasted or invested.

When it comes to technology, innovation, business, and entrepreneurship, if the European Union was the equivalent of the U.S., they should be managing more since their total population is 60% greater.

But that's not the case, to say the least, whether one looks at computer technology, software, medical breakthroughs, movies, or almost anything. Pretend the U.S. didn't exist for the past half-century or rather that it caused and produced no more than Europe. How much would be missing? List any top ten or top one hundred new technologies and advancements of the past few decades, observing which country caused the most by far.

You don't seriously think that's a fair comparison, do you? The last half-century is overshadowed by the consequences of WW2. It would have been completely impossible for Europe to perform as well as the US when it was forced to struggle so hard just to rebuild itself from a shattered husk, whereas the US enjoyed an enormous economic boom from the rest of the entire world becoming an "emerging market" for its goods and services. As time goes by and those lingering consequences fade, the US lead in many areas shrinks. Just look at the auto industry for an excellent example of this: they used to essentially control the global market, and now they've shrunk dramatically and painfully.

Bureaucracies get entrenched over time, expand, and rarely decrease.

True, but there is no absolute correct size of government; the question is whether it's doing a good job, and it should be whatever size it needs to be in order to do that job. After all, your bloated defense budget and interests payment on your debt add up to more than a third of your spending as it stands now. And I believe Canada, despite all of the talk about our government being "socialist", has lower federal spending per capita than the US does. IIRC, our federal government spending for 2008 is around $230 billion, while US federal government spending for 2008 will be something like $2.9 trillion.

[Graeme Dice]

After all, the Washington D.C. kids receiving about $14000 a year of educational spending, more than any frugal person's total basic living expenses, yet failing regardless, are *clearly* doing so because the whole issue is just a shortage of funding and *undoubtedly* best solved by taking a large additional percentage of my income to make that $20000 or $25000 each annually instead!

$14k a year is poverty level for a single person even in cheap Canadian cities like Saskatoon.

[K. A. Pital]

Wow, Sikon blew a pile of ideological drivel in response to a simple question.

Thanks, Sikon. Admitting that US government spending is inefficient does not mean all spending is inefficient (especially as you admit that it's wasted on military misadventures and failed social policies).

Maybe one should think about reforming one's government then. The piece about Europe is ridiculous.

I wish I had more time to respond to this ridiculous mix of strawmen and false comparisons that Sikon crafted, but I have a job and a family, so it'll take time.

However, as long as vastly accelerating historical increase in spending beyond already $14000/year per pupil in some states is *assumed* to just be the primary solution despite past results, there's little likelihood of greater focus on politically-incorrect alternatives like more curriculum focus on fundamentals, school vouchers, or forcing unmotivated students to try with direct incentives.

Drivel. Effectiveness of spending matters. You just ignore this and assume any increase in government spending ineffective. That's not only wrong, it exposes your bias completely. You then offer "politically incorrect" alternatives - one of them does not contradict the increase in spending (focus on fundamentals), it's a question of quality of the curriculum. The other, "school vouchers" and "direct incentives", do not make spending more effective, since it assumes a fucking schooler would make good, well-informed decisions. What a joke.

The cost of every additional trillion dollars spending should not be ignored.

Who the fuck said it's "ignored", you idiot? "Cost" of spending? There's only one question to answer. We have fund A produced as part of GDP. Fund A is produced in it's primary location (say Factory A). Fund A can be given to people as additional income, or to government as additional taxes. The government will then spend "A" for it's programmes, or people would spend "A" themselves on what they want.

The problem is that while the government can make strategic investments, develop infrastructure and the like, Joe Average who posesses a fracture of Fund A, is extremely short-sighted, ignorant and also very fragile when it comes to receiving economic fallout from his decisions, while the government is robust and can absorb damage.

In the end, a few thousand dollars additional government expenses per person means a few thousand dollars less remaining original private income per person on average

That means a few thousand in dollar equivalent per capita additional government services - like, say healthcare, education and transport - being available to the same "average person".

Even Europe doesn't universally have 60+% of GDP as government

Did you even read what I said? Some nations do. Some don't. So what? How does this answer my point?

The E.U. has average GDP per person of $32700 (2007, PPP), compared to the much greater U.S. $45800 of economic output per person.

And yet, the EU has a higher HDI, especially EU First World nations. Of course, you would gleefully ignore the fact that the EU includes many Second World nations by now, or worse-off First World places, which would be damaging the average statistics, and also the fact that GDP per person is not the only measure; you totally ignore the GINI which any utilitarian would use combined with the general GDP stats.

Would one rather live in the U.S. or in Europe?

Are you asking me? Europe, of course. The US healthcare system is a maze of fucked-up Social Darwinism. In fact, the entire US economic ideology is monumentally shifted to Social Darwinism, which manifests in many sectors. I've been to both US and Europe - even shittier European nations - and I'm pretty confident Germany is better than the US in all regards, from social policies to work and benefits and medicine, and education. Of course, capitalists or their descendants would be more at ease in the US, but since I'm not one, can't really comment on their worldview.

When it comes to technology, innovation, business, and entrepreneurship, if the European Union was the equivalent of the U.S., they should be managing more since their total population is 60% greater.

Did someone hit you in the head with a club which resulted in amnesia of XX century history of Europe? I bet that's so; other people already shot down your pathetic claim. The EU is not a monolithic nationstate like the US; it's a confederation of nations, and a rather loose one. All nations have different level of development. They have harder time to concentrate enormous money on certain projects, like the US. They did not have favourable evnironment post WWII, whereas the US, totally unscathed, with nuclear weapons to boot and the largest economy, a total hegemon, had ALL the cards to be the hegemon, utilizing other nations as markets and easily out-competing their rising industries. And yet, with all this present, the US position has been shaken.

...but there are some factors which have historically contributed towards one 4.5% segment of the world's population causing so much of its progress.

Yeah, some of them have been actually colossal US government spending, especially on military technologies or civilian hi-tech. Space Race, Cold War. Of course all of them are blessings of less government... but actually not.

[Vendetta]

Wow, Sikon blew a pile of ideological drivel in response to a simple question..

Sikon's argument is one that pops up frequently in response to major social change in America, whether it's healthcare, electoral reform, welfare, or any other form of government spending or management, the argument is that because America has a spectacularly bad system for doing something via public spending, there cannot be any value from doing it that way in the first place.

[Darth Wong]

The logic maps like this:

1) Find a specific example of an badly run government program.
2) Conclude that 100% of government programs are badly run.
3) Conclude that the entire concept of government programs is bad.

Of course, this logic is easily challenged in debate, so they have a process for that too. If confronted with a specific example of a government program that works better than a private industry equivalent, declare that:

1) That was not really a government program, because private contractors were involved.
2) That is an exception to the rule, but it is unique.
3) That might work well in other countries, but not in America, because America is unique.

That right there is a summation of every conservative American argument about "big government" that we've ever heard on this forum.

[Surlethe]

You forgot the "private contractors would have done it better if they'd had the chance". You hear that about the space race and the Eisenhower highway system.

[Patrick Degan]

You forgot the "private contractors would have done it better if they'd had the chance". You hear that about the space race and the Eisenhower highway system.

Most recently and amusingly from the still-MIA Voluntaryist.

[Sikon]

Sikon's argument is one that pops up frequently in response to major social change in America, whether it's healthcare, electoral reform, welfare, or any other form of government spending or management, the argument is that because America has a spectacularly bad system for doing something via public spending, there cannot be any value from doing it that way in the first place.

The logic maps like this:

1) Find a specific example of an badly run government program.
2) Conclude that 100% of government programs are badly run.
3) Conclude that the entire concept of government programs is bad.

Those who really read my post can see how inaccurately you portray it. What you are doing is obvious, which is counting on the TLDR crowd. (A classic TLDR skimmer, Vendetta goes so far as to emphasize "any value" because he can't conceive of less simplistically judging something to have some benefit yet concluding the quantitative cost was greater; you know better but refuse to demonstrate it here).

When discussing the overall result of the spending increase from $13700/person to $17200/person annually, over the 1992 to 2008 period (in 2008-dollars), such is not some atypical case for extra spending increase for the U.S. government, not just one specific badly-run government program alone. Such is the overall average historical result of recent exponential spending increase way beyond that which would keep up with inflation and population.

On contrary, however, some specific government programs having spending increase can be worthwhile even now, if more justified than average in a particular case, but the point is more caution in overall spending growth.

Of course, my post on the first page of the thread explicitly stated that:

A huge cost if government expenses rise to 60+% rather than the current 37% of GDP is clear. An equally huge benefit to fully make up for that is not particularly suggested by past history, for how little benefit the average person really noticed from the 1992-2008 increase compared to its $3500/year per person extra expense.

Obviously, the details depend on the particular program being discussed. There are a variety of limited, specific increases in government funding in some areas which would be worthwhile if done right, ranging from the space program to alternative energy to even a controlled degree of universal health care spending, if there was reason to expect better than the average congresscritter's boondoggle in regard to a particular proposal.

2) Conclude that 100% of government programs are badly run.
3) Conclude that the entire concept of government programs is bad.

There's a mirror image to those who falsely pretend any socialism is communism. It is those who falsely pretend judgement to slow careless exponential spending growth must be libertarianism.

My post did not argue for cutting government spending from the current 37% of the economy to 0%. I did not say the concept of having any government programs is bad, rather the opposite. I pointed out the tradeoffs in the argument about whether it should go to 60+% of GDP. Marginal benefit from a particular increase is separate from the benefit for some initial amount. A loose analogy is how water is needed for life and desirable, yet one still doesn't want to drown in too much of it.

[Sikon]

Admitting that US government spending is inefficient does not mean all spending is inefficient (especially as you admit that it's wasted on military misadventures and failed social policies).

This is about the U.S., with the whole argument being sparked by whether the government portion of U.S. GDP should go from 37% to 60% or more.

In cases where other governments do something more efficiently, that helps my prior points.

For instance, if one points to one of the school systems managing better performance for less expense per student than the $14000/year of U.S. schools in some states, that only leads more to a conclusion that there are better, effective problem-solving methods other than throwing vastly more taxpayer money at it here.

However, as long as vastly accelerating historical increase in spending beyond already $14000/year per pupil in some states is *assumed* to just be the primary solution despite past results, there's little likelihood of greater focus on politically-incorrect alternatives like more curriculum focus on fundamentals, school vouchers, or forcing unmotivated students to try with direct incentives.

Drivel. Effectiveness of spending matters. You just ignore this and assume any increase in government spending ineffective.

Enormous increase in government spending isn't a new idea but rather exactly what has been going on in recent years, although with little if any observed increase in reading and math scores, since the system is not managed well. In contrast, even most private schools used by the wealthy manage to obtain substantially lesser expense.

That's not surprising. After all, for example, if half of that $14000/year went to teachers paid $50000 per year, there could be a teacher per 7 students while allowing the other half of the funds for various other expenses from building maintenance to everything else. (Probably part of the organizational issue is that really far less than half ends up as teacher salaries). While the preceding is just an imprecise example, almost any reasonable figures would illustrate the same general idea. As much as Broomstick was outraged that I wouldn't support a rise to $20000/year or $25000+/year, an *assumption* of such rise being needed is practically as unsupported as $50000/year per student, disconnected from reality.

You then offer "politically incorrect" alternatives - one of them does not contradict the increase in spending (focus on fundamentals), it's a question of quality of the curriculum.

Part of the reason most students graduate with nearly no science knowledge is since not necessarily even several percent of a total around 15000 cumulative hours of education gets actually spent properly covering it.

The other, "school vouchers" and "direct incentives", do not make spending more effective, since it assumes a fucking schooler would make good, well-informed decisions. What a joke.

While polls indicate that most of the U.S. population would send their students to different schools if not for such being unsupported by the state, that doesn't mean it is an uninformed or illogical preference. On the contrary, higher academic achievement is well-known, like this random example of reading scores averaging 280 instead of 260.

As for whether direct incentives can have an effect, when there are figures like 55% of those graduating not even knowing electrons are smaller than atoms, that implies a serious lack of motivation for spending much time at all trying to learn, yet the interesting thing in contrast is that nearly all of the population is capable of putting out effort under different conditions like the average worker on a job.

The cost of every additional trillion dollars spending should not be ignored.

Who the fuck said it's "ignored", you idiot? "Cost" of spending? There's only one question to answer. We have fund A produced as part of GDP. Fund A is produced in it's primary location (say Factory A). Fund A can be given to people as additional income, or to government as additional taxes. The government will then spend "A" for it's programmes, or people would spend "A" themselves on what they want.

The problem is that while the government can make strategic investments, develop infrastructure and the like, Joe Average who posesses a fracture of Fund A, is extremely short-sighted, ignorant and also very fragile when it comes to receiving economic fallout from his decisions, while the government is robust and can absorb damage.

In most societies, like the U.S., the government does not control the means of production, such as not operating factories.* When the government redistributes money, it can mean, for example, that company A has X less remaining net aftertax income from its growth beyond expenses of the past tax cycle, which can mean it gets Y less additional new facilities and capital investment or hires W fewer additional extra production workers. Meanwhile, the government uses those funds to hire Z more soldiers, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, or others employed by the government. There is the cost of losing the former, but, to a degree, some of the latter are entirely needed.

However, one of the issues can be if that goes too far. To take an extreme simplified illustration, 100 workers at a private company's factory helping support 1 bureaucrat can be fine, while, at the other extreme, those 100 workers having to support 150 bureaucrats would have major tradeoffs. Even soldiers, teachers, firemen, or others instead of bureaucrats is a similar idea. Those on welfare or retirement living off the funds the government redistributes from those currently working are again a similar situation. None of this is wrong in itself, if simply occurring to an appropriate degree, but it is important to keep relative numbers under control.

In the more specific case of discussion here, the private portion of U.S. GDP declining by more than a third from the current 63% to under 40%, with the rest being government spending, would be a huge change. Then the topic gets into cost versus benefits.

* I'll skip making this segment of the post very long to cover everything, not bothering to be nitpick-proof. There are some exceptions, but mostly the U.S. government and its workforce can be best described as providing services, rather than as producing stuff.

Transportation includes some infrastructure construction, but such is a small amount of government spending, about 4.5%. If government spending goes from $17200 to $28000 per person annually in the future, little of that total will have to do with additional road maintenance costs per person.

I would also like to encourage a thought experiment to readers. Ask yourself this: Given what many assume about low tradeoffs, why don't you think the U.S. government should produce computers, food, and so on? After all, don't you think it could deliver lower prices and innovation more efficiently without taking a share as private profit? Understand why that typically isn't desirable, especially as judged from history, and you would see why the standard American philosophy is to use government spending when necessary. Use it in cases where private industry couldn't or wouldn't do the equivalent, yet be cautious about unlimited government growth.

Potential for inefficiency isn't surprising in an organizational setup where those in some positions are not at all worried about getting fired for low performance. Nearly guaranteed lifelong employment in many government career jobs is a great strength in ways, but like much in the real world sometimes comes with tradeoffs too. The voting public unfortunately can't even be bothered to learn almost any relevant figures for judging performance, but there is some justification for nevertheless a frequent popular perception of high waste and for disapproval ratings of Congress usually hanging around the 80% range.

Even as a commie, you yourself described a different but sometimes slightly analogous situation in another thread:

But eventually, the level of laziness and slacking became so atrocious that the Secretary General Andropov in the 1980s had to start special campaigns against slacking workers. Entire shifts of workers were found at either cafes or cinemas relaxing all day long by special "anti-slack" squads from the KGB, which sought to root out slacking. This was a nationwide event.

Ultimately, the USSR fell apart not in small part due to the complacency and laziness of it's own population that thought all the Soviet goods were given to them for granted, and were in no way bound to the centralized authoritarian economic planning apparatus that kept the giant nation alive.

From here.

The main thing that slows exponential growth of spending is the degree to which some of the public still appreciates issues with it growing too much, making politicians pander to such a little to maximize their chances of getting re-elected. Otherwise, there's not much to control it.

Congressmen are mostly not mythological 100%-altruistic humble public servants but ordinary individuals biased towards decisions which place more power and money under their control. More than 60% of senators are millionaires, with a median (not the mean) net worth of about $1.7 million each. Such is bipartisan, with the top 10 being 7 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Actually, that doesn't concern me in itself, even though some senators starting from little wealth before taking office didn't really become millionaires from savings under their comparatively small official salary alone. However, the point is that they are human, however much they may be skilled at making election promises and emoting to voters.

The average human tendency outside of atypical individuals is for someone to seek far more money under their control, whether or not strictly needed. Observing how they do such for personal income should make it not a leap of faith to realize they have the same natural tendency to want more public funds under their power too, to rapidly expand spending, justified or not, efficiently or not. Besides, even when partially altruistic, anybody with a large ego will tend to think the country is better off with more money directed according to his self-perceived great skills. The public has to be a watchdog.

Often in the private world, in the case of a competitive environment without high barriers to entry, companies tend to keep up efficiency because the inefficient ones get outcompeted and crushed by their competitors. However, the ordinary nature of government is to be a non-competitive environment, whether contractors winning bids through lobbyists or a bureaucrat knowing he keeps his job either way. Government can be made efficient if but only if sufficient efforts from the top down are made to keep it that way with stringent oversight. The very top of government power is fundamentally the general public, the voter.

In the end, a few thousand dollars additional government expenses per person means a few thousand dollars less remaining original private income per person on average

That means a few thousand in dollar equivalent per capita additional government services - like, say healthcare, education and transport - being available to the same "average person".

You do realize I lived through it here, the increase from $13700 to $17200/year government spending per person between 1992 and 2008 (the former figure converted to today's dollars)? Seriously, if I got the equivalent of thousands of dollars additional annual transportation benefit, like having my car's insurance and gas for free, I would have noticed, to say the least!

I can imagine cool things that could have been done with the extra increase of spending in theory. Since the trillions of dollars cumulative increase amounted to specifically $44000 per household (in 2008-dollars) over the 1992-2008 period, only counting the extra beyond 1992 levels of spending, technically we might have had something major. In alternate reality, there might have been a fairly extensive automated personal-rapid-transit rail system for that expense. However, a hypothetical like that has nothing whatsoever to do with what actually gets accomplished when rather looking at history.

Roads are about the same as they were at 1992 levels of government spending per person. Life expectancy has been nearly flat. So was educational performance; reading scores, math scores, etc. Were there some benefits from the extra spending increase? No doubt. However, nothing proves that they had equal or greater magnitude than the extra $3500/person expense, making its average efficiency rather unimpressive.

Most people don't even realize that government spending increased by $3500 per person annually (even after adjustment for inflation and population growth). That's partially because the increase has been paid largely by means other than personal income taxes alone, from taxes passed onto the cost of goods to deficit spending. (As an extreme illustration of a principle, technically the government could maintain current spending yet cut income tax rates meanwhile to 0% simply by increasing deficit spending above its current large percentage of the total, yet that obviously wouldn't make such at all free while causing misc disastrous effects).

As explicitly stated in my post on the first page of this thread, nevertheless there are of course some specific increases in government funding in some areas which can have a good benefit to cost ratio, worthy of support, just not the average congressman's extra funding allocation in recent history.

A point is to question the assumption that government expenditures should be increased from $17200 per person annually to the equivalent of $28000+ per person annually, as in this argument about whether spending going from 37% to 60+% of GDP would be desirable. While the $11000+ per person additional annual government expenditures would give more benefit than the previously discussed historical $3500/person annual spending increase, being 3.1+ times times as much, the cost to the private sector is far greater too. The benefit to cost ratio doesn't look too good.

The E.U. has average GDP per person of $32700 (2007, PPP), compared to the much greater U.S. $45800 of economic output per person.

And yet, the EU has a higher HDI, especially EU First World nations.

The U.N.-published HDI which I've read (made by Europeans IIRC) was based on factors even including such as the percentage of women legislators. While equal rights for women is important (although legally protected in the U.S. anyway), whether that figure is XY% or WZ% of the legislature at a time may have much lesser overall effect than factors like GDP/capita.

The U.S. gets lesser points on infant mortality partially because we have far more drug users of illegal narcotics from cocaine to heroin, a chief cause of low-birth-weight high-mortality babies, unlike relatively more homogenous European countries. A year ago, I killed a thread with an article discussing causes, here. Plus there are details to consider of how different countries do statistics, like the article here talks about the minimum birth weight for what statistics count as originally live births.

Of course, there are nevertheless some weaknesses in the U.S. healthcare system.

However, overall U.S. HDI relative to European countries all depends on how much the author of a HDI weights different factors. While GDP is concrete, overall quality of life, human development indexes, happiness or utility is more subjective. My utility is higher here.

Of course, you would gleefully ignore the fact that the EU includes many Second World nations by now, or worse-off First World places, which would be damaging the average statistics, and also the fact that GDP per person is not the only measure; you totally ignore the GINI which any utilitarian would use combined with the general GDP stats.

While the E.U. includes some countries of lesser development than others, that affects its overall GDP per capita only a rather moderate amount, because the bulk of its population is in the few largest countries. The top five E.U. nations with the largest economies had a 2007 GDP per capita of $33200 (PPP): Germany, U.K., France, Italy, and Spain. It's barely more than the overall E.U. $32700 average (versus U.S. $45800 GDP/capita), since the overall E.U. average is pushed down a little by its small less developed members but also pushed up by Norway being lucky enough to currently have a lot of oil exports.

Would one rather live in the U.S. or in Europe?

Are you asking me? Europe, of course. The US healthcare system is a maze of fucked-up Social Darwinism. In fact, the entire US economic ideology is monumentally shifted to Social Darwinism, which manifests in many sectors. I've been to both US and Europe - even shittier European nations - and I'm pretty confident Germany is better than the US in all regards, from social policies to work and benefits and medicine, and education.

Even if you visited a portion of the U.S. once, which varies greatly by locale, much of your complaint seems based on what you've heard from some people rather than personal experience.

Admittedly, there are some weaknesses in the U.S. health care system. Ideally, some basic coverage could be extended to the currently uninsured; since they are only 16% or so of the total population, such technically could be done for around 2% of GDP or less, a relatively small change. Besides, with people not left on the streets bleeding to death, suffering a heart attack, having a baby, etc. even if they are uninsured, hospitals already often end up spending money on their care anyway but in a disorganized manner. For example, public hospitals in cities along the Mexican border have heavy medical bills from immigrants relative to limited local funds at the county and state level.

Nevertheless, other matters are far more the differences noticed by most people between the different countries; my life doesn't revolve around health insurance alone.

But if an European prefers living in Europe, good for them. Every country has its mixture of advantages as well as disadvantages. Clean, cultured, with less of an obesity epidemic, and other favorable terms can be used to describe Europe.

Ordinarily I wouldn't "bash" Europe in particular, rather having a live and let live attitude. However, supporting that a third of income in my country, 23+% of an original 63% non-government GDP, be lost/transferred from private ownership while heralding the highest-tax states of Europe as a model is naturally going to lead to pointing out disadvantages.

That would mean becoming more like Europe economically, so the topic of how much there are tradeoffs involved is rather relevant. Such might actually be more percent government than even Sweden, which seems to appear here to have about 50% of its GDP government, except possibly that figure could be inappropriate depending on if there are state or local government expenditures not counted or how much if so. (After all, the CIA world factbook displays
only the federal portion of total U.S. government spending in the case of the U.S.).

In an imaginary ideal world, people would be able to choose what they wanted on the individual level, "voting with their feet" (as opposed to a individual vote only having a chance comparable to a lottery ticket for deciding the election). To a very small degree at substantial difficulty, that sometimes happens. In 1996, 148000 people decided to immigrate from Europe to the U.S. Some go the other way, although whatever small number immigrates from the U.S. to the E.U. is hard to find, too little to appear on typical lists on top countries of origin. It must be small since only 9000 Americans immigrated even to Canada in 2007 (while 24000 Canadians immigrated to the U.S.).

The statistics support anecdotal impressions. Most Americans who visit Europe don't see immigrating there as a desirable goal, seeing the prices of almost everything as expensive especially after all the taxes. They see job opportunities usually as rather limited in wages relative to the cost of goods, and there is high unemployment, like the CIA World Factbook last shows 8.5% in the E.U. versus 4.6% in the U.S. in 2007. Of course, the language is often a factor too, although the U.K. is english-speaking after all.

Of course, capitalists or their descendants would be more at ease in the US, but since I'm not one, can't really comment on their worldview.

Correct. Although my own judgement of my probability of becoming rich would appear overoptimistic to someone on the internet, in any case I'm happy to have all the opportunities for enterprise here. Such is possible in Europe too of course but with some more difficulties.

since I'm not one, can't really comment on their worldview.

Here's part of one capitalistic worldview:

In the political realm, success is determined by how well someone can appeal to voters, from emotional appeals to being perceived as like the common man. What is needed for those gaining power in government is a lot more like used car salesmen than based on actual ability aside from that involved in getting elected. However, the economic realm is sometimes different.

...but there are some factors which have historically contributed towards one 4.5% segment of the world's population causing so much of its progress.

Yeah, some of them have been actually colossal US government spending, especially on military technologies or civilian hi-tech. Space Race, Cold War.

This argument has been about whether U.S. government spending goes from 37% to 60+% of the economy.

If such occurs, a very small if any percentage of that extra government spending increase would be space or military R&D beyond current levels. The preceding would correspond to the equivalent of around $3.2 trillion or more additional government spending per year in 2008-dollars, upwards of $30 trillion extra per decade. For so much as 1% of that to be extra towards the $0.017 trillion/year space program is rather unlikely. In fact, the space program is one of the few things actually getting its funding relatively decreased over recent years, in the inflation-adjusted and population-adjusted terms usually used in my post. That's despite the huge overall increase in government spending elsewhere.

The European Union with more government as a portion of the economy than the U.S. doesn't tend to have more of a space program.

***************************

When it comes to technology, innovation, business, and entrepreneurship, if the European Union was the equivalent of the U.S., they should be managing more since their total population is 60% greater.

But that's not the case, to say the least, whether one looks at computer technology, software, medical breakthroughs, movies, or almost anything. Pretend the U.S. didn't exist for the past half-century or rather that it caused and produced no more than Europe. How much would be missing? List any top ten or top one hundred new technologies and advancements of the past few decades, observing which country caused the most by far.

You don't seriously think that's a fair comparison, do you? The last half-century is overshadowed by the consequences of WW2. It would have been completely impossible for Europe to perform as well as the US when it was forced to struggle so hard just to rebuild itself from a shattered husk, whereas the US enjoyed an enormous economic boom from the rest of the entire world becoming an "emerging market" for its goods and services. As time goes by and those lingering consequences fade, the US lead in many areas shrinks. Just look at the auto industry for an excellent example of this: they used to essentially control the global market, and now they've shrunk dramatically and painfully.

Admittedly, the U.S. has had advantages, of course. However, it's now been 63 years since the end of WWII, with the last half-century beginning 13 years after the end of the war, and European GDP was relatively soon significantly above pre-war levels.

Let's use the example of a technological race of the 1970s and later, after Europe had a generation to recover from WWII: personal computers

Look at relative innovation in that case. Not only is the comparison obvious in the early years of PC development, even in 2001 data, there had been only 63% as many PCs obtained in all of Europe, which relative to their greater population means around 40% as much per capita.

Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Dell, Seagate, Texas Instruments, Heward Packard, Hitashi, Toshiba, Sony, etc. ...
The U.S. and Asia utterly dominate there compared to Europe.

In contrast, the auto industry is to a degree an European strength, the most major and well-known product they export here. However, in general:

• 1. Europe is more comparable in production of established technologies than in total amounts of innovation.
  
  Although lesser GDP per capita and due to having 60% more population, the total economic output of the E.U. all combined is slightly greater than the U.S. as measured by GDP. Yet someone would have a rather hard time arguing that they do more innovation and advancement of new technology than the U.S.
• 2. The "rise" of the E.U. over the past couple of decades isn't a matter of relatively high overall economic growth as much as it is 27 nations grouped together now forming a larger group than they did before. Specifically, for example, the largest five European economies actually have been relatively decreasing from being 85% as much as U.S. GDP in 1988 to being 74% as much as U.S. GDP later in 2007 (PPP). Over the past couple of decades, the U.S. actually is gaining on the individual top European nations of Germany, U.K, France, Italy, and Spain, yet that is masked by the E.U. as a whole adding more countries.

I'd like to put something here to demonstrate what I know from a lifetime of keeping up with new tech development, how much more of the top advancements per year occur in the U.S. than Europe even in recent times. Unfortunately, there isn't a convenient database to reference. Anybody who looks at publications like Technology Review can see patterns though. Admittedly, that's a U.S. publication, although discoveries or new technologies worldwide get covered, but really the trend applies across a wide variety of sources.

[Sikon]

(As mentioned in the last post, even after adjustment for inflation and total U.S. population, converted to 2008-dollars, it went from $13700 per person to $17200 per person annually).

In contrast, if it was efficient and effective, they would have noticed major benefit from the $3500/year additional government spending per person, comparable to as if they had that much more private income.

How much of that additional $3,500 per year is eaten by inflation? That's got to be at least some portion of it.

(previously snipped sentence restored in nestled quotes)

You lack reading comprehension, as the very sentence right before mentioned that the $3500/year spending increase per person is after adjustment for inflation. Such was also explicitly pointed out in my first, short post in this thread.

Before adjustment for inflation, it was a $8100 annual government spending per person increase, from $9100 to $17200.

Government spending was $2350 billion over a population of about 257 million people in 1992, which was about $9100 per person annually. Of that figure, $1382 billion was federal spending, while the rest was state and local. Adjusted for inflation, converted to today's 2008-dollars, that was $13700 per person annually.

In 2008, it has been about $5210 billion spent on 303 million people, about $17200 per person.

Most voters don't think quantitatively, look at past trends versus results, or even attempt to really judge cost versus benefits.

Public tendency is towards automatically always supporting something which superficially sounds good, like rapidly increasing educational spending forever (with little other change to fix the system). After all, the Washington D.C. kids receiving about $14000 a year of educational spending, more than any frugal person's total basic living expenses, yet failing regardless, are *clearly* doing so because the whole issue is just a shortage of funding and *undoubtedly* best solved by taking a large additional percentage of my income to make that $20000 or $25000 each annually instead! Government expenses reaching 60% of U.S. economic output in thirty years could be an underestimate unless current trends change first.

Here's the root of the problem: you're a greedy asshole. You got yours, fuck everyone else - because you will never lose your job, suffer a disaster, become disabled, or otherwise suffer misfortune, right? So fuck the poor and the unfortunate, you don't need a goddamned safety net. Just step over those inconvenient corpses in the street. How rude of them to get in your way.

(full quote restored in nestled quotes)

Even after I explicitly point out the importance of thinking quantitatively, it doesn't even occur to you that there can need to be a limit, that increasing spending from $14000/year per student to $20000 or $25000/year per student could be excessive and not the best policy compared to focus rather on other methods to improve education.

Almost anybody grasps the concept of having a budget when it comes to daily life, but the way you make a fool of yourself here comes from one source, the same as that of a religious fundie: ideological tribalism. You're used to simplistic emotional reaction, where anyone questioning unlimited government spending increase is considered the enemy.

Earlier in this set of posts, I discuss education spending more in a reply to Stas Bush, so I'll skip repeating all of that here.

You don't really logically counter my point. Yes, I use the term my income since it is true. Costs are paid by real people, not only me but the average worker in general, by the nation's economy. That doesn't mean to have no educational spending. On the contrary, although at a very high end of the range compared to private schools, the current levels of spending are mostly about acceptable, albeit mismanaged. But continuing recent rapid exponential growth towards $20000 or $25000 a year per student is part of reckless government spending which is going to hurt the economy unless the public learns fiscal discipline. History such as test scores shows very poor returns when lots of extra money is thrown at the problem without focus on its real issues.

Let's add an analogy, this time in the case of something to which you are less emotionally attached. Pretend an imaginary person has almost your ideology of assuming educational spending should always be vastly increased, except instead took it to an extreme on military spending.

---------------------------------------

• Person A: U.S. military spending should be tripled, which would be a beneficial fiscal policy.
  
  Person B: Looking at the figures doesn't support your assumption. With $607 billion being spent on national defense in 2008 or rather $730 billion total including the national guard of various states and everything else too, actually the U.S. is spending more than the rest of the world combined. Tripling that would indeed provide some benefit, but you've shown no quantitative evidence such is nearly as great as the enormous cost, an extra annual expense proportionally like $4800 of income per person in the U.S.
  
  Person C: Fuck you, you greedy asshole! You care nothing for the men and women serving our country in uniform! You would happily send them out to die with inferior equipment and step over their corpses, for you foolishly believe there will never be a war!

---------------------------------------

Let's give another analogy of judging marginal benefit versus cost, of higher-order thinking than emotionalism and ideological tribalism. Surely it is outrageous, wrong, uncaring, and selfish to put a price on the value of a human life when making regulatory policy, right? It's an evil Republican concept, right? Actually see this illustration from a prior thread:

---------------------------------------

• The present administration pretty much seems to discount the value of any human life - if it happens to be on the daylight-side of the birth canal.

  I know it may not be a practical policy, but if I was in charge the value of human life, at least where it came to safety regulations, would be infinite: if pollution or whatever is going to cost even one person their life, the regulation needs to be tightened.

  There are ways in which $1 billion can be spent in a manner giving a moderate chance of saving 1 life, and there are also ways in which the same available funds can instead statistically save 10000 people on average.
  
  Since it isn't possible to spend infinite millions of dollars per individual, with neither government revenues nor total economic output being high enough, the real-world result of situations in which the former is done is that funds aren't available for the latter ... and statistically thousands of unnecessary deaths occur due to the emotional reaction of refusing to make rational calculations.
  
  For example, it isn't possible to spend $100 billion per life saved on all possible measures doing that. Attempting to do that would only mean neglecting other methods saving more lives. In the real world today, it is possible through the right methods to save statistically an American life for on the order of $100000 or a third-world life for as little as $1000. [...]
  

  [...]
  
  If there were smoke alarms in every home, it is estimated that 2,000 fewer people would die each year in fires. Even with a generous allowance for costs of installation and maintenance, this works out to a life saved for every $120,000 spent, but less than half of American homes have smoke alarms.
  
  On the other hand, a great many Americans purchase premium tires to avert the danger of blowouts. If everyone did, this would cost an aggregate of about $10 billion per year and might avert nearly all of the 1,800 fatalities per year that result from blowouts, a cost of nearly $6 million per life saved. Many Americans buy larger cars than they need in order to achieve greater safety, which costs something like $12 million per life saved.
  
  There is clearly no logical pattern here. It is not that some people feel that their life is worth $12 million while others do not consider it to be worth even $90,000 — there are undoubtedly many women who buy larger cars for safety reasons but skip their regular Pap test. And there are millions of Americans who purchased premium tires with their new cars but did not order air bags, even though the air bags are 10 times more cost effective. The problem is that the American consumer does not calculate cost effectiveness. His or her actions are governed by advertising campaigns, salesmanship, peer group pressures, and a host of other psychological and sociological factors. [...]

  Other, similar calculations by the Bush administration have proved politically explosive. In 2002, the EPA decided the value of elderly people was 38 percent less than that of people under 70. After the move became public, the agency reversed itself.

  A classic example. If there is a one risk that would increase my chance of dying at 30 instead of 75 by 0.01%, while another risk would increase my chance of dying at 70 instead of 80 by 0.01%, I'd rather have a bit more funds spent on avoiding the former. The former is 0.005 years of life expectancy on average, while the latter is just 0.001 years on average.
  
  But many (most?) people in the public can't think straight like that without an emotional reaction as the above quote from the opening post news article illustrates.

---------------------------------------

While repeating myself from that past thread here is a bit lazy, albeit a time-saver, the point is to illustrate one must consider tradeoffs in any spending.

The idea of putting a price on the value of education for the nation's children may superficially, emotionally seem outrageous, but is it any more illogical than what is pragmatically necessary with regulation too? In fact, it is a better situation, since as discussed in an earlier one of this set of posts, there are better ways to improve education without uncontrolled vast spending increase.

After all, the Washington D.C. kids receiving about $14000 a year of educational spending, more than any frugal person's total basic living expenses

Where the fuck do you get these numbers?

Living on $14k a year is fucking hard, even if you're frugal. That's not "frugal" that's poverty.

$5000 / year apartment. $2000 / year food. That leaves another $7000 / year for misc other basic living expenses.

I just referenced the "basic living expenses" for if someone lives frugally, explicitly not for a fancy lifestyle at all. Of course it would be hard and relatively unpleasant. $20k/yr income is better; so is $50k/yr preferable; so is $200k/yr nicer. Perhaps you are planning to respond by saying your great-aunt's cousin has $30000 of medical expenses each year or something, but it's simply a typical illustration for basic living expenses of a single individual. Besides, that was just a comment in passing, while you miss the overall point here. See above.

Shelter the homeless? There are less than a million homeless people in the U.S., so basic secured public shelters for that number (even assuming on the order of $400/month per person) would cost around $5 billion a year, compared to government spending of currently $5200 billion a year.

Where do you get $400/month per person? Your ass?

Nevermind that homeless shelters try to provide more than just a roof - the idea, after all, is to help people get back to independent living. While some are, indeed just a place to sleep out of the weather many offer meals, job assistance, referrals to agencies for various things like medical care and drug treatment, all of which cost money. Also because homeless shelters are dealing with many people with hygiene deficiencies there's a cleaning cost to running these operations that private citizens don't encounter.

Regarding the figure on the order of $5 billion a year and sheltering the homeless, the point was to show the factor of 1000+ difference between $5200 billion/year government spending and such, to illustrate it is an issue unsolved for reasons other than lack of funds.

As a result, for just an order-of-magnitude illustration, my post just approximated the number of homeless as simply under the round number of a million. Actually, checking now for more precision, there are examples such as: "In January 2007, more than 3,800 cities and counties counted the number of homeless persons on the street and in emergency shelters on a single night. [...] Local communities across the country report there were 123,833 chronically homeless persons in 2007." From here. Apparently the higher homeless figures come from other numbers, ranging down to those who are homeless for a few days due to a disaster, of whom some of them are helped by relatives later.

With a far lesser number of homeless than a million at a time to shelter, that strengthens further the point of it being not many billions of dollars a year. Shelter itself wouldn't have to cost more than the equivalent of a couple people sharing a $400/month apartment or $200/month per person, while food, medical expenses, police expenses, social services, and so on for other expenses could add substantially more per person total. The more precise, reduced figure for number of homeless at a time further reinforces the three-orders-of-magnitude difference observation. Nominally, $5 billion a year per ~<= 0.2 million homeless people at a time would even cover $25000 per year per homeless person, not to say that much is involved.

Taking care of the homeless is less a justification for greatly expanding government spending beyond the current $5200 billion/year than it is for focus on better using it.

Per person, $3500/year is a substantial portion of total basic living expenses, not quite but almost as much as being able to live in my apartment for free.

Holy fuck,where do you live? My rent is $7k a year and in this area I have one of the lowest rents around.

I said "not quite but almost as much" since $3.5k/yr is about $1k/yr less than my apartment but yet mostly as much. Outside of a few exceptional location like the middle of NYC, the more inexpensive range of apartments is on the order of $400/month all over the place, whether west coast, midwest, or east coast. Here are some random examples found for illustration in a couple minutes, like the sometimes $350-$450 apartments in Seattle, Washington here or the sometimes $300-$450 apartments in Oklahoma City, OK illustrated here.

I wonder if I need to spell out that 12 months in a year times around $300 to $450 a month equals around $3.6k-$5.4k/yr. Of course someone can alternatively instead spend $1000/month on a fancy apartment in those cities or any expensive figure depending on which one they choose, but you disputing the preceding is silly for someone living in the U.S. who should already have known and not even needed these reference links for proof.

The point is illustrating that $3500/year per man, woman, and child in this country is a significant amount, of substantial benefit to people if in private income, so one should hope for comparable benefit when that much extra government spending is added beyond prior levels.

If asked in a different context and answering honestly, most people living in the U.S. would say they didn't notice jack shit for extra benefit from 2008 levels of government spending per person compared to 1992 levels.

Well... except for my extended unemployment benefits (an additional 3 months, or a 150% of what I would normally get in a year like 1992), my soon-to-be-in-effect (3 more days!) government-subsidized health insurance (said program did not exist in 1992), the disaster assistance provided by FEMA to my neighbors who were devastated in this summer's tornado and flood episodes, and the national guard deployment to provide security in our local disaster areas to prevent looting and crime and, oh yes, rescue people from the flooding, no I cant say I saw "jack shit" from increased government spending.

If the "average" person saw little benefit maybe it's because the average person, despite current problems, doesn't need government help. Many government programs are need based so you have to be having problems to get the goods. If you don't qualify, well, bravo for not needing assistance.

You're the very rare, very first person I've heard who can say they noticed something beyond 1992 levels of benefit. However, much of what you attribute as being unavailable without the extra spending growth is rather questionable, such as the National Guard, which existed and did a similar function in 1992 too. Meanwhile, if a small portion like X% of the population notices extra benefit, in order for there to be an efficient payback relative to cost, the benefit would have to be on the order of $350000 / X annually to the minority getting that extra benefit. Can you quantitatively show such was of that much magnitude? Of course not.

Let's put it this way, in another example, with the following based on households (113 million 2008):

Put in other terms, the increase amounted to cumulatively $44000 per household over that period. That's not total government spending over that period, a far greater figure. That's the extra, additional increased government spending beyond if it had remained at 1992 levels adjusted for inflation and for population growth.

Such is $4.4 million dollars extra government spending cumulatively per 100 households.

Of course that $44000 extra spending per household provided some benefit, some limited minority of the population noticing benefit beyond 1992 levels of government spending per person. But some benefit does not mean more benefit than cost. I would have taken a fraction of that much in private cash over it in a heartbeat. I actually think most of the public would do so too if they fully understand how much it cost, rather than few people knowing any relevant quantitative figures, while failing to see the expense. (It is largely hidden in between deficit spending and taxes even indirectly raising the cost of goods, yet not shown as much in income tax rates since politicians realize those are more directly noticeable).

Ideally, the worthwhile minority of the spending increase would have occurred but the rest not. Failing that, however, I'd rather have had seen spending stay relatively closer to 1992 levels per person after adjustment for inflation, for the cost was enormous, probably including a lot of waste which contributed to the current economic malaise.

Some misc topics:

With this set of posts already getting around a dozen pages long and four days past, some topics will be skipped, especially when mostly rather addressed in the posts replying to Stas Bush or Darth Wong.

At least have a summary paragraph at the end?

Government spending is good up to a point, but, like anything else in life, it has to have some limits and has tradeoffs. In this case, we're discussing how it increased from $13700/person to $17200/person during the 1992-2008 period (inflation-adjusted, in 2008 dollars). An argument, starting with Stas Bush, has been sparked over whether it is desirable for U.S. government spending to go from 37% to 60+% of GDP.

If government spending thus goes from the current $17200 to $28000+ per person annually (equivalent, in 2008-dollars), the $11000+/person increase will be multiple times as much as the historical $3500/person increase in spending of 1992-2008. Being 3.1+ times more than the 1992-2008 increase, it will tend to have somewhat greater benefit. However, outside of rather rare exceptions, most people as well as myself didn't notice 2008 government services to be greatly superior to those of 1992. Somewhat limited benefit would likewise tend to occur even if annual spending went up by an extra $11000+/person instead of the past $3500/person increase. Meanwhile, the costs to private income and production would be as huge as those figures suggest.

Even though some benefits would occur, costs appear to be far greater.

Regarding costs, I would like to directly illustrate here that the current economic downturn has been affected by the amount of deficit spending, as opposed to the mid to late 1990s when, under conflict between a Republican Congress and Democrat President Clinton, there was a somewhat lesser rate of spending growth and waste. Unfortunately, a detailed illustration is beyond the scope of even this number of pages of posts, complicated by other factors since even the government isn't the sole influence on the economy, so I'll skip attempting it. Some readers understanding how much both taxes and deficit spending have costs will suffice.

Costs versus benefits must be judged *quantitatively* and not by ideological assumptions.

As stated before in the first post, this doesn't mean opposing all increase in government spending. However, it does mean preferring for such to stay at mostly similar to current levels, supporting additional funding increase in specific cases only where there is good, specific reason to conclude a particular proposal is quantitatively, exceptionally worthwhile. Congress is spending like drunken sailors and showing no signs of slowing down. The recent rate of rapid, exponential, inefficient spending growth is headed towards screwing over economic growth in the long term.

[Sikon]

Bureaucracies get entrenched over time, expand, and rarely decrease.

True, but there is no absolute correct size of government; the question is whether it's doing a good job, and it should be whatever size it needs to be in order to do that job.

In contrast to your other post, your earlier post here is much better. A reasonable individual can conclude that there is an optimal size for government, not 0% and not increasing too much towards 100% of GDP but some debatable figure in between.

Although an excessively exact figure would not be meaningful, depending on conditions, overall I'd want around two-fifths of GDP or less for the U.S. government, staying closer to its current size, not going from 37% to 60+% of GDP. Even China has dropped their corporate tax rate as low as 25%, definitely not for ideological reasons (still calling themselves the communist party!) but rather based on pragmatic judgement, the sort of changes which have helped their economic growth.

After all, your bloated defense budget and interests payment on your debt add up to more than a third of your spending as it stands now.

Of federal spending, yes, though that figure is closer to 1/5th of total government spending if state & local was considered too. Adjusted for inflation, the federal defense budget went up by $140 billion, a significant increase albeit only a portion of the change, as total spending went from $3660 billion (converted to 2008-dollars) to $5240 billion over the time period discussed in my post.

And I believe Canada, despite all of the talk about our government being "socialist", has lower federal spending per capita than the US does. IIRC, our federal government spending for 2008 is around $230 billion, while US federal government spending for 2008 will be something like $2.9 trillion.

Yes, the federal portion is $2.9 trillion in 2008. The 2009 federal budget is $3.1 trillion, up by tens of percent from having been $2.4 trillion in 2005, although that's only part of the increase with state & local going up too.

Even adjusted for population, Canada has less spending than the U.S.

I see that as strengthening my overall theme, though. For example, comparing to other school systems only strengthens my impression that the current $14000/year per student for public schools in some states is enough if used right, in contrast to how much Broomstick was outraged when I said it shouldn't be increased to a much higher figure like $20000 or $25000 annually.

An extreme case is Singapore. They provide around the usual package of government services but do so efficiently at low tax rates. Their economy has grown far faster than even the U.S., from about merely 45% as much GDP per person in 1989 to become now already 109% as much (2007), including a lot of industry such as electronics. Life expectancy is higher; math scores in schools are far higher (with contributing factors even including better textbooks); etc.

Their economic output per capita has become the highest of all the world's couple hundred nations, aside from several lucky oil-exporters and tourist-hub-type places which are not regular countries unlike Singapore of a few million people (2007). Such has been helped by a relatively high focus of their government on efficiency. Although not an expert on the country myself since just a casual outside observer, it appears even their web pages for the public talk about it, as if the public is serving as a concerned, knowledgeable, and good watchdog perhaps.

If asked in a different context and answering honestly, most people living in the U.S. would say they didn't notice jack shit for extra benefit from 2008 levels of government spending per person compared to 1992 levels.

Is that not because most of the increase in government spending has actually been put into the hands of corporations, particularly government contractors? How does this support a blanket argument that smaller government is better? It's like saying "less money used is better" as a blanket statement, with no regard for whether it is being wasted or invested.

First of all, it is an argument for mostly keeping the government at closer to its current size, increasing spending in special cases where exceptionally worthwhile but avoiding extreme general spending increase. The topic which sparked the argument was whether or not U.S. government spending going from 37% to 60+% of GDP would be desirable.

I'm not particularly seeking a smaller government. I'd settle for not keeping up and accelerating the current rapid rate of overall spending increase, too drastically way beyond inflation and population growth.

Secondly, however mismanaged in the past, a roughly similar degree of inefficiency is the default average expectation in the future too. After all, the 1992-2008 spending increase in my prior post occurred with both parties in control of Congress at different times. Put the burden of proof on those supporting a potential extra spending increase to show such is better than just the average increase in recent history, sometimes true but only sometimes.

It's a little like dealing with a large corporation, a monopoly providing benefits with the public as stockholders. Some services are worth the cost charged, but ideologically refusing to question almost anything in the style of Broomstick's last post can lead to such foolish customers or taxpayers being ripped off like the suckers they are, whether by CEOs or by congresscritters.

Thirdly, some of the waste has indeed come from government contractors in some cases, yet such is only a portion of it. Annual federal spending on contracts went up by $221 billion during 2000-2007. During that seven year period, total federal spending went up by about $995 billion. Unlike most of my figures in these posts, the preceding two numbers are not adjusted for inflation (and not considering state/local spending).

However, one can see increased spending on government contractors was a significant 22% but only 22% of the federal spending increase, that which occurred as the federal budget went from $1789 billion in 2000 to $2784 billion in 2007. Whether going to private government contractors or to public bureaucratic agencies, a lot of waste can occur if the public doesn't care about the efficiency of their money consumption, or ideologically *assumes* the extra increase is efficiently spent, or fails to learn figures to even know what is going on.

[Darth Wong]

The logic maps like this:

1) Find a specific example of an badly run government program.
2) Conclude that 100% of government programs are badly run.
3) Conclude that the entire concept of government programs is bad.

Those who really read my post can see how inaccurately you portray it.

And those who read my post can see how I'm not speaking specifically of your post. I did not name you, I referred to the target as "they", and I was speaking of people who use "big government" as an attack on political ideas.

[Darth Wong]

Skipping to your statement of intent:

I'm not particularly seeking a smaller government. I'd settle for not keeping up and accelerating the current rapid rate of overall spending increase, too drastically way beyond inflation and population growth.

Secondly, however mismanaged in the past, a roughly similar degree of inefficiency is the default average expectation in the future too. After all, the 1992-2008 spending increase in my prior post occurred with both parties in control of Congress at different times. Put the burden of proof on those supporting a potential extra spending increase to show such is better than just the average increase in recent history, sometimes true but only sometimes.

It's a little like dealing with a large corporation, a monopoly providing benefits with the public as stockholders. Some services are worth the cost charged, but ideologically refusing to question almost anything in the style of Broomstick's last post can lead to such foolish customers or taxpayers being ripped off like the suckers they are, whether by CEOs or by congresscritters.

Thirdly, some of the waste has indeed come from government contractors in some cases, yet such is only a portion of it. Annual federal spending on contracts went up by $221 billion during 2000-2007. During that seven year period, total federal spending went up by about $995 billion. Unlike most of my figures in these posts, the preceding two numbers are not adjusted for inflation (and not considering state/local spending).

However, one can see increased spending on government contractors was a significant 22% but only 22% of the federal spending increase, that which occurred as the federal budget went from $1789 billion in 2000 to $2784 billion in 2007. Whether going to private government contractors or to public bureaucratic agencies, a lot of waste can occur if the public doesn't care about the efficiency of their money consumption, or ideologically *assumes* the extra increase is efficiently spent, or fails to learn figures to even know what is going on.

It's not so easy to determine the efficiency of government. In order to do that, we need to know how much useful work it is doing in dollar terms, and I don't know how you quantify that. Most of the time, when people speak of "wasteful spending" in government, they are speaking of entire programs or classes of programs that they dislike (ie- all social entitlements for the right, and military-industrial spending for the left), and hence consider to be waste. Corruption, in the sense of individual politicians covertly taking personal bribes, cannot amount to a significant proportion of a $2.9 trillion budget. Corruption in the sense of trading "pork barrel spending" for Senate votes might still potentially be useful spending, depending on what exactly that pork-barrel spending is (in many cases, a regional politician may simply be looking for federal program spending on much-needed improvements in his region).

Of course, there is also the problem of government employees being overpaid and underworked, but since they are bound up into unions and nobody intends to take on those unions, I find it hard to imagine a solution to that facet of the problem.

Just about the only thing that everyone can agree on as a financial waste is the interest payments on the ballooning national debt, but that won't go away as long as the voters are too stupid to understand why they (and by extension, their government) should not live beyond their means.

[K. A. Pital]

Basically, the argument boils down to "I like the US more than I do Europe", "costs to the private sector in the US in my view outweigh the benefits" and "US government inefficiency will be preserved in the future at the same level as of now".

Actually I would agree with the last one - the only one which isn't an entirely subjective opinion, so perhaps you are right. Spending more in the same fashion as the US does now might not lead to a similar increase in government services, and the result would be yet more money thrown into a system which should reform to make better use of the money it has now.

Myself, I see no problem with government size ranging from 50% to 70% of GDP, and instead of constraining the "government", making it more efficient from top to bottom with administrative measures. But that's a question of preferences I admit.

[Broomstick]

Holy fuck, Sikon, where do you find the time to type so much verbiage? Trying looking up "brevity". Who the fuck wants to read all your shit anyone?

Most voters don't think quantitatively, look at past trends versus results, or even attempt to really judge cost versus benefits.

Public tendency is towards automatically always supporting something which superficially sounds good, like rapidly increasing educational spending forever (with little other change to fix the system). After all, the Washington D.C. kids receiving about $14000 a year of educational spending, more than any frugal person's total basic living expenses, yet failing regardless, are *clearly* doing so because the whole issue is just a shortage of funding and *undoubtedly* best solved by taking a large additional percentage of my income to make that $20000 or $25000 each annually instead! Government expenses reaching 60% of U.S. economic output in thirty years could be an underestimate unless current trends change first.

Here's the root of the problem: you're a greedy asshole. You got yours, fuck everyone else - because you will never lose your job, suffer a disaster, become disabled, or otherwise suffer misfortune, right? So fuck the poor and the unfortunate, you don't need a goddamned safety net. Just step over those inconvenient corpses in the street. How rude of them to get in your way.

(full quote restored in nestled quotes)

Even after I explicitly point out the importance of thinking quantitatively, it doesn't even occur to you that there can need to be a limit, that increasing spending from $14000/year per student to $20000 or $25000/year per student could be excessive and not the best policy compared to focus rather on other methods to improve education.

When the fuck was I discussing education?

First of all, $14k a year does not apply to ALL school districts. School funding is largely [/i]local[/i] and conflating it with Federal spending is confusing the issue. Yes, some districts spend a shitload of money. Some spend very little. All get variable results. You're comparing apples and kumquats and trusting those from outside the US to be unfamiliar with our half-assed school funding system where local property taxes set the base funding levels for schools.

Second, I'd like to point out that schools are funded through property taxes - so how much of that increase you're bitching about comes from increased tax rates versus inflated property values? And, with falling property values the amount of tax revenue for schools is likewise falling.

Third - I'd think school funding, being locally set, would be exactly the sort of taxation you'd have any approval of, as it is not being imposed by the Feds but is a locally controlled issue.

Almost anybody grasps the concept of having a budget when it comes to daily life, but the way you make a fool of yourself here comes from one source, the same as that of a religious fundie: ideological tribalism. You're used to simplistic emotional reaction, where anyone questioning unlimited government spending increase is considered the enemy.

Bullshit. Yes, I do have passion for my opinions but so what? Why the hell would I bother to discuss something I don't care about? Your "my opponents are emotional, therefore wrong" stance is a lot of horseshit. One can have emotions AND be correct at the same time.

I certainly do question increased government spending - indeed, on Tuesday I will be voting on a county initiative to eliminate politcal/government jobs on the county level, and I will be voting in favor of such elimination because it really is a needless duplication of services. Unlike you, however, I do not have a kneejerk reaction that Government Spending = Evil Waste. Unlike you, I realize that if I wish to enjoy the benefits of civilization I must contribute towards those benefits, and those who have the most wealth (and I used to be considerably better off than I am today) must contribute a higher percentage than the poor or else the system falls apart. As we have seen with recent economic nosedives on a global scale.

Earlier in this set of posts, I discuss education spending more in a reply to Stas Bush, so I'll skip repeating all of that here.

Frankly, I skipped reading it because I figured that was Stas' argument and, amazingly enough, I have other things to do with my time than read your verbal puke.

But continuing recent rapid exponential growth towards $20000 or $25000 a year per student is part of reckless government spending which is going to hurt the economy unless the public learns fiscal discipline.

The exponential factor here (if there even is one, which I am no convinced there is) is rising property value since educational funding is derived from a tax based on property and property values skyrocketed recently (unless you've been living under a rock I'm sure you've heard about that). The fucking tax rate has had a mild increase, at most, in any location. It's the value of what was taxed that went up.

And, in case you hadn't noticed, the economy is already damaged. Damaged enough that you won't have to worry about rising funding level in education this year.

Nice way to confuse the issue, asshat.

History such as test scores shows very poor returns when lots of extra money is thrown at the problem without focus on its real issues.

Test scores are only a very crude measure of educational success. You can have students that score highly on tests and fail at life, and vice versa.

One thing is for sure, however, and that is that you must spend some money on education, and that goes beyond teacher salaries to items such as sound buildings, useful textbooks, and all the other necessary infrastructure including, in some instances, adequate security to keep students safe on campus.

Let's add an analogy, this time in the case of something to which you are less emotionally attached. Pretend an imaginary person has almost your ideology of assuming educational spending should always be vastly increased

Kindly do not distort my argument, shithead. First of all, it's Stas you're primarially having the education argument with, not me. Second, nowhere do I come out in favor of increasing spending on education - I am merely disputing your argument that we have recently experienced some sort of disastrous, allegedly "exponential" increase in the taxation for education. We haven't. The value of what has been taxed to pay for education has gone up, not the tax rate (at least not beyond minimal amounts). Even then, this increase in funds is wildly inconsistent from district to district due ot the local nature of taxation to fund education. So shut the fuck up.

The present administration pretty much seems to discount the value of any human life - if it happens to be on the daylight-side of the birth canal.

I know it may not be a practical policy, but if I was in charge the value of human life, at least where it came to safety regulations, would be infinite: if pollution or whatever is going to cost even one person their life, the regulation needs to be tightened.

Hey, fuckhead - do NOT quote someone else in such a manner as to make it look like my opinion or something I said. Either fucking attribute it to the original speaker, or make it clear you're using someone else's argument.

Since it isn't possible to spend infinite millions of dollars per individual, with neither government revenues nor total economic output being high enough, the real-world result of situations in which the former is done is that funds aren't available for the latter ... and statistically thousands of unnecessary deaths occur due to the emotional reaction of refusing to make rational calculations.

Except we don't need to spend "millions" on most people who are without health care - for 10k or less a year the vast majority of those uncovered could be adequately covered. You're setting up a bullshit strawman that we must somehow find a million dollars for everyone when that is complete shit. Due to the emotion called "greed" that leads people to refuse a level of care we give to fucking pet dogs and cats in this country to fellow citizens there are thousands of unnecessary and preventable human deaths each year in this country, and tens of thousands living in pain or distress that could easily be relieved for far less than your hypothetical "millions per individual".

For example, it isn't possible to spend $100 billion per life saved on all possible measures doing that. Attempting to do that would only mean neglecting other methods saving more lives. In the real world today, it is possible through the right methods to save statistically an American life for on the order of $100000 or a third-world life for as little as $1000. [...]

Ah, American exceptionalism again - it does not cost orders of magnitude more to save an American life than it does to save someone in the third world. That's unsupportable bullshit. It also completely blows past the fact that people in the US die every year of diseases and disorders that are preventable and cheap to treat, but to which they have extremely limited access because they lack insurance. My MRSA infection this year was treated with an easily available antibiotic a local chain store provides to the community for free (the store absorbing the cost) - it was the doctor's visit that had the daunting price tag. Failure to treat it, however, would have, at the very least, resulted in an expensive hospitalization and could have led to either an amputation or death. My becoming disabled would put TWO people on welfare (as I supported my spouse). So... in order to "save" money by not providing easy access where it is CLEARLY required your opposition to contributing to society and public health society is risking a $30,000 bill for "just" treating an infection through IV drugs (that could have, earlier, been treated through oral medication) or $100,000 for an amputation + rehab (which is a conservative estimate) along with lifetime costs of such a disability + two people on welfare who weren't before, or 1 corpse + 1 disabled person on welfare. And you can't see how fucking stupid such a scenario is? Particularly when repeated over and over? We're NOT talking about a million dollar fix, holy fuck, that's, at most, $150 to prevent such a train wreck! That's one of the reasons single-payer health systems cost less - they prevent the goddamn train wrecks in the first place!

A classic example. If there is a one risk that would increase my chance of dying at 30 instead of 75 by 0.01%, while another risk would increase my chance of dying at 70 instead of 80 by 0.01%, I'd rather have a bit more funds spent on avoiding the former. The former is 0.005 years of life expectancy on average, while the latter is just 0.001 years on average.

Except your example provides NO indicate of actual cost. If the item that benefits the 70 year old costs $0.02 and the item benefiting the 30 year old costs $2.00 how does that change the equation? There are also a lot fewer people who are 70 than who are 30, and that too will affect costs. There is also a marked difference between someone 70 who is fit and able to work and someone who is 70 and decrepit (as an example - because my father is healthy and able to care for my mother she is NOT in a nursing home, with its attendant costs. Thus, my father's continued health is of benefit not only to his immediate family and extended family for financial reasons, but benefits society as a whole because he keeps the burden of caring for my mother out of the overburdened extended care system.) And why do you assume automatically that we can't afford BOTH?

While repeating myself from that past thread here is a bit lazy, albeit a time-saver, the point is to illustrate one must consider tradeoffs in any spending.

You're already too fucking long-winded and now you're repeating yourself? You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you? Learn to be more succinct.

After all, the Washington D.C. kids receiving about $14000 a year of educational spending, more than any frugal person's total basic living expenses

Where the fuck do you get these numbers?

Living on $14k a year is fucking hard, even if you're frugal. That's not "frugal" that's poverty.

$5000 / year apartment. $2000 / year food. That leaves another $7000 / year for misc other basic living expenses.[

I just referenced the "basic living expenses" for if someone lives frugally, explicitly not for a fancy lifestyle at all. Of course it would be hard and relatively unpleasant. $20k/yr income is better; so is $50k/yr preferable; so is $200k/yr nicer. Perhaps you are planning to respond by saying your great-aunt's cousin has $30000 of medical expenses each year or something, but it's simply a typical illustration for basic living expenses of a single individual. Besides, that was just a comment in passing, while you miss the overall point here. See above.

Again - WHERE the fuck did you get those numbers? Out of your ass? DOCUMENT your fucking dollar signs asshat. Otherwise you're just fucking guessing.

As a result, for just an order-of-magnitude illustration, my post just approximated the number of homeless as simply under the round number of a million.

In other words, you fucking guessed and it wasn't until you replied to me that you bothered to look anything up. What a shithead.

Shelter itself wouldn't have to cost more than the equivalent of a couple people sharing a $400/month apartment or $200/month per person, while food, medical expenses, police expenses, social services, and so on for other expenses could add substantially more per person total.

HEY SHITHEAD - THERE ARE NO $400/MONTH APARTMENTS IN THE GREATER CHICAGO AREA. Even IF you could find rent anywhere near that low, there is still the matter of utilities. If you don't have heat in the winter in Chicago you will die. The local authorities pulled frozen corpses out of buildings every year during the winter.

In other words, there's at least one metropolitan areas of close to 10 million for which your pulled-out-of-the-ass figures don't work. Tell me, have you ever had to leave mama's basement for the real world?

Per person, $3500/year is a substantial portion of total basic living expenses, not quite but almost as much as being able to live in my apartment for free.

Holy fuck,where do you live? My rent is $7k a year and in this area I have one of the lowest rents around.

I said "not quite but almost as much" since $3.5k/yr is about $1k/yr less than my apartment but yet mostly as much. Outside of a few exceptional location like the middle of NYC, the more inexpensive range of apartments is on the order of $400/month all over the place, whether west coast, midwest, or east coast. Here are some random examples found for illustration in a couple minutes, like the sometimes $350-$450 apartments in Seattle, Washington here or the sometimes $300-$450 apartments in Oklahoma City, OK illustrated here.

"Sometimes" apartments - you mean you cherry picked the lowest figures off craigslist? Way to go, asshat.

Rents are going for $700+ in my area for one bedroom apartments (mine rent is low because we do maintenance work for the landlord around the place). While bumfuck, nowhere might have whole fucking houses for rent at $500 a month metropolitan areas do not. Then you get situations like this summer/fall in my area where housing units are destroyed by natural disaster and you can't rent at ANY price because there are no vacancies!

Of course someone can alternatively instead spend $1000/month on a fancy apartment in those cities or any expensive figure depending on which one they choose, but you disputing the preceding is silly for someone living in the U.S. who should already have known and not even needed these reference links for proof.

I'm working for a landlord asshat - I know what he charges a month to his tenants, and I've compared it to other rental units in my area. Around greater Chicago you need at least $700/month to get even a basic 1 bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood, plus covering your utilities. Public housing is FULL and has a waiting list. Section 8 is FULL and has a multi-year waiting list. Doling out $400/month to the destitute and saying "there, that's sufficient no matter where you live" is a denial of reality.

If asked in a different context and answering honestly, most people living in the U.S. would say they didn't notice jack shit for extra benefit from 2008 levels of government spending per person compared to 1992 levels.

Well... except for my extended unemployment benefits (an additional 3 months, or a 150% of what I would normally get in a year like 1992), my soon-to-be-in-effect (3 more days!) government-subsidized health insurance (said program did not exist in 1992), the disaster assistance provided by FEMA to my neighbors who were devastated in this summer's tornado and flood episodes, and the national guard deployment to provide security in our local disaster areas to prevent looting and crime and, oh yes, rescue people from the flooding, no I cant say I saw "jack shit" from increased government spending.

If the "average" person saw little benefit maybe it's because the average person, despite current problems, doesn't need government help. Many government programs are need based so you have to be having problems to get the goods. If you don't qualify, well, bravo for not needing assistance.

You're the very rare, very first person I've heard who can say they noticed something beyond 1992 levels of benefit.

Speak less and listen more and you might hear such things more often.

However, much of what you attribute as being unavailable without the extra spending growth is rather questionable, such as the National Guard, which existed and did a similar function in 1992 too.

Right... because their costs for equipment, fuel, personnel, etc. couldn't possibly have gone up since 1992 When I said "how much was eaten by inflation" I meant THAT TOO - not just inflation on tax collected, but inflation of costs for what those tax revenues paid for.

[Illuminatus Primus]

To be fair, Obama has been forced to adopt at least in principle many former right-wing positions, such as across-the-board assessment of federal spending and cuts where ever desirable, limiting increases in spending, increased efficiency, and not dramatically increasing taxation. Hopefully a new Democratic majority will reform dramatically. Not just increasing the scope of federal government, but the "smart government" that Obama has described. In some cases, like the health care one, it clearly can be better managed for cheaper by a Canadian style system. A greater emphasis on direct incentives, realistic goals, and fundamentals in education can yield a populace more prepared to work and live healthy lives that assess a lower social cost to society. In other cases, the federal government may be overstepping its constitutional or empirical limits (places where local and state spending and programs paid for with state taxation would be more efficient and useful). Also increasing the tax base in some cases (removing the 102,000 dollar ceeling on payroll taxes) and limited output (there is no reason to provide Social Security to people who are wealthy and those with secure and robust savings of their own; and those who choose to keep working longer in lieu of retiring and drawing on their government pension.

[Sikon]

Who the fuck wants to read all your shit anyone?

You definitely didn't...

I don't really see why someone would go to the time and trouble of writing a reply (still a moderately long one in your case) without spending several minutes to read first.

I said "not quite but almost as much" since $3.5k/yr is about $1k/yr less than my apartment but yet mostly as much. Outside of a few exceptional location like the middle of NYC, the more inexpensive range of apartments is on the order of $400/month all over the place, whether west coast, midwest, or east coast. Here are some random examples found for illustration in a couple minutes, like the sometimes $350-$450 apartments in Seattle, Washington here or the sometimes $300-$450 apartments in Oklahoma City, OK illustrated here.

"Sometimes" apartments - you mean you cherry picked the lowest figures off craigslist? Way to go, asshat.

Yes it is talking about the more inexpensive range, "cherry picking" cheaper places. It started with passing mention of my apartment rent, something odd for someone in the U.S. to dispute, but, since you unnecessarily decided to nitpick it, I responded.

Regarding the figure on the order of $5 billion a year and sheltering the homeless, the point was to show the factor of 1000+ difference between $5200 billion/year government spending and such, to illustrate it is an issue unsolved for reasons other than lack of funds. [...]

With a far lesser number of homeless than a million at a time to shelter, that strengthens further the point of it being not many billions of dollars a year. Shelter itself wouldn't have to cost more than the equivalent of a couple people sharing a $400/month apartment or $200/month per person, while food, medical expenses, police expenses, social services, and so on for other expenses could add substantially more per person total. The more precise, reduced figure for number of homeless at a time further reinforces the three-orders-of-magnitude difference observation. Nominally, $5 billion a year per ~<= 0.2 million homeless people at a time would even cover $25000 per year per homeless person, not to say that much is involved.

Taking care of the homeless is less a justification for greatly expanding government spending beyond the current $5200 billion/year than it is for focus on better using it.

HEY SHITHEAD - THERE ARE NO $400/MONTH APARTMENTS IN THE GREATER CHICAGO AREA.

(additional sentences restored to nestled quotes)

As usual, the point flies over your head. The illustration is what is involved in sheltering the homeless is around three orders of magnitude less than $5200 billion/year government spending, on the order of a factor of 1000+ times less, which means that particular issue has more to do with usage of funds than a shortage of total funds.

In Chicago, IL, given the reputation of the area for high crime and other issues, it is possible the cheapest places in the area may be rather undesirable like run-down or in bad neighborhoods, so, although there are pages of results for under $500/month rent in that area (as shown here), whether or not such are suitable in that one city is a detail beyond the scope of this discussion. I used the illustration of $400/month as an approximate, order-of-magnitude typical figure for shelter itself. If higher in a few areas, that doesn't greatly change the overall national average, not that the exact figure greatly matters anyway. As my discussion goes on to point out, even $5 billion/year would be on the order of $25000/year each per <=~ 0.2 million homeless at a time. Such leaves a substantial amount for everything from cleaning to police security, even though such as $25000/year per person ($2000/month) could tend to be overstating cost.

Hey, fuckhead - do NOT quote someone else in such a manner as to make it look like my opinion or something I said. Either fucking attribute it to the original speaker, or make it clear you're using someone else's argument.

Here we run into one big mess of reading comprehension, worst even than that in your last post by far. Since you won't bother to read much anyway, I'll keep this short.

As said before, that was an illustration from a prior thread talking about regulation, and nothing of it was attributed to you specifically since you weren't in that thread. It was separated by ----- and indenting. That thread talked about tradeoffs in policy. If you had clicked on the link to it (repeated here), you could have seen the point was quantitative decision making as illustrated in the case of regulation and safety, recognizing not everything may be simultaneously funded to the maximum degree.

One of the examples quoted from Dr. Cohen in the thread was judging a regulatory policy on radioactive iodine release, statistically very slightly reducing a population's chance of cancer (like all carcinogens down to smoke from a barbeque have a slight effect), at a cost of preventing a fatal cancer case per $100 million spent on average.

You somehow turned it into a large rant on healthcare, and there is no evidence you so much as fully read it.

For example, it isn't possible to spend $100 billion per life saved on all possible measures doing that. Attempting to do that would only mean neglecting other methods saving more lives. In the real world today, it is possible through the right methods to save statistically an American life for on the order of $100000 or a third-world life for as little as $1000. [...]

Ah, American exceptionalism again - it does not cost orders of magnitude more to save an American life than it does to save someone in the third world. That's unsupportable bullshit.

Here you didn't really understand what was being talked about, but, instead of looking at the thread link if in doubt, you wrote a long reply based on wrong assumptions.

That was a reference to such as the following:

There are numerous opportunities for highly cost-effective lifesaving in underdeveloped countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 5 million childhood deaths could be averted each year by immunization programs at a cost ranging from $50 per life saved from measles in Gambia and Cameroon to $210 per life saved by a combination of immunizations in Indonesia. These costs are for complete programs that provide qualified doctors and nurses, medical supplies, transportation, communication, and the like. WHO also estimates that about 3 million childhood deaths each year could be averted by oral rehydration therapy (ORT) for diarrhea. This consists of feeding a definite mixture of salt, sugar, baking soda, and "sodium-free" salt with water on a definite schedule. The cost per life saved by complete programs range from $150 in Honduras to $500 in Egypt.

Other low-cost approaches to lifesaving in the Third World include malaria control ($550/life saved), improved health care ($1930), improved water sanitation ($4030) and nutrition supplements to basic diets ($5300).

From here.

The point is obviously not to spend no money saving lives in the U.S., have no regulation, or the like. It is to point off tradeoffs with usage of funds.

In Chapter 12 we will see that our radioactive waste management programs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars per life saved. [...]

From the above discussion one gets the impression that the American public is willing to go to extremes in spending money for protection against radiation. But then there is the case of radon in our homes. Government policy here is to provide information and guidance to help citizens to protect themselves from radon, utilizing the services of private industry. The cost to the citizen for implementing this protection is about $25,000 per life saved.A great deal of publicity has been given to this problem, but the public has shown little interest. Only about 2% of Americans have taken even the first step in this process of measuring the radon level in their homes, which costs about $12. [...]

If we cut through the childish notions, we see here a truly horrible human tragedy. The $2.5 billion we spend to save a single life in making nuclear power safer could save many thousands of lives if spent on radon programs, cancer screening, or transportation safety. That means that many thousands of people are dying unnecessarily every year because we are spending this money in the wrong way.

Clearly, we have here a highly irrational situation. [...]

From here.

As said in that thread:
So, as an example, if one wants to reduce public radiation exposure, figures indicate one could get as much done per $100,000 spent on paying people to check homes for radon as per $100,000,000 on some current radioactive waste disposal programs. Of course, that is not to say the latter should be canceled, just that the amount of extra funds spent on it should be kept under control.

In this example, the point isn't to have no safety measures on radioactive waste disposal. It is to be able to quantitatively judge, for example, that so-and-so extra measure beyond the usual would reduce population exposure to tiny amounts of radiation (even though no single individual gets so much as that of an airline flight), reducing the statistical chance of an extra cancer case by X amount, when perhaps the same extra funds if instead spent on scrubbers on coal power plants would do many times more benefit per unit expense.

[Broomstick]

Yes it is talking about the more inexpensive range, "cherry picking" cheaper places. It started with passing mention of my apartment rent, something odd for someone in the U.S. to dispute, but, since you unnecessarily decided to nitpick it, I responded.

How many of those are sub-lets where a tenant is trying to recoup any cost at all rather than break a lease?

HEY SHITHEAD - THERE ARE NO $400/MONTH APARTMENTS IN THE GREATER CHICAGO AREA.

(additional sentences restored to nestled quotes)

As usual, the point flies over your head. The illustration is what is involved in sheltering the homeless is around three orders of magnitude less than $5200 billion/year government spending, on the order of a factor of 1000+ times less, which means that particular issue has more to do with usage of funds than a shortage of total funds.

In Chicago, IL, given the reputation of the area for high crime and other issues, it is possible the cheapest places in the area may be rather undesirable like run-down or in bad neighborhoods, so, although there are pages of results for under $500/month rent in that area (as shown here), whether or not such are suitable in that one city is a detail beyond the scope of this discussion.

Hey, shithead - not only are most of those that are IN Chicago are in some of the shittiest areas in the city (but hey, poor people don't deserve to be safe, right?) but some of them aren't even in fucking Illinois! You have a listing in there for Knox, Indiana - eighty-eight miles from the city of Chicago and in a completely different state. At least two of them are rented rooms - NOT apartments, just a room in someone else's home! Did you even fucking READ some of these listings?

As for the rest of your post - most of it is attempting to explain what wasn't clear in prior posts. If it was clear the first time you wouldn't have to constantly explain yourself. Why is it that I can understand everyone else but you - oh, right, you're "special".

[Darth Wong]

The homeless situation is one where turf wars between different levels of government exact a heavy toll. In an ideal world, there would be no homeless people of course, but in a slightly less ideal world, different cities would [not] have to administer their own homeless solutions locally. As a result, homeless people could be shipped out of tight clusters in metropolitan centres and distributed more evenly across the landscape. As a particular matter of practicality, they could be moved out of high real-estate value areas, where they obviously can't afford to live even with welfare money.

EDIT: Damned typo.

[Sikon]

HEY SHITHEAD - THERE ARE NO $400/MONTH APARTMENTS IN THE GREATER CHICAGO AREA.

(additional sentences restored to nestled quotes)

As usual, the point flies over your head. The illustration is what is involved in sheltering the homeless is around three orders of magnitude less than $5200 billion/year government spending, on the order of a factor of 1000+ times less, which means that particular issue has more to do with usage of funds than a shortage of total funds.

In Chicago, IL, given the reputation of the area for high crime and other issues, it is possible the cheapest places in the area may be rather undesirable like run-down or in bad neighborhoods, so, although there are pages of results for under $500/month rent in that area (as shown here), whether or not such are suitable in that one city is a detail beyond the scope of this discussion.

Hey, shithead - not only are most of those that are IN Chicago are in some of the shittiest areas in the city (but hey, poor people don't deserve to be safe, right?)

Like I did say, Chicago does have some pretty bad neighborhoods. While the closest I've personally come is once driving through the state on interstate 80 and not stopping, Chicago's reputation is well-known. Indeed it is infamous for abandoned run-down houses, and, speaking of crime, a news story reported it is once again this year the "murder capital" with more than any other city in the entire U.S.

Again, though, as my post went on to point out "even $5 billion/year would be on the order of $25000/year [($2000/month)] each per <=~ 0.2 million homeless at a time." While I suppose you decided to focus on Chicago since you live there, the whole idea is just the approximate average order of magnitude nationwide.

Yes it is talking about the more inexpensive range, "cherry picking" cheaper places. It started with passing mention of my apartment rent, something odd for someone in the U.S. to dispute, but, since you unnecessarily decided to nitpick it, I responded.

How many of those are sub-lets where a tenant is trying to recoup any cost at all rather than break a lease?

Some are, while some are not. While I really know this from personal experience, to show an independently verifiable source, here's another link. Indeed, a random example is "Sky Properties" showing 1 bedroom apartments in Oklahoma City from $325/month up and 2 bedroom apartments from $450 up here.

But this is a silly topic to need to argue over anyway.

[Sikon]

Darth Wong:

Yes, that's a valid point.

[Graeme Dice]

While the preceding is just an imprecise example, almost any reasonable figures would illustrate the same general idea. As much as Broomstick was outraged that I wouldn't support a rise to $20000/year or $25000+/year, an *assumption* of such rise being needed is practically as unsupported as $50000/year per student, disconnected from reality.

Are teacher's wages really that pathetically low in the U.S.? No wonder your school system sucks, you're paying poverty level wages to people with at least one, usually two university degrees. Of course you don't get good teachers under those conditions. I can't believe that the right has the gall to complain that teacher's unions are the problem with the American school system when they pay their employees less than what they would make at _McDonald's_ here in Edmonton.

[Terralthra]

Are teacher's wages really that pathetically low in the U.S.? No wonder your school system sucks, you're paying poverty level wages to people with at least one, usually two university degrees. Of course you don't get good teachers under those conditions. I can't believe that the right has the gall to complain that teacher's unions are the problem with the American school system when they pay their employees less than what they would make at _McDonald's_ here in Edmonton.

Average K-12 salary in the US is roughly $40,000 annually. source

[CaptainZoidberg]

Are teacher's wages really that pathetically low in the U.S.? No wonder your school system sucks, you're paying poverty level wages to people with at least one, usually two university degrees. Of course you don't get good teachers under those conditions.

Part of the problem is that a totally clueless and unconcerned teacher makes the same wage as a teacher that is willing to stay after school on their own time to give kids extra help. And trust me - I went to high school in the US - there are a lot of teachers who are a complete waste of space but cannot be fired. If we implemented a system where test scores, put into the context of the student body (socioeconomic background, prior education, etc.), could be used to draw attention to struggling teachers and bring bonuses to great teachers - than you'd see the quality of teaching improve pretty rapidly.

And the US school system doesn't "suck". It's probably more close to "mediocre". The US ranks #13 in the world for number of top 100 research universities per capita.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_u ... per-capita

Note that this metric is actually quite biased against the US because many of our best and brightest go to liberal arts colleges like Harvey Mudd, Amherst, Holy Cross, Webb etc. that are highly underrated on these top 100 rankings but also offer a very high quality undergraduate education. To my knowledge the top schools in Canada and Western Europe are almost all large schools like U Waterloo or McGill.

And while this is technically just a measure of how many good colleges there are in a country, it also reflects on the quality of a nation's high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools - because the vast majority of students who go to US colleges had all of their prior education in the US.

I can't believe that the right has the gall to complain that teacher's unions are the problem with the American school system when they pay their employees less than what they would make at _McDonald's_ here in Edmonton.

You must make a lot at the McDonalds Edmonton...

If I worked my old (entry level) job at Arby's full time, I'd only make 14k a year. And Arby's pays more than McDonalds or Burger King.

Just curious though, what kind of money do say, professionals make in Canada? If your teachers make well over 40k a year, how much do your engineers or doctors make?

[PainRack]

My MRSA infection this year was treated with an easily available antibiotic a local chain store provides to the community for free (the store absorbing the cost) - it was the doctor's visit that had the daunting price tag. So... in order to "save" money by not providing easy access where it is CLEARLY required your opposition to contributing to society and public health society is risking a $30,000 bill for "just" treating an infection through IV drugs (that could have, earlier, been treated through oral medication)

You can treat systematic or gangrenous MRSA with oral meds?I thought that the current medication regimes are either IVs or topical ointments?

An extreme case is Singapore. They provide around the usual package of government services but do so efficiently at low tax rates. Their economy has grown far faster than even the U.S., from about merely 45% as much GDP per person in 1989 to become now already 109% as much (2007), including a lot of industry such as electronics. Life expectancy is higher; math scores in schools are far higher (with contributing factors even including better textbooks); etc.

Their economic output per capita has become the highest of all the world's couple hundred nations, aside from several lucky oil-exporters and tourist-hub-type places which are not regular countries unlike Singapore of a few million people (2007). Such has been helped by a relatively high focus of their government on efficiency. Although not an expert on the country myself since just a casual outside observer, it appears even their web pages for the public talk about it, as if the public is serving as a concerned, knowledgeable, and good watchdog perhaps.

That's a damn piss poor way of arguing. First of all, Singapore has a highly active public sector, to the extent that if one includes Government Linked Corporations, they form a good bulk of GDP. Economic industrial activity not directly driven by GLCs are sponsered through government agencies and investment agencies such as the EDA, A*STAR, Biopolis, Temasek and etc.
While regulations are relatively laissez faire, the size of the government is not, which is an counter-argument to your US should not expand its government size or expand government spending.
And even if we were talking about education, the bulk, nay, virtually the entire Singapore population attends public schooling. The creation of independent schools recently has had no impact whatsoever on education rankings and is meant solely to allow gifted students more choice and variety in their education, as well as accelerated programmes. And they're STILL heavily sponsered by the local governments. Students here pay only 6 dollars for primary education and IIRC, 14 for secondary, and a significant subsidy exist for tertiary education. In a bid to equalise the social gap between Malays and other races, as well as a throwaway bone towards bumiputra(Malay rights), education is entirely free up to tertiary levels, which receive substantial support.
In terms of healthcare, while 80% of primary care is rendered by for profits GPs, that still leave the bulk of advanced primary care in government owned polytechnics, which offer extremely subsidised rates for Singapore citizens and PR.(I'm not sure about foreigners). And of course, over 80% of secondary healthcare is offered via Government Linked Agencies via Singhealth and National Healthcare Group. While the trend is towards increased corporation and adopting private for profits methods(the abandonment of price rates in the late 80s and of course, the spinning off of government hospitals into the current twin conglomerates), hospital care is still rendered by government agencies, subsidised by government dollars and trained and staffed by government decree. Hell, the only real fucking difference in our healthcare system now is that I'm not a government employee, meaning I don't get the civil servant package, and patients now have to pay higher prices........... For the later, this is an highly undesirable outcome.
Its not as semi-privatising hospitals had helped control costs. It took ministry intervention so that a pricing list and comparision was put out for the benefits of consumers......... Wow. Whatever happened to the Invisible hand of the Free Market allowing for consumers to make informed choice and choosing good, cheaper health care and driving competition? Prior to said ministrial intervention, no simple comparison between costs were available. And of course, the data for outcomes comes NOT from Singhealth or NHG, but rather, from MOH, although surveys and other organisational based patient feedback mechanicism has evolved. But again, only AFTER the government had started their own initative.
And of course, the government IS spending more healthcare dollars than ever, with more increases in the healthcare and education budget so as to improve both sectors, with the expected pay-offs in the economy. There is an increased drive to lure medical tourism, which has led the government to sponser increased advertising dollars via Uniquely Singapore.

If anything, Singapore demonstrates the exact opposite of your argument. That increasing expenditure of government dollars and intervention will actually improve efficiency and outcomes. This of course ignores the MASSIVE differences between a city state that is approximately the same size of Manhatten Island and the United States of America which occupies half a continent and has a vast rural population as opposed to IIRC an 98% urban populace.