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Comment by Olscore | Hacker News Reader

Fundamentally, it is disgusting we are forced by government to buy insurance products (e.g., car, health) provided by for-profit companies; however, I do not support universal healthcare either. The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the electorate vote themselves benefits.

The long-term financial incentives to maintain a functioning society are all broken because of the misaligned short-term (vote for me, get free stuff) and long-term incentives (debt reduction, financial management, business planning and other investments.) Voters are simply looting the treasury at this point. It is a shame. I cannot believe anyone actually buys into the notion that government will fix problems, or somehow do a better job than what already exists.

The candidates are just handing you money from your own pockets, and skimming off the top.

It's so damn dumb.

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> The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the electorate vote themselves benefits.

Could you give me some examples of this? Living in a nation with universal healthcare, I've never seen this.

What else would you call students voting for loan forgiveness? Point blank the candidate is effectively saying, "we will give you $xx,xxx" in the form of loan forgiveness. It is the same for healthcare. This is a literal voting for benefits; and, this creates perverse incentives for the electorate to vote for whomever will "pay them" the most for their vote. Candidates are simply buying votes by offering free stuff with taxpayer monies. It is completely broken at this point with one candidate trying to out-give the next.

Except that here in Europe (Germany and Austria) in each election, saving money on social programs by cutting cost overhead as well as services is a big topic and parties arguing for those cuts regularly get around half of the votes.

The one candidate tries to buy votes by offering free stuff pairs by taxpayer money, the other one tries to buy votes by promising to stop giving out free and lowering taxes.

So let's say that the roads in my town are broken. No one can drive on them because they're filled with potholes.

One candidate says that they're going to reorganize the local government so that our roads will be fixed. With your argument, that candidate is trying to bribe voters in order to get into office and the voters are simply voting for benefits.

Prop 13 is a great example in California.

Vote to freeze my property taxes? Yes!

Vote to increase spending? Yes!

see pensions for municipal/state employees in the US.

I get your concern of government bungling the financial aspects. However, are we all OK with 68K people dying every year due to lack of coverage? Do we have evidence that medicare recipients ration insulin?

How is this fundamentally different from the electorate voting for an army to protect them, or firefighters to put out their fires? These are also paid for by taxes and where the electorate will vote for their own benefit.

Aren't the electorate also the ones voting for tax structures (or for the politicians who'll implement them)?

> because the electorate vote themselves benefits.

Doesn't this cut both ways? Rich people voting for austerity is equivalent to the wealthy voting themselves benefits. You won't find the right balance if you always demonize welfare in favor of tax cuts.

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