Fiscal conservative ,Social Progressive..

[superrific]

I see incredible waste. The government answer is always to throw more money at a problem. Do you think government is efficient in spending tax dollars?

1. The government's answer is *rarely* to throw more money at a problem. Typically, government salaries are lower than private sphere. Government agencies have to deal with budget crunches. Don't even get me started on funding for public schools.

2. The private sector's answer is more commonly to throw more money at a problem. Tesla burned through tens of billions of dollars of equity capital before turning a profit. Uber, even more. VCs hand out money like candy -- well, not quite that readily, but it's about the same difficulty to get $5M from a VC as a $250K grant for the government.

3. You don't see incredible waste. You imagine incredible waste.

4. Yes, I think the government is about as efficient in spending money as other big organizations, when you compare apples to apples. After all, the goals are different. The job of a government agency is often to hand out money. It is therefore not going to be "efficient" according to any metric you would use to estimate efficacy in the private sphere. Government agencies also sometimes have to collect taxes or fees. That's a harder job than collecting money from someone to whom you've sold a good or service.

 

[bdubunc01]

One thing that should appeal to conservatives is eliminating or streamlining pointless means-testing in many programs that costs more money than it saves. Free school breakfast and lunch is a great litmus test. The moral and ethical case for it is obvious, and it has been proven over and over again that keeping children fed provides tremendous health and educational benefits. The pushback from conservatives is usually some version of "well I don't think we should be paying to feed the rich kids whose parents can already afford it." But the problem is, it takes so much work and money to establish any sort of means-testing that it simply isn't worth the savings. You have to create forms for every kid to fill out. You have to hire people to review the forms and follow up about errors or incorrectly filled out forms. You have to hire people to review the forms and decide who satisfies the means-testing requirements. You have to hire people to investigate alleged fraud on the means-testing forms. You have to establish a process by which people can appeal or follow up if they're wrongly denied benefits via means testing. And all this can simply be avoided by giving the food to all kids, which doesn't increase marginal costs all that much because you take advantage of economies of scale in ordering the food. Not to mention that you avoid creating the social stigma of being a "free lunch kid" at school. it's such a no brainer from a fiscal perspective, not just a moral and ethical perspective.

Another thing conservatives love to support is drug-testing recipients of various welfare programs. Because they don't want tax dollars supporting someone's drug habit. But this, of course, creates a ton of administrative expense. You have to perform the drug tests; you have to analyze the test results; you have to allow for an appeal process if people believe the results are incorrect; etc. And all to save fractions of the amount you are paying out in benefits; you'll be lucky if you even cover the administrative cost. Even if you have no moral objection to forcing welfare recipients to take drug tests to receive benefits (as many do) iit just doesn't make any sense from a fiscal perspective.

Got a buddy that's high up in an urban school system. We talked about the free lunch for everyone going away after COVID and he confirmed that it is absolutely cheaper to just offer it across the board than it is to "administer" the program as it currently stands.

 

[BubbaOtis]

I don't hear people people describe themselves as fiscal conservative and social progressive,
I hear fiscal conservative and civil libertarian which I think is a better fit.

 

[Geisterfahrer]

I think it’s fiscally conservative to favor an aggressively progressive tax system.

 

[Batt Boy]

The same people who complain most loudly about the traffic issues in Charlotte are the ones voting against the Transportation bonds. The estimated increase in property tax is $1 per $100,000 of assessed value, so if you have a $1 million house you can expect a property tax increase of $10 a year for the 20 year life of the bonds. They oppose public transportation, they want more roads, better roads, bigger roads but don't want to pay for it.

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.

 

[UNCatTech]

I see incredible waste. The government answer is always to throw more money at a problem. Do you think government is efficient in spending tax dollars?

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?

 

[UNCatTech]

I don't have time to get into it but I have no issue with Medicaid, Medicare or SS. I know a lot of people working for road construction, local contractors, and they share stories. Education is another one, it is always that we do not spend enough, and never about choice, holding teachers accountable, whatever. But I am not against programs that help the poor. As one example people went crazy locally when it was decided that all school children would get free lunch, even the rich kids. What we found out, and editorialized on, was that it was actually more efficient to feed all for free than to identify those small percentage who did not qualify and charge them. Also don't want to derail the thread. My point mainly is I don't mind paying taxes, but I do think there is a lot of wasteful spending.

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]

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?

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.

 

[UNCatTech]

I don't have time to get into it but I have no issue with Medicaid, Medicare or SS. I know a lot of people working for road construction, local contractors, and they share stories. Education is another one, it is always that we do not spend enough, and never about choice, holding teachers accountable, whatever. But I am not against programs that help the poor. As one example people went crazy locally when it was decided that all school children would get free lunch, even the rich kids. What we found out, and editorialized on, was that it was actually more efficient to feed all for free than to identify those small percentage who did not qualify and charge them. Also don't want to derail the thread. My point mainly is I don't mind paying taxes, but I do think there is a lot of wasteful spending.

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.

 

[UNCatTech]

I consider myself a fiscal conservative and I'd support higher taxes if it was part of a plan to eliminate the deficit. But inevitably any increase in tax revenue gets spent rather than applied to the national debt. For instance, Kamala's billionaire net worth tax includes plans to use 80 percent of it for middle class tax cuts, iirc.

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]

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.

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.

 

[UNCatTech]

You read my post.

Touche

 

[gtyellowjacket]

I think this is all pretty fair. But what would you identify as an actual example of a "failed and inefficient program," and/or a "program with declining results," that we should stop spending money on?

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.

 

[UNCatTech]

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.

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.

 

[UNCatTech]

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.

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]

From what I've read these "generational poverty" generating programs are mostly a myth.

Do you expect any different from that poster?

 

[rodoheel]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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?

No idea what needs to be done to fix it but things like food stamps, housing assistance, etc.

 

[finesse]

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.

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.