Ask HN: Is there a “spend more money” problem in political discourse?

I don't know if this has always been the way or if it's just something I've been noticing more recently, but almost every political conversation I get into anymore seems to result in the other person arguing that the government needs to spend more money. And this is often layered with the accusation that their unwillingness to spend more money is proof they don't care.

I wouldn't deny there is always going to be some truth in this. At the end of the day money does fix most problems and any problem that is a high enough priority will likely have more resources allocated to it.

However, it seems the vast majority of people struggle with solutions more complex than "spend more money". Even the media will discuss problems in the simple terms of how much money one group of politicians want to spend another.

I find myself often having to explain there are limited resources and for the government spend more money per capita on anything they either need to increase the tax burden, borrow more and offset the problem to future generations, or find some way to increase productivity. The only one of these that is a solution long-term is raising productivity since it's not possible to sustainably keep spending more in real terms via tax increases and borrowing alone.

A few examples of conversations I've had recently:

Kids falling behind in school? Spend more money. Bad health care? Spend more money. Energy bills too high? Spend more money.

What upsets me is that it's difficult for me to even argue that higher taxes, more borrowing and more government spending can't be the solution to all of our problems. I often get accused of not caring about the issues or not understanding people's suffering, but this is exactly why I get so worked up about this and why I want us to find sustainable solutions.

One major problem we have here in the UK is that people will not accept any other solution to our healthcare problems other than spend more money on the NHS. It's really difficult to explain to people that when real GDP per capita has not meaningfully increased in the last 15 years and when we have an aging population and a growing population we literally cannot afford the same quality of healthcare unless it comes at a significant expense to spending elsewhere. This isn't my opinion, this is just the economic reality of the longer-term realities of the situation we're in. The amount of government spends per capita far more a product of the country's GDP per capita than of relative tax rates and government deficits.

Do you agree this is a problem, and if so is there anything we can do to make political discourse more pragmatic about the complexity of the problems we face? I get the sense people were more pragmatic about the limits of government spending in the past, and that this idea that the government should be able to fix all of our problems is a recent trend. It also seems to be playing into dissatisfaction people have with politics more generally and I don't think this is healthy for democracy.