Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

taurath

The list of things we could have achieved with that money is what is the most distressing.

Make a countrywide high speed rail system.

Universal free preschool

Universal free college

(Edit: for scale rather than an example of necessarily a good) Paid off half the mortgages in the US

The list goes on and on. Let nobody say we don’t have money for improvements to our society.

View on HN

I'm against both parties funneling tax payer money to defense contractors in never-ending wars, but more government programs to give them more options to funnel money is not the solution.

Totally for high speed rail depending on if the money gets to it. Japan has shown a private/public transportation system is possible. That being said, it'll probably go to a politicians friend's company and it'll end up like the $90 billion California train.

The current K-12 public school system is a joke, lets fix that first. I'd rather see school of choice. You can already qualify for preschool if you need it. For college, let's lower tuition before making the tax payer pay off the current tuition debt and then paying for free college for even more. (but really lets not pay people's debt)

I’m not saying it has to be spent, or that it has to be spent on what I said. The scale is the thing. Austerity since 2008 seems like it leads to much worse outcomes.

I understand, my point was, the never ending war gave them the opportunity to funnel to Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, etc.

Making "universal" programs is the same thing as Afghanistan, you won't get anything out of it in the end and it'll end up costing you trillions.

The best government program is near to no program. Don't print more, let it hold it's value, don't steal from the people. Then you'll have oodles of wealth to help the true people in need, either through private companies or through limited government programs with oversight.

Stop giving them tax payer fund spigots, they can't be trusted.

Governments around the world are able to provide more services to all of their citizens, being less rich than us. I think the “government is always the problem” mindset ignores the downsides of the alternative that we’re living through now, with the only proscribed thing to do being a zero example “doubling down” on less government.

If you want your country to have healthcare, at the very minimum you do the Swiss system.

My point was OUR government can't be trusted with the money. You think the same people playing games with lives over seas just to funnel money to defense contractors is going to truly implement the system promised?

That being said, no I don't believe in socialist programs, Sweden was a pretty good example they aren't feasible, it crushed their economy and they are slowly reversing course. I think there should be safety nets, but the government should not be in charge of your life.

There's a reason America is the economic powerhouse it is today, limited programs, less taxes. Our private healthcare system is expensive but leads the world in innovation (cancer treatments, experimental drugs, vaccines, etc.) The American people pay for that R&D while the world gets it basically for free. I don't have an issue with universal healthcare, but we should lower costs first, not throw more tax payer money to hospitals and pharma.

I don’t think American government is special compared to a lot of other places that provide more services. Often we have less corruption. What we do have is a lot of corporate de facto control of government IE the pharmaceutical industry - this comes out of a desire to have minimal government.

The American healthcare system is not better because we spend more money, it’s better because we have good universities and lots of immigrants.

Agree we should lower costs - deregulation does not lower costs in this case.

> The best government program is near to no program.

1000x no! We need government to work - that's not negotiable - the question is not whether it works well enough to make you happy, it's what it should work on. The US didn't go to the moon or build the interstate highway system by saying, "Politicians suck, I hope the private sector solves this."

While the space programs gave us a lot of technology early on and were definitely needed, private sector entities such as SpaceX have shown they can do it more efficiently. I'd say NASA was a massive outlier in terms of government program effectiveness. I wish they would get more funding tbh, instead they get cuts :(

I'm all for R&D spending, defense spending, infrastructure spending, etc. But time and time again OUR recent government has shown they cannot be trusted with the funds and programs they suggest. They make these massive bills and none of the money makes it to anything meaningful.

I'm for SPECIFIC programs, not UNIVERSAL slush funds.

Name the bridges you want to repair, repair them. Don't try to steal $5 trillion while funneling it to "green companies" without fixing a single pothole.

> Making "universal" programs is the same thing as Afghanistan, you won't get anything out of it in the end and it'll end up costing you trillions.

You will get.. infrastructure, healthcare, education. How is this nothing?

> I'm against both parties funneling tax payer money to defense contractors in never-ending wars, but more government programs to give them more options to funnel money is not the solution.

I get what you're saying, but consider this. If you explicitly funnel money to these people for the purpose of warfare, they will only make weapons and train people to engage in warfare and supporting activities.

Best case scenario, you got some specialists who are "also" proficient in adjacent technical skills, related to warfare (e.g. cybersecurity), and a bunch of military hardware sitting on parking lots (or falling into the hands of the Taliban).

But if you engage them for education or high speed rail, sure, they pad their pockets, sure, but at the end of the day you at least got some infrastructure for schools, rail engineers and supporting roles for those fields. You don't have to deal with depreciating military machines, who are only fit for destruction.

I don't mean to say I have the ultimate truth regarding this, but personally, I will pick the $90 billion California train over 300 days in Afghanistan every single time.

The US should only spend money on rail infrastructure if it’s willing to pay the Japanese or Europeans all that money to build the infrastructure with no American involvement whatsoever.

Otherwise they’re better off burning the money.

School choice doesn't work. The "success stories" are just funneling the smart kids into other schools while letting others fail while charter corporations make millions. The problem isn't the "school", it's poverty and the home situation.

Why not free internet? Seeing as it's now an essential service. (Although totally crazy that we are so dependent on it.)

One major reason for why not, I would say that water and electricity are essential services too (esp given that free internet is useless if you dont have electricity access), but they aren’t free yet.

So before we jump onto thinking about making internet free (if that was ever even a plan), I think it would make sense to make water+electricity free first.

Unlike water and electricity, internet can be provided without a physical connection. Which makes it much easier to provide than water or electricity. So I'm not actually sure "no free electricity/water => no free internet" is a sensible implication here. (Though I'm not opining on the merits of any of them here. Only discussing the implication.)

Interesting idea. What if electricity and water were free? Aren't they essential also? Instead of ubi; electricity, Water, and energy - basic amount to survive (heat or cold.) Together with medicine. And education. That would make a huge difference to make an even playing field. Instead of all the other attempts to make up for this, with equal access, etc. And a huge difference to fight basic poverty, because these would just be there. True equal opportunity then?

I think your proposal is actually pretty sound. Never thought of this before, but it is an interesting idea.

Having utilities free sounds pretty good, but idk how helpful it would be to deal with homelessness (which is one of the main issues with basic access to all of those things), given how small of a fraction utilities make up when it comes to overall housing costs. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely not in the camp of "just because this improvement proposal might have some issues, we should just sit and do nothing", and free utilities would definitely be an improvement, and a massive one at that. I just think that, while we are floating those proposals, we shouldn't forget the elephant in the room either, which is "how do we make sure that everyone who needs access to housing has access to housing".

Do you really think we'd have done any of those things if we weren't in Afghanistan? I find that hard to believe.

The change in politics required to get us out of Afghanistan before wasting all that money would probably also have been conducive to an updated social safety net.

How about lowering taxes and giving that money back to people?

>"Universal free college"

This would greatly increase the amount of critically thinking population. I do not think it lines up well with what the government and elites want.

>This would greatly increase the amount of critically thinking population.

I wish I were as optimistic as you.

Well I did not say all of them will turn this way ;) But still should be many times better than what it is now.

Being in a PhD program has shown me that academic education does not solve any of the political problems. I mean we can also look at other countries and see highly educated populations still not question their governments.

>I do not think it lines up well with what the government and elites want.

...which is why the government subsidizes college tuition with grants and guaranteed loans? Or that banks give out the same loans as well?

The government gives out loans so that politicians can claim they helped people while also claiming they controlled spending and kept taxes low.

Those taxpayer guaranteed loans are just taking money from future taxpayers and giving it to the higher education business by letting them increase tuition without limit since there is no underwriting process.

And of course the students get saddled with lifelong debt with no exit since they are not dischargeable in regular bankruptcy, and future taxpayers get soaked with paying for the defaulted loans.

Private banks used to give out those loans because they were still guaranteed by the government, and I think Obama changed that, but they still have special status that make them harder to discharge in bankruptcy.

Tl:dr taxpayer funded loans for higher education are a net negative for society

What happens to that debt if a person leaves the US and doesn't return?

Ignoring how expensive and difficult that is if you're already saddled with 6 figures of debt for the purpose of discussion. I'm not American and haven't found a clear answer though my Googlefoo.

I had to have a cosigner for all of my student loans. If I disappeared off to a foreign country I bet my parents would be forced to pay in my absence

If a person defaults, the debt stays on their credit report in the US for (I think...) seven years.

This can have various consequences depending on the new home country and its agreements with the US - from credit issues and possible legal action, to absolutely no consequences at all.

Obviously if the person moves back to the US, they'll likely be chased by debt collectors and possibly the IRS.

> I do not think it lines up well with what the government and elites want.

I'm of the (apparently dated) notion that we are the government.

You’re not alone in this idea.

When was the last time you had serious input into national policy?

And I don't mean with a (token) vote. I mean actually designing and implementing national policy, designing and setting up monitoring of outcomes, and reporting back to everyone else on how the policy idea performed.

A Princeton study argues convincingly that average citizens and organizations representing the interests of average citizens have little effect on policy:

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

That's a fairly popular conspiracy theory with no basis in reality.

A lot of people get all the way through college without ever considering the total cost of compound interest or the value of their major. Many college educations and critical thinking are not remotely the same thing.

Define "cost"

Why would the US government pay off peoples mortgages? Surely you don't think that is viable thing to spend public money on?

To be clear, I think the other ideas are great, except that one.

> Why would the US government pay off peoples mortgages? Surely you don't think that is viable thing to spend public money on?

Yeah that's a dumb idea. All that would do is cause houses to be even more expensive.

I’m not saying it should by any means, only to appreciate the sheer scale. There are of course way better ideas.

Why is the govt (i.e., taxpayers) paying off a mortgage good for society? And if you later sell the house, do you keep the money, or pay back what the govt paid? Who benefits from the enormous appreciation (if the govt will be paying off the mortgage, why not offer $5 million for a typical 3br?)?

I don't think they meant that the government should actually do this, it was just to indicate the scale.

Here's the good news though: This proves that money is imaginary, and we should print up as much as we want, and do these things (in your list).

Money is a social construct. We create money for investment every day. Investing in the population creates returns in tax revenue. You open opportunities for wealth creation by putting down roads and train stations and modes of commerce.

The more money you print, the more imaginary it becomes, the less purchasing power it has, the more stuff costs. Inflation.

That only matters for imports. For domestic economy if inflation stays reasonable it doesn’t matter. Print away.

Current life says that's not the case. Some of that may be supply chain issues, and they say inflation is at 5% or so, but most things have had at least a 20% price increase this year.

Edit: to poster below, it varies, very noticeable if you are traveling. For your cost of living, it's noticeable over the month if you are living paycheck to paycheck. My point is don't just "print away", inflation is a tax on the poor.

Car rental 87.7% (y/y change)

Used cars 45.2%

Gas 45.1%

Laundry machines 29.4%

Airfare 24.6%

Moving 17.3%

Hotels 16.9%

Furniture 8.6%

Bacon 8.4%

TVs 7.6%

Fruit 7.3%

Shoes 6.5%

Fresh fish 6.4%

New cars 5.3%

Milk 5.6%

Rent (OER) 2.3%

> most things have had at least a 20% price increase

Most things have not had anywhere close to that. The things that have draw more attention, though.

Car rentals, used cars, hotels, airfare will all trend down in price over time.

Even if that is true, it doesn't help the average person who doesn't travel much. Their day-to-day expenses are still going up faster than wages.

Thanks for including bacon.

Check US inflation since the early 80's. It's 200%.

For something more recent, look at US home prices over the past year. It's crazy.

Food costs are also rising. Anecdotally, grocery prices have gone up quite a bit. Restaurants, too. I don't remember a large pizza costing $25 a couple years ago.

> Check US inflation since the early 80's. It's 200%.

It's been 40 years. Applying the rule of 72 ('cause I can't be bothered to do a more sophisticated analysis) and assuming that your "200%" means prices have doubled since then, that comes to 1.8% annual inflation. Very reasonable.

200% means tripled. I'm looking at https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Still, it's about 2.8%. Not bad, if you look at it that way. But it adds up.

I know some normal tech guys with 3 or 4 million in assets. They'd barely be 80's millionaires.

It’s still a pretty normal level of inflation. I assume 3% in my financial planning.

But yes, being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be.

The equivalent of 80's millionaire today is about $10 million

Reply on news.ycombinator.com