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Comment by honkycat | Hacker News Reader

And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools?

Hell, Anything? No. Nothing is ever done. Nothing ever happens except decay.

The United States is spinning down its governmental duties. The pendulum will swing right again, and that will be the death blow. They will continue to gut public and infrastructure programs. All 3 branches will finally truly be a jobs program for the upper class to suck the blood out of everyone else.

The roads will fall apart. Jails will continue to fill up. The homeless crisis will continue to not fix itself. Everyone but the most wealthy will live like dogs, and then obligingly die when they can't afford the "good" insurance.

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This is an impressive rant and makes sense if you ignore the fact that more and more money is being sucked up by the government that seems to be providing less and less in return.

I mean San Francisco has a $1.1B budget for homelessness. That's a contribution of almost $1,300 for every man, woman and child resident of SF. And yet the problem is worse, not better.

Maybe it's not a money problem but the approach that's the issue.

The mistake you are making is that you think I consider our current administration and democratic leaders remotely competent or aligning with my values.

They do not. I agree they are useless on purpose. That is my point.

Then the real question is whether you believe there is any hope or even precedent of efficient government administration and spending. I personally believe not and that government, especially on a broad federal level, will inherently tend to be inefficient, bureaucratic, and corrupt. If so, wouldn't a swing right towards small government be ideal?

It is not possible to remake the USA given its legal structure and most importantly its culture. Federation in the USA is kind of fucked, but how do you fix it?

In reality, anyway, the social, economic and political system works pretty well for business and capital owners. Specially those at the very top. Governments are corrupt because the system is corrupt. The rules of society have been written, and this dates back to the foundation of the country, to benefit elites.

In order to change the rules major dissent is needed, and that will only come in a situation of complete collapse of the political system. I think it will happen, and I actually think things are getting really heated up... but it's not gonna be pretty.

It will be interesting to see what kind of economic, political and social models could be followed. But really, elites will never want to risk their current positions.

Small government. So you are in favor of defunding the military?

Small doesn't mean non-existent. One of the few things even the most extreme anarcho-capitalists believe the government should do is protect it's people from a hostile takeover on behalf of a non-anarcho-capitalist nation.

Well, I don't think any sane country will try to invade somewhere where the citizens have recreational nukes.

Nukes don't defend a country without a huge human force supporting and maintaining them.

In addition to that, you need to constantly evolve your delivery vehicles to overcome newly developed defense capabilities.

In even the most bare-bones defense scenario, the needed investment is fairly large, and it depends on how large of an investment adversaries make.

I think that most anarcho-capitalists don't believe in a government or nation.

Sure they do. They just call countries "collectives."

Anarcho-capitalists just want archipelagos of privately-owned governments.

I gotta say the situation in politics in the US is so rancorous that no person with two brain cells to rub together would go into it unless they’re a pig that likes to wrestle in shit; who wants to go into that mess? Even Bernie gave into the identity politics out of necessity.

Our best and brightest are making money to buy fallout shelters in NZ or wherever.

> That's a contribution of almost $1,300 for every man, woman and child resident of SF

If you are a property owner, then distributing the externalities and barbaric social harm of the insane NIMBYism and zoning laws that artificially protect your property's valuation to the majority renting population makes sense. A few thousand a year is nothing compared to real estate.

And obviously, that amount of money is easily enough to just give the unhoused the housing they need, if it weren't impossible to build affordable housing in the first place.

You’re wrong about San Francisco having a $1.1B budget for homelessness.

In fy2021-2022 the amount is $670M … over two years.

SF spends 1/4 of the amount you accuse it of.

Furthermore, it’s well known that other counties near and far send their homeless people here. So as a SF tax payer… I think you owe me many thanks for taking care of your homeless people.

https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/

> The FY21-23 HSH budget leverages $1.2 billion over the next two years in federal, state, and local resources (including Prop C funds). In addition to HSH’s existing commitments

…wait, im seeing in here that they plan to add 4,000 new homes to addresss homelessness. Given the real estate pricing of SF it makes sense it would be expensive as fuck. Why are folks mad at SF govt? They should be mad at landowners for price gouging on rent.

SF rent isn't gouged: SF land prices are gouged by NIMBYs. For the price rent is SF should look like Manhattan. Instead it's more like Boise.

>And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools?

Actually, a pediatric emergency was just declared [0]. And both Republicans and Democrats passed a $250 Million bill to provide rapid support for children's mental health. A Dr friend described it as "if I'm seeing a child and I'm concerned he/she is suffering from depression, I can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the country in 30 minutes".

I'm aware, "mental health" for kids isn't the same as "education for kids" - but this is a big step in the right direction

[0]https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/zLatest_News/Pediatricians_CAPs_...

With 73 million children in the United States, that's $3.74 per child. I don't think a phone call with a doctor can actually solve the problems that most of these kids face, but even if it could, how much healthcare can you buy with pocket change?

I find it funny how there is a separation between the ideas of mental health and peoples lives, as if there is no relation between the two.

That's kind of the entire premise of medicalizing "mental health."

can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the country

That seems like a less than scalable approach.

Five experts * 30 minutes means at most 240 kids/day assuming they works around the clock or it’s less than 30m to solve the problem.

Sounds unreasonably optimistic.

That's around $5 per child age 5-11.

About $2 per person under age 18.

It's a broken clock hanging on a moldy wall where the pendulum swings all the way right, stops in the center, back to the right.

A lot of people on this website, in my experience, do not take this seriously enough, preferring to put on blinders or tell stories about how it’s all for the better we just can’t tell why (thanks invisible hand of the market!).

> Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools?

What do you suggest? More funding? The US has one of the most expensive public education systems per capita. We keep pouring more money into it and it keeps getting worse. I'm in favor of "providing additional support to schools" but it needs to be something other than throwing money at the problem.

I don't know if it's good or bad but I see hear more and more parents wanting to contribute in group for handpicked tutors and teachers and they're not doing it for religious reasons. Problem is, the government doesn't want to give back the taxes or support that (even if they do support private schools).

That is a highly political, opinionated, and pessimistic take. You can just as easily say that the "pendulum swing" hard left has been causing our current issues, and that at least a balancing out could be a natural and needed correction.

How could you argue we have gone "hard left" exactly?

What is an event or piece of legislation that has been passed?

Socially and culturally it's undeniable, it's now completely unacceptable in my professional and social circles to publicly support one of our two political parties.

Politically, outside of the obvious 2020 election, there has been unbridled and unprecedented government spending since at least the beginning of the pandemic. Whether it was justified is up for debate, we likely still haven't realized all of the effects, but it has been at levels typically only those further on the left would propose.

Since when is it just one party’s bag to spend loads of money? I’m not sure that the stopgap measures in the CARES Act qualify as “hard left” considering they were intended to provide aid to the country during a hudred-year catastrophe event. Distinct from the media monkey-dancing, both parties obliged those initial packages with little cross-party fuss. It seems as if you’re conflating “left” with “spending lots of tax-payer money.” That ship has sailed. I still have my first paper stimulus check with a very proud signature on it. This kind of my-favorite-flavor of picking and choosing what is “left” and what is “right” proves the intentional vagueness of American politics works perfectly in undoing any meaningful criticisms of the system as a whole. Both parties are one in the same. The differences between them are immaterial in the face of the problems we face. Red or blue, they will continue to burp their champagne at us as this magnificent shift drifts further toward the iceberg and they tell us from both sides of the aisle “we’re working on it, but the other guys won’t budge.” How many decades does this pattern play out with nothing getting better before the realization sets in that nothing is going to get better, and that’s the way it’s meant to be? No left or right, only wrong.

Which political party was in charge of the executive branch and presided over the unbridled and unprecedented government spending since the beginning of the pandemic?

Well, one of the parties has kind of gone off the rails with support for literal assaults on our democracy. You bet it's unacceptable.

I agree, it's the party who thinks our entire system is racist because it was built by the euro-centric male slave owning patriarchy. Thinking it needs to be torn down and made into a NWO by way of packing the supreme court, flooding in illegal immigrants to vote, letting riots happen, and pushing CRT and gender theory on elementary students is definitely an attack on democracy.

Forgive me if I'm not really that concerned about Qanon shaman taking selfies in the capital building or the FBI creating fake white supremacist groups.

How much TV do you watch?

How many people were killed Jan. 6th? How many citizens were under threat?

I know of one, but there aren't any statues of her going up anytime soon.

Yep that's my point. The only person hurt Jan. 6th was one of the "insurgents". So, why is mainstream media pushing this narrative so hard?

Politically, we're deadlocked as always.

Don’t think this is true empirically. Unless “always” means “sometime in the 2010s” vs the entire data set.

One small anecdote to avoid citing :), a biography of a US congressman said that in the 1950s Democratic and Republican Senators would sometimes vacation together at each other’s summer homes or during the annual recess. Not sure that happens anymore.

Some would say that spending $6 trillion in < 2 years on largely progressive programs is a pretty hard left swing. Others say that since the latest $4 trillion hasn’t passed yet we’re not left enough.

Ill leave the judgement to you, but it’s pretty obvious that things are not the same today as they were 3 years ago.

Yeah, that might have something to do with a major global pandemic, the response to which we completely bothched in our country.

Let's see, who was the party in charge then, hmm...

I mean why are we counting 2 years when the "left-leaning" party wasn't even in power 1 year ago?

Even those on the right were, at least temporarily, willing to accept unprecedented levels of government spending.

The right has not been truly fiscally conservative for decades. Maybe you are the anomalous one, as your party seems to have transitioned to cults of personality lacking any sort of coherent ideology.

Please show receipts here. You mean the infrastructure bill? That is only 1 trillion?

What do you think is going to happen if we stop maintaining our infrastructure?

It will survive for another decade or so, but without funding for maintenance and repair, at the point where it gets actually too unsafe to use or collapses during regular use it will be either a Democrat president getting under fire from Republicans for "not doing enough about infrastructure" or a Republican president blaming past Democrats for being "unwilling to fund infrastructure" - and the latter would actually be correct this time, given how Manchin acted.

The problem with the infrastructure bill is that the price tag was hidden with programs that needed to be renewed periodically.

Could you explain that then, because honestly I can't fathom how a "hard left" pendulum swing has created our current issues. The US has arguably been swinging to the right for decades, and certainly is pretty right-wing compared to most other western democratic nations.

You probably won't get a good answer. The conception of political "wings" and the current FPTP party duopoly along those wings is hilariously narrow in the US. Our Overton window ranges from "genocidal fascists" to "okay maybe the government should build roads sometimes".

> The pendulum will swing right again

> Everyone but the most wealthy will live like dogs

These two points confict. Maybe the left should stop trying to raise the SALT tax deductions that the right reduced?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/22/democr...

And I say this as someone that would benefit from raising the SALT taxes. It is wrong for them to try to raise it

You think democrats are the left?

I love this talking point, because in comparision to basically every country, US Democrats are socially very far left. It's only fiscally where they are more moderate. Which is basically the opposite of what most Americans want, yet they seem confused on why they struggle.

> in comparision to basically every country, US Democrats are socially very far left

I'd really want to see the data on which you base this belief. Watching US politics from Europe I see the Democrats roughly matching the European center. European "left" has no voice in the US!

And what is more important? Saying "nice" things, or actually passing legislation that affects the main lever of power in our country?

"They say things very far left( arguable ), but the way they govern is extremely moderate."

> they seem confused on why they struggle

The politicians? They aren't confused. They understand the system.

In order to have political success they explicitly seek the backing of the wealthy elite.

It constrains the politics to never be leftist, and politicians to dodge policy and posture on culture wars.

How are US Democrats socially far left? There are multiple countries with parties that are literally communists. There are sizable number of US Democrats (especially in the government) who support the death penalty, torture, nukes, a large military, interventionism and mass surveillance (look at the votes concerning the US Patriot act and the reauthorizations). How is any of this "very far left"? They may talk sometimes about socially left issues (homeless, healthcare, etc...), but in terms of actually fixing anything, very little is done, especially that would be considered "left" in any country. Like instead of getting universal healthcare, they just voted to "reform" healthcare companies.

Far left on posturing, far right on policy.

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