If this becomes reality I will move to another country. Immediately.

[Necronic]

Personally I think the waste comes from a couple of areas

1) Redundant government agencies: I was talking with someone who used to work with the ATF down in Columbia fighting FARK, and I asked him straight out "dude wtf? Isn't that what the DEA is supposed to be doing?", his response was "Don't get me started". There are way too many redundant agencies. NSA vs CIA vs Homeland Security. Agriculture Dept vs National Institute of Food and Agriculture. NIST (which does research) vs National Science Foundation. Bureau of Land Management vs Fish and Wildlife Services vs National Park Service vs USDA Forest Service

Not all of these are fully overlapping, in fact few are, but all of them overlap significantly enough that you are seeing double digit percentages in wasted or duplicated efforts. This is WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE. It's almost like the opposite of a merger, where two groups come together and eliminate redundancies, here we have a single group that creates redundancies.

2) Information Technology/data logistics: It's not enough that the US government has byzantine recordkeeping across redundant departments, we also have to have terrible data management tools. The entire tax system seems founded on an inability to automate data management. This issue has gotten me close to striking a couple of government employees before where they ask me to give them information that there is absolutely no reason for them not to have already.

Think what this could do for Medicare/Medicaid. This could also vastly improve our national security as intelligence could be simultaneously more accessible and more secure. And hell, since this data would be publicaly available through FOIA you would be empowering legions of analysts to go through and to research for you.

But this can't effectively happen without first cleaning up #1 above. If each of these agencies independently develops an IT solution they will be putting in much more work than is necessary, and if they are eventually brought together they will have to spend a lot more money putting it all together.

3) Too much change too fast: There are logistical consequences of legislation, and these have price tags. The national healthcare bill had a significant price tag simply in the logistical aspects of it. Setting up offices, developing metrics, informing the populace of the system. And all of this is wasted effort when 3 years later the senate shouts "Shut it down".

A proper business operates on a 5-10 year launch cycle for major projects. There is a commitment involved. The government is more ADD though, starting something, getting 1/2 way through it then getting interested in the new shiny.

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

A lot of this is OUR fault, by being people that are looking for the new shiny as the solution instead of the boring practical and entirely non-partisan solutions in business efficiency. Fiscal conservatives claim this as their goal but that is a completely fatuous statement that amounts to cutting off your n

 

[GasBandit]

Except that's not what really happens, now is it? The people who suffer will be the poorest and the weakest who rely on those programs which get labeled as wasteful.

Simply cutting funding for programs across the board doesn't adequately weed out wasteful spending, especially when the biggest spenders are often taken 'off the table'.

By "biggest spenders," you mean social security and medicare?

What your argument fails to address however, is that the "poorest and weakest" are not starving in the streets. But they're also not any better off than they were when we were spending one third as much. Money spent by the government doesn't equate to better lives for the poor. Most often, it just equates to bigger government. Otherwise, I don't know how I could have missed seeing the corpses of the indigent piling up in the streets during the 80s, 90s, and early 00's. Heck, some of the 80s even had sub-trillion dollar outlays.

Personally, I'd prefer we NOT cultivate a permanent underclass of mendicants entirely dependent upon the government for their subsistence, but maybe that's just me.

 

[Krisken]

I was talking about medicare and medicaid along with the defense budget, but thanks for assuming I wasn't.

And yes, people are starving and living in the street. Just because you don't hear about them, doesn't mean they aren't there. Imagine all the medicare/medicaid recipients suddenly not getting the help they do.

Personally, I prefer not to be the person who says to the millions (many of which are the elderly and military veterans) who depend on these programs that the richest in the nation should get a bigger tax cut instead. But maybe that's just me.

 

[GasBandit]

I was talking about medicare and medicaid along with the defense budget, but thanks for assuming I wasn't.

And yes, people are starving and living in the street. Just because you don't hear about them, doesn't mean they aren't there. Imagine all the medicare/medicaid recipients suddenly not getting the help they do.

Personally, I prefer not to be the person who says to the millions (many of which are the elderly and military veterans) who depend on these programs that the richest in the nation should get a bigger tax cut instead. But maybe that's just me.

We don't have a revenue problem. The federal government is collecting 2.5 plus trillion dollars in revenue. People often talk about how Reagan put us into such bad debt, but he never spent more than 1 trillion. Even George Dubya's budgets, ludicrously bloated as they seemed at the time, are now seeming more reasonable.

Yes, there are homeless. There always have been, there always will be, tripling our expenditure did not solve the problem and even tripling it again won't either. There is no such thing as a society without poverty or homelessness. But remember too, that those deemed "poor" in the united states are also actually more wealthy than the middle class of many European nations.

And the fact of the matter is we're broke. Again, not because of revenue problems, but because of spending problems. The government will never make enough money, nor spend enough money, to eliminate poverty and homelessness. We can't afford to persist in throwing ever-increasing amounts of money into a bureaucratic thresher to assuage our aching consciences, increasing taxes perpetually on those who create jobs, thus retarding job creation and subsequently making more people poor. In the long run, compassionate liberalism hurts most those who it purports to help and it's silly to talk about "tax cuts for the rich" when the poor aren't paying taxes at all... in fact, they're getting nauseatingly socialist "refund" checks for credits on taxes they aren't required to pay due to exemptions.

 

[sixpackshaker]

"Reagan put us into such bad debt, but he never spent more than 1 trillion..."

You do know that today's dollar is roughly half of a 1980 dollar.

 

[Krisken]

I just can't do this anymore. Good luck with it, really. I feel like we've been over and over the same ground, and no one is really listening to what the other is saying. Blah blah "we're broke" blah blah "our taxes are too high". Just another shock doctrine to push for bad policy, nevermind who gets hurt.

 

[MindDetective]

The short of the problem is this: Things can be done better. The best method of determining the best solution is not to try and reason about it. People are inherently biased. We may need to streamline bureaucracy or outsource programs to charities or revise assessments. There are many potential solutions and the best way to figure out which ones work the best are to empirically test them in small scale tests and then scale them up and apply them. The social sciences are developing a solid understanding of human behavior in groups and as single decision-makers. Why are we implementing dramatic policy changes because the sound right? Yes, experts only to give an opinion on theoretical outcomes. This is stupid. We don't put a drug on the market until it has been vetted to a certain degree. Why do we enforce policies across the population based on an educated guess?

I don't believe for a second that an empirical approach is unfeasible. We can use towns, big cities, counties and states as test-beds for reasonable policy changes. We can even fast-track empirical tests to find solutions to immediate problems. I'm okay cutting spending. I'm okay cutting programs. I'm okay reducing taxes. But these actions should be supported by quality evidence and more than just historical trends or theoretical predictions from models. Otherwise, we end up with circular rhetoric.

 

[Mathias]

We don't have a revenue problem. The federal government is collecting 2.5 plus trillion dollars in revenue. People often talk about how Reagan put us into such bad debt, but he never spent more than 1 trillion. Even George Dubya's budgets, ludicrously bloated as they seemed at the time, are now seeming more reasonable.

Yes, there are homeless. There always have been, there always will be, tripling our expenditure did not solve the problem and even tripling it again won't either. There is no such thing as a society without poverty or homelessness. But remember too, that those deemed "poor" in the united states are also actually more wealthy than the middle class of many European nations.

And the fact of the matter is we're broke. Again, not because of revenue problems, but because of spending problems. The government will never make enough money, nor spend enough money, to eliminate poverty and homelessness. We can't afford to persist in throwing ever-increasing amounts of money into a bureaucratic thresher to assuage our aching consciences, increasing taxes perpetually on those who create jobs, thus retarding job creation and subsequently making more people poor. In the long run, compassionate liberalism hurts most those who it purports to help and it's silly to talk about "tax cuts for the rich" when the poor aren't paying taxes at all... in fact, they're getting nauseatingly socialist "refund" checks for credits on taxes they aren't required to pay due to exemptions.

Time to draw it in crayon for Gas.

The problem is a revenue one as well as spending. If you're not making more money than what you want to spend on, you become broke. The problem with the budget is the foucus on who gets the money. The military budget is BLOATED. Shave off just 10% of the billions that the military budget receives and it'll help a ton in the long run. The military can live without an extra Hummer or two at the expense of programs like medicare.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0...flows-mallory-factor-real-defense-budget.html

 

[SpecialKO]

There was an article that I linked in a previous thread about how Gates really wants to boot out R&D contractors who don't produce, and he felt that the DoD had wasted over $100 B in 3 years on projects that never became ready for anything past the on-paper stage.

 

[GasBandit]

Time to draw it in crayon for Gas.

The problem is a revenue one as well as spending. If you're not making more money than what you want to spend on, you become broke. The problem with the budget is the foucus on who gets the money. The military budget is BLOATED. Shave off just 10% of the billions that the military budget receives and it'll help a ton in the long run. The military can live without an extra Hummer or two at the expense of programs like medicare.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0...flows-mallory-factor-real-defense-budget.html

When I said cut everything, I meant everything, including the military budget. But that alone won't be enough. I'd also like to see the date and supporting data on that graph, but as its URL originates from moveon.org, I somehow don't have high hopes for it. But let's look at it. Yes, Gee Dubya was a horrible spender. He was an embarrassment to the republican party and probably was the biggest factor in the shellackings they took in 06 and 08. But that's only part of the story. The rest of the story is that the submitted fiscal plans for the future dwarf that entire graph. That's what the argument is about. The budgets proposed for the future are even worse than dubya. And that doesn't show up on a chart that only looks backwards.

I just can't do this anymore. Good luck with it, really. I feel like we've been over and over the same ground, and no one is really listening to what the other is saying. Blah blah "we're broke" blah blah "our taxes are too high". Just another shock doctrine to push for bad policy, nevermind who gets hurt.

The real problem here is that you're stuck in a mentality for which the only possible answer is to spend more money on societal ills. That no cuts are acceptable, ever, lest the indigent suffer. At some point, that hits the fiscal brick wall of reality and something's gotta give.


I like what MindDetective says about empirical testing, but we have precedent that it gets disregarded by Washington. There have been places in the US that have experimented successfully with, for example, privatizing social security (Galveston, TX)... but despite its apparent success, not only has DC not adopted any of its lessons, not tested their methods in other places, but some have even tried to squash it and force Galveston back into the federal SS fold. The problem here is that once the federal government gets a power, it doesn't give it up.

 

[Krisken]

Whatever you say man. Have fun.

 

[MindDetective]

When I said cut everything, I meant everything, including the military budget. But that alone won't be enough. I'd also like to see the date and supporting data on that graph, but as its URL originates from moveon.org, I somehow don't have high hopes for it. But let's look at it. Yes, Gee Dubya was a horrible spender. He was an embarrassment to the republican party and probably was the biggest factor in the shellackings they took in 06 and 08. But that's only part of the story. The rest of the story is that the submitted fiscal plans for the future dwarf that entire graph. That's what the argument is about. The budgets proposed for the future are even worse than dubya. And that doesn't show up on a chart that only looks backwards.


The real problem here is that you're stuck in a mentality for which the only possible answer is to spend more money on societal ills. That no cuts are acceptable, ever, lest the indigent suffer. At some point, that hits the fiscal brick wall of reality and something's gotta give.


I like what MindDetective says about empirical testing, but we have precedent that it gets disregarded by Washington. There have been places in the US that have experimented successfully with, for example, privatizing social security (Galveston, TX)... but despite its apparent success, not only has DC not adopted any of its lessons, not tested their methods in other places, but some have even tried to squash it and force Galveston back into the federal SS fold. The problem here is that once the federal government gets a power, it doesn't give it up.

Washington hates science. Not just Republicans either.

 

[DarkAudit]

The question is: which is the bigger lie, Trump's hair, or his financial statements?

According to this Washington Post op-ed, Trump has one monumental hurdle he won't be able to overcome. The Ethics in Government Act. He has to provide a sworn accounting of his finances. How many bankruptcies is that now, Donald? Five? Six?

 

[Mathias]

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/11/stuffing_the_right_turkeys.php

 

[SpecialKO]

WaPo post on debt problem is excellent.

 

[Mathias]

So what you're saying is that if Al Gore had won (well he technically did), this country would be sailing smooth. Color me surprised!

 

[SpecialKO]

So what you're saying is that if Al Gore had won (well he technically did), this country would be sailing smooth. Color me surprised!

Er, not quite. More that the programs and tax cuts that GWB actually put in place contributed far more to our debt problem than the current right-leaning rhetoric would have us believe.

 

[@Li3n]

Yeah, it's funny how tax cuts that help drive up income for the people that are getting the cuts don't increase the amount of actual money the government gets...

 

[SpecialKO]

Oops, we're on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. Our bad!