Hacker News Reader

Comment by cloakandswagger | Hacker News Reader

I found the post very rambley but I don't think Carmack was far off the mark. Most of his arguments seem to orbit around the concept that the federal government is hugely wasteful, which isn't a particularly uncommon or controversial opinion.

Your comment about the US tax rate is misguided though. While we might technically pay less than some European countries (not much less, in some cases), we also receive a lot less in return.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth...

A vast amount of US tax dollars go towards social security--a creaky, shuddering retirement plan that many expect will collapse before they ever benefit from it--and defense. When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.

View on HN

>Most of his arguments seem to orbit around the concept that the federal government is hugely wasteful, which isn't a particularly uncommon or controversial opinion.

Why is this uncontroversial?

>A vast amount of US tax dollars go towards social security--a creaky, shuddering retirement plan that many expect will collapse before they ever benefit from it--and defense.

I'm not a fan of the defense spending, and I've heard it is quite inefficient. Social Security, however, seems very efficient and effective: elder poverty is nothing compared to what it was before Social Security, and the administrative overhead on the program is tiny.

Also, it's not creaky and shuddering at all. All it needs for indefinite, perfect solvency is to have its contribution cap lifted so people actually pay in proportion to their incomes.

>When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.

I don't see how Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act are "no clear benefit". They seem like society's lifelines to me.

The US government per capita spending on health care is 4,763.9USD [1]. Canada's is 4801.25USD [2]. But Canadians don't have to buy medical insurance, nor do they pay deductables, or out of pocket for nearly everything.

Carmack is totally right. Most Americans are totally right. The government in the US is totally huge, bloated, and wasteful.

What's really foolish is that they attribute that quality to the fact that it's government, and by definition governments are incredibly incompetant and wasteful. Nope, it's just their government.

American's never seem to ask why their civil service is so poorly run in comparision to other developed countries. They just seem to want to punish it out of fury.

1. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/US_per_capita_spending.h... 2. https://www.cihi.ca/en/spending-and-health-workforce/spendin...

This is exactly my complaint with both "sides" of our politics. The spenders have nothing to show for their spending, and the anti-spenders can't imagine a world where you get valuable things from the spending...despite the existence of multiple real world examples.

It's actually quite amazing what happens when government is efficient and successful. One of my favorite examples is the UTA Trax. Built initially off the support of the liberal core in SLC, they did something rare: they built it on time and cost efficiently, and then operated it cost efficiently. And magically, even though every expansion proposal put it deeper into the most conservative areas in the entire country, and passage depending almost entirely on pure red votes, every expansion proposal has passed easily. Because when you actually deliver on your promises, people are willing to part with their money.

> Canadians don't have to buy medical insurance

That's just not so.

Canadians are required by law to pay medical premiums in the amount and manner determined by their province. It's currently C$75 per month for a single person in BC, with subsidies available to those with low income. It's paid just like any other utility bill.

Overall people seem happy with the system, though most of them have nothing else to compare it with.

That's not insurance, and it's only in three of the thirteen provinces/territories. For all intents and purposes it's a tax, and I'm pretty sure it's included in the figure I listed above.

I don't know what you're getting at with "most of them have nothing else to compare it with". Are you suggesting that Canadians are ignorant of other countries health care systems? Certainly not of America's - many Canadians go to the States to vacation or have relatives there and have first or second-hand experience with it. Also the whole world got to watch the insane debate over ACA.

Objectively, the health care outcomes aren't any better in the States than in Canada, despite the fact that it's essentially twice as expensive once you add in their insurance premiums.

> For all intents and purposes it's a tax

Yes, you're right. The rate is fixed, not based on individual risk. Really, it's no different than Employment Insurance, which is also more of a tax than an insurance.

> Are you suggesting that Canadians are ignorant of other countries health care systems?

I'm suggesting that the vast majority of Canadians, myself included until relatively recently, are almost completely unaware of affordable options available world wide. (Other than in the US, which isn't affordable at all)

Wastefulness of government is fairly uncontroversial, yes. But you're acting like that's all he claims - he's claiming it's both wasteful and that it cannot be fixed. It's a slightly more eloquent version of "make it small enough to drown it in a bathtub".

That government cannot be made to work for the people IS controversial (and kind of un-American, really). That evidence of wastefulness weakens the usefulness of government IS controversial. That a wasteful democractic government at least ostensibly answerable to its constituents isn't better than any alternative IS controversial.

You're basically saying, "he said the sun's coming up tomorrow and we're all going to die in a horrible conflagration, and really the sun coming up tomorrow isn't a particularly controversial opinion".

His point that government is not subject to the same competitive forces which force private industry to adapt or die isn't wrong.

You can see this at work in industries with monopolies or duopolies: how many people are over the moon about the service and support they receive from, say, Comcast?

Carmack's point seems to be that an entity with no competition and the ability to requisition cash at a whim is inherently wasteful and broken.

All large systems (and I very much include corporations in this) are inherently wasteful and if some level of waste is your measure then they're all broken too.

Large systems that have been able to stand the test of time and deliver good have had safety mechanisms to deal with the danger that they stop providing value.

Governments have a different (and in some ways, more competitive) check mechanism to companies probably because the catastrophic failure of government is even more traumatic than the catastrophic failure of companies.

Undermining trust in the systems (engaged citizens, the press, elections) that keep government honest is exactly the wrong way to go about solving this problem.

Except government is always under pressure to lower taxes (reduce prices) and be more efficient even without free-market competition. Competition is always just one election away.

But your government is exactly a duopoly -- there is no real competition -- not because it's a fundamental property of government but because you have a very strict two party system. Do you live in a Comcast or Time Warner city? Do you live in a Republican state or Democrat state?

> When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.

The real damning part is that there have been concerted efforts to reduce taxation in the US for decades but the net result seems to be that you still pay about the same amount but you get less and less for it.

My wish for your country (and mine for that matter) is that people stop focusing merely the bottom line and more about what you want to achieve. Single-payer health care, for example, requires taxation but would ultimately be a better use of your tax and personal money than the system you have now. But that is really wishful thinking, the political tides have turned everywhere in the world and there mere thought of destroying entire industries for the good of a nation is completely unpalatable.

Yes, and besides, there's a flat income tax called 'payroll tax' that everyone pays both directly and indirectly through employment taxes paid by employers. Americans don't call that 'income tax' for some reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com