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Comment by mfoy_ | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article, and great visuals. The Sankey Diagram of the budget was very nice and of course all the interactive maps bear mentioning.

I think that anecdote about the "free" parking structure was really telling. The federal government swooped in and built a bunch of parking space then left the lesser governments squabbling over whose responsibility it wasn't.

More importantly, I think the best solution is to just pay more taxes. But "paying more taxes" seems to be antithetical to most Americans.

It's like the American Dream has just become "having nice things and not paying for them".

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I have to share one of my favorite anecdotes.

CA colleges are, for a number of reasons (prop 13, etc), in perpetual budget crises. A mother with a daughter in a UC was interviewed on tv whining about the impact of budget cuts on her daughter's education. After about a minute of this moron whinging, the reporter asked if she would be willing to pay a couple hundred dollars per year more in tax if it were dedicated to the UC system. Given my description of her, you know the answer: Of course not! We're overtaxed!

Most people are too stupid to understand that if we want nice things, we have to collectively pay for them. Though to be fair, there's plenty of politicians (see Republicans in Kansas, Louisiana, etc) telling people what they want to hear: tax cuts pay for themselves...

I'm not surprised at all that people would hold such contradictory views, simultaneously demanding tax cuts and service improvements, but it is surprising that someone could utter them in the same breath and keep a straight face.

Maybe it's just a lack of self awareness?

any government budget is just too big to get any feeling for this imho. And you can either always argue that its just spend on the wrong things, like military, espionage, social security or that others are not paying enough, like Apple only paying very little taxes because they hoard their money abroad.

Yep, budget mismanagement and being underfunded are completely separate things. It's entirely possible that the "moron" woman interviewed believed that the budget was plenty, but being negligently mis-spent.

I don't think people really understand where the money is going. I just looked at the numbers in the article, and I'm shocked that the upkeep of a little stretch of road in front of your house costs almost a thousand dollars a year. We just get used to that stuff being around and forget it costs money.

People think that way about all infrastructure, actually. "They want to raise water rates? What for?! We already pay $36/month!" Nobody thinks about the cost of digging up streets, replacing worn pipes, upgrading treatment plants, etc.

For some I'm sure it is, but I believe there's another facet to it: waste. A lot of tax revenue is totally wasted, and while some is almost certainly inevitable in an organization as large as the government, I strongly feel that no taxes should be raised or imposed until all reasonable avenues of reducing that have been pursued. For example, this should not be a thing: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08333.pdf

By setting up conditions that will never be met, you're insisting that taxes never be raised. Which is fine, but just honestly advocate for that. Also, that pdf is singularly stupid. Look at the first page: they found waste of $77k in the DoD! In a budget approaching one TRILLION dollars. There's always going to be a couple percent of waste; that's life in any big organization, public or private. Even if their 50% waste is accurate -- hell, even if it's 100% waste -- they're discussing $15B in a $3T federal budget -- half a percent.

Or is it knowledge that most of the cost are going to growing administrative costs and bureaucracies and not to actually provide the services they are their ostensibly to provide. It reminded me of when my home towns school district had budget cuts no one in the administrative side was let go but a dozen or so teachers where laid off. services are cut but administive side stay the same or grow.

Most of them want nothing to do with actually understanding how their government works or how their money is spent, because they've been conditioned from a young age to believe that the government can't do anything right and anyone who works or receives benefits from the government is lazy and entitled. Some will even do the song and dance of telling everyone who will listen how private industry could do so much better, even though the average business in this country ends up being insolvent within a few years of beginning.

Their taxes will never be low enough because the service they receive will never meet their completely unrealistic standards.

This might be unpopular, but California is a great example of a place where taxes are high, but it is not spent well. I remember looking at this a few years back, and although the state claims that 2/3 of state tax dollars goes towards education, a lot of it is supporting pensions and benefits of previous generation employees and teachers. While this is admirable, it essentially takes money away from today's generation for unsustainable promises made by unions and political leaders in the 80s and 90s. CA already has one of the highest marginal tax rates in the US of 9.5%, so it is understandable the woman does not want to pay more.

For schooling, Prop 13 is an even bigger issue. Even though property taxes are high for new buyers, schools are underfunded. Parents essentially are paying higher taxes in the form of fundraising to support science and other enrichment classes, which cannot be supported by the state. There were somewhat noble ideas behind Prop 13, but essentially what we have in California, is that newer residents of Californa bear a disproportionate amount of the burden.

While I'm with you on prop 13, we combine high income taxes with exceptionally low property taxes for long term property holders. Again, if we want nice things, we have to pay for them.

As for pensions, you say unsustainable promises, I say stealing from people who took cash later instead of cash immediately. Consider your last boss deciding to reach into your checking account and take $40k out because the business retroactively decided they overpaid.

According to this http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2016CAbs_1... pensions are 36.9/208.2 = 18% of the state budget.

It's possible to be unhappy with underfunded pensions and also think it would be unfair to change them retroactively.

The point is that the politicians back then stole from the future. If they were going to promise cash in the future the should have set aside money back then to pay for it.

It's one thing when a government borrows money to pay for a capital project that will last long after they are out of office. The net present value of an accruing pension is an operating cost and should be paid for as the obligation is incurred.

>As for pensions, you say unsustainable promises, I say stealing from people who took cash later instead of cash immediately.

This is really an accounting problem. In California, at least, changes to the pension system weren't reflected in the current budget as future obligations.

So for many years city and state controllers dealt with union demands by "off the books borrowing" in the form of more lavish pensions. City and state pensions really are unnecessarily lavish, and the reason is voters never realized what obligations they were being asked to shoulder.

"...a lot of it is supporting pensions and benefits of previous generation employees and teachers. While this is admirable..."

It's contract law. No admirable necessary.

Pensions etc are negotiated as part of the compensation package. Those former employees earned that money. It's not an entitlement, or charity.

Legitimate complaints would be gaming the pension system and chronic underfunding (kicking the can down the road).

They earned a promise from the government. That's not the same thing as earning the money, as many state and municipal employees will doubtless discover over the next few decades.

Yes. The government should have been made to put that money aside when they promised it. (Or at least to keep the commitment honestly on their books, instead of hiding it.)

What you're describing is a defined-contribution pension plan (like a 401(k) or an IRA) rather than a defined-benefit pension plan.

As I understand it, public employee unions have not been big fans of defined-contribution, preferring the more generous promises. That is a risk that both the union and the government take together.

You can still make it a defined-benefit plan. A defined benefit plan should be easy for the government to budget for---the benefits to be paid out are very easy to forecast. (And in essence equivalent to a bond, or perhaps annuity.)

"Budget" is the operative word there: Controlling the expenditure of tax dollars is one of the fundamental things elected officials do in a democracy. Thus current governments can't ever truly bind future ones.

Unless the money is in an account with your name on it, what you have is a political promise, not a contractual obligation or an asset.

This argument rests on the assumption that taxes are spent wisely and fairly.

If you're wanting to be fair, you should also bring up the very real (and reasonable) possibility that this woman would rather existing tax revenue be spent on education than some of the things it is currently being spent on.

There is nothing contradictory about feeling overtaxed and also feeling that insufficient tax revenue is being spent on education.

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