Quote from: Mazarine_Sky on November 04, 2009, 09:00:06 AM
I think that mostly happens because opponants of certain programs fight to dumb the program down and therefore the program doesn't work as effectively as it should.
Or when oppanants do everything they can to restrict that program from doing anything good.
Your assumption is not totally invalid except on one point - more often it's the supporters who overload a program until it fails.
For instance - take Amtrack.
It was designed, upon inception, to be a "for profit" business. It has never made a profit.
Why?
Consider the Sunset Limited. That ONE run loses millions of dollars a year, and there have been repeated suggestions to kill it. but it presists.
why?
Because Amtrack needs the votes of the Congressmen through whose districts that line runs. and those congressmen won't vote for Amtrack funding without that line remaining.
Or consider the Post Office. Since 1971 the Post office has been, on paper, a quasi-government agency that was supposed to at least support itself if not make a profit.
The thing is, even though the Federal oversite is limited - whenever the Congress wants there way, all they have to do is hold hearings on changing that status.
For instance, in the mid-40's the Post Office proposed to close 12,000 inefficent or unnecessary offices which the GAO calculated would save them $100 million per year. what happened? Congressmen who didn't want offices in their districts closed amended the Postal Reauthorization Act to bar the USPS from closing any offices.
And that sort of thing is why government programs - ALL government programs - are money losing inefficient programs, not because someone is trying to undermine them, but because government by definition screws up everything it does. Comepting agendas, bought off lobbyists, pandering to segments of the voting population with something no business would do because it's a bad idea, protecting vested self interest to the detriminet of good government.
Honestly, I don't know how anyone could take an objective look at how our government (or any government) operates and then want the government to do ANY thing that could possibly be done any other way.
Post Merge: November 04, 2009, 04:56:07 PM
Quote from: Becca on November 04, 2009, 12:02:59 PM
Yes! You are a member of the reserve labor force, you work when workers are needed and are cast aside when they aren't.
Sure. But there's no such thing as an economy without such workers.
Except communism and we've already seen how that works out.
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The thing is, it doesn't matter how much it costs. Our nation has the money, it is productive and powerful and resource rich and in the long term we will be fine.
No, we really don't. And a lot of what inherent wealt the nation does have is off limits based on the actions of the same government we are turning too (for instance, vast oil reserves in places congress says we can't drill).
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It's all a balance, my doctor wears clothes that were made by people who can't afford to see her. She drives a car worth more than most of her patients make. I have things in my house that surely were made by people making minimum wage, and I eat food prepared by such people all the time.
It's an illusion. The total net worth of All Americans in 2007 was about $58 trillion.
The Federal budget for 2008 was almost $3 trillion.
It's safe to add another trillion when you add in state and local governance.
At least.
The median family net worth for those in the top 10% of all households (in net worth) is about $1.5 million.
There are about 112 million households in the U.S. so the top 10% of those would be 11.2 million, time's $1.5 million works out to about $16.8 trillion.
So, if you confiscate EVERY DOLLAR of net worth of EVERY household in the top 10% you have enough money to run the government (BEFORE adding new spending) for less than 6 years.
Not enough? Take the top 25% of all households. The median net worth of those between 75% and 90% is only $500,000 but lets wipe them out too.
That gets you a whopping $44 trillion. which runs the government, in it's current form, for less than 15 years. and that's not paying down the dept, or adding health care, or allowing for the increased cost of programs like Miedicare and Social Security which MUST go up if promises are kept. In reality it would be far less than 15 years.
In short, wipe out EVERY person you consider wealthy and leave them totally broke, give it all to the government - and you have maybe a decade until you are both broke AND have no rich to tax anymore.
And again - that's JUST the Federal government.
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The stunning thing is that these people are SO convinced that it's their fault they are poor and they don't deserve health care. You guys are just as important, even members of the reserve labor force, as my doctor or the restaurant ceo.
Ya it smacks of Marxism, but read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx before you automatically call that a dirty word. It's available online for free. It isn't very long and makes a lot of sense and the cause was twisted later on by other people. Modern socialism is a perversion, Karl himself once said "I am not Marxist" but he also held out hope that America was a nation that could evolve into exactly what we are becoming, without bloodshed.
The problem is that the sad reality is the idealism doesn't actually work when you apply it to real people, because people don't behave in an ideal way. Marx's ideas are WONDERFUL! They just so happen to not work. Because people, rich and poor, are...well...people. And people usually don't do the right thing as a group.
All you have to do is look at any given election regarding gay marriage to find evidence of that.
Edit: Forgot to add links to the source-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#cite_ref-GWUS_1-3http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/markets/w07-1.pdfDefinitely not right wing sources.
