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0 pointss1artibartfast3y ago0 comments

>But we don't do it, because, in America, our sense of what government can or should provide is atrophied, and we, mistakenly, look to private actors to provide basic public services.

I don't think this matches reality. The US government is doing more today than any time point in the past. Spending and taxation as a percent of dgp is at an all time high.

There's also a sense that nobody should have to do anything themselves. There's nothing stopping anyone from talking to a homeless person and helping them set up an email account without 2fa.

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md_3y ago

That's fair that I shouldn't make such an unqualified statement.

While public spending as a % of GDP has indeed increased, that's primarily driven by two things: increased defence (and related) spending, and increased spending on health costs.

In the US, the growth in social assistance spending over the last 3 decades is driven almost entirely by the latter: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-expenditure-as-per....

At the same time, we continue to believe in privatizing basic government services: outsourcing social assistance to charities (including religious charities), outsourcing military and intelligence functions to mercenaries, or, on point for this thread, outsourcing ID verification to VC-funded private startups.

s1artibartfastOP3y ago

Looking at your numbers or just social spending, it is increased 50% since 1990 as a portion of GDP. Real GDP adjusted for inflation itself has increased more than 3x since 1990. This means that us social spending in terms of inflation adjusted purchases has gone up more than 450% from 1990 levels.

This excludes military spending and is adjusted for the purchasing power of those dollars.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel like we are getting 450% more value out of the government services. The numbers are pretty clear that the government is collecting more and more inflation adjusted dollars from people's income than ever before.

I Suspect we would probably agree that the government is not being a responsible steward of this money that it is collecting.

My primary point was that I don't think that the belief that a decrease in government spending and Revenue is reflected in the numbers. Further, I think it is important to push back on the idea that the systemic issues we see can simply be solved by throwing more money into an increasingly inefficient system.

md_3y ago

Sure. My point was indeed to suggest we rethink what government can do.

Can governments (not necessarily the federal government) run a public service internet system? Sure, and probably more easily than we can, as another poster suggested, regulate tech companies into providing the right tradeoffs for housed and unhoused users.

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md_3y ago

That's fair that I shouldn't make such an unqualified statement.

While public spending as a % of GDP has indeed increased, that's primarily driven by two things: increased defence (and related) spending, and increased spending on health costs.

In the US, the growth in social assistance spending over the last 3 decades is driven almost entirely by the latter: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-expenditure-as-per....

s1artibartfastOP3y ago

This excludes military spending and is adjusted for the purchasing power of those dollars.

I Suspect we would probably agree that the government is not being a responsible steward of this money that it is collecting.

md_3y ago

Sure. My point was indeed to suggest we rethink what government can do.

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