Fiscal conservative ,Social Progressive..
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I think it’s fiscally conservative to favor an aggressively progressive tax system.
Batt Boy
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This issue gets me about as fired up as any. Tea Party Maga types simply refuse to see the value safe, clean, efficient public transportation has for all society. They just want to add traffic lanes. We fight it out all the time over bike lanes , safe streets, etc with this type. To a person, they are also against public healthcare.
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Please give us some examples of private companies that are perfectly efficient?
The government isn't perfect, but this attitude that we can't trust them or utilize them because they are not 100% efficient is part of the reason we struggle to get things done.
A great example is health care, do we really think that the government, without a profit motive, couldn't be equally as efficient as our insurance companies?
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Choice and accountability, those sound like right leaning talking points.
GA has school choice. One can change schools if their school is underperformed. But choice to spend tax dollars on private or religious schools, isn't about choice.
The accountability angle, in my opinion, is also a red hearing. The vast majority of our public school teachers are great. The talk about removing tenure and other "accountability" discussions seem to fall more in the anti labor camp than in really improving our teachers.
superrific
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What a lot of people don't realize is that big companies self-insure. They hire insurance providers to manage their insurance plans, but the companies themselves keep a reserve for paying claims rather than pay dues to insurers.
Health insurance companies really don't provide much value. They used to be a patient advocate of sorts in dealing with hospitals or providers trying to rip you off, sort of like the way credit card issuers can help protect you against unscrupulous merchants. But that role for the insurance company has long since disappeared.
So the idea that the government can't do what private companies do -- i.e. rely on vendors to administer plans that dole out big pots of money -- is ludicrous.
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I agree with your example of school lunch.
There's a lot to discuss there.
Like the stigma of a qualification line and the parents that whine about a "rich" kid getting an unneeded benefit. These miss the forest for the trees in not seeing the benefits of a universal process being less costly.
I do agree with efficiencies, but we have to understand the definition in many cases.
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If we get the tax code fixed and everyone paying at the appropriate level, then they can better budget and start to tackle the deficit and debt.
superrific
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The reason that schools need more money is that teachers have to be paid. That's what folks like heel79 call "throwing money at the problem."
There's an economic theory that more people should know about, and should be much more of our national political conversation. It's called the Baumol effect. It predicts that services will gradually become relatively more expensive in an economy, because it's much harder to increase efficiency. Maybe AI will change this, but when you go to the doctor, you expect to see the doctor. All the efficiency software in the world can't change the fact that a doctor can only provide medical services to one person at a time, and there is a minimum level of time that the doctor needs to spend with that person.
At the same time, the pay for those service professions has to keep up with pay elsewhere, or we wouldn't have any service professionals. So in a business, a smart, ambitious person with an MBA can make good money in a process of overall efficiency. If the company no longer needs 10% of its workforce, it can pay its managers 10-50% more (depending on the ratio of workers to managers) and still come out ahead. Thus can managers make more money without goods being more expensive. But that can't happen for doctors. If doctors' pay is to keep up with the managers' pay, the cost of the service has to go up.
This is an observed effect across many different fields. It helps explain rising medical costs (for people and pets!), rising education costs (for college and primary education), police and other government services, etc.
People who complain about "throwing money at a problem" are usually just seeing this effect in action. It has nothing to do with efficiency and it has nothing to do with waste. It's all just economics. It's the way capitalist societies like ours work.
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ToucheYou read my post.
gtyellowjacket
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I don't think programs that keep people in generational poverty, no matter how well-intentioned, are working and we need to make changes.
And changes can be made. Changing from large public housing complexes that tended to concentrate poverty to more section 8 style housing has led to some successes.
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Completely agree.
Many people use the phrase you have to use money to make money. Our school system is a perfect example. It's not throwing money at a problem, it's an investment in our future. Money well spent on good teachers pays dividends when our kids are well educated and competitive on the world stage.
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From what I've read these "generational poverty" generating programs are mostly a myth. Studies show that most safety net programs work as a stop gap, just as intended.
And even if a single mother gets food stamps for 18 years, it will more likely translate to a child that has a chance at success vs the alternative.
superrific
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Do you expect any different from that poster?
rodoheel
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What is an example of a benefit program that "keeps people in generational poverty" and what do you think needs to be done to fix it?
gtyellowjacket
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I'm fine paying for that single mother although 18 years sounds like a lot but yes in some cases. The real issue that I hear about is a single mother's kids and grandkids being on similar programs. That doesn't seem like a program that's working.
gtyellowjacket
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No idea what needs to be done to fix it but things like food stamps, housing assistance, etc.
Would need to know the frequency of that. Statistics insist that there are going to be cases where that would be legitimate. I'd also need to know if fraudulent cases are currently being prosecuted. If they are not, is that policy or lack of funding? Vague speculations like yours aren't going to get very specific answers.
There are serious problems with causation in this "keeps people in generational poverty" argument.
Is the kid on food stamps because the mom was on food stamps? Or is the kid poor for the same reasons that the mom was poor?
I have never seen any reputable studies that show causation for the argument that "The mom took part in poverty-alleviating programs and that taught the kids to stay poor and rely on those programs."
I am a public interest attorney who has worked with low-income tenants for over a decade and this view does not match my experience. I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data, so take that for what it is worth. I would actually argue the opposite - the trauma of experiencing the brutalizing effects of poverty (unalleviated by policies designed to mitigate this harm) is much more likely to lead to a cycle of poverty.
Is the kid on food stamps because the mom was on food stamps? Or is the kid poor for the same reasons that the mom was poor?
I have never seen any reputable studies that show causation for the argument that "The mom took part in poverty-alleviating programs and that taught the kids to stay poor and rely on those programs."
I am a public interest attorney who has worked with low-income tenants for over a decade and this view does not match my experience. I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data, so take that for what it is worth. I would actually argue the opposite - the trauma of experiencing the brutalizing effects of poverty (unalleviated by policies designed to mitigate this harm) is much more likely to lead to a cycle of poverty.
gtyellowjacket
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I'm not sure if its a myth as much as there is little evidence that it's causal. There are plenty of studies that show that people on government assistance are more likely to have parents on government assistance than the general population. That makes sense that kids of poor parents are more likely to be poor.
The question has always been are the government assistance program's causing the intergenerational dependence or are there other other reasons such as families not getting great education or living in crummy areas.
Here is one study that seems to indicate that government welfare is at least partly causal and that reform of social welfare programs can reduce generational dependence.