Comment by adventureful | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventureful | Hacker News Reader

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Roads, education, emergency services.

Ah yes, the classic tiny list meant to justify taking $6 trillion per year out of the economy in the form of taxation.

Roads? Laughable. Let's run that budget up against SS / Medicare / Military, and see where our taxes are really spent.

Education? Oh my, yes, the government is doing such a stellar job inflating the cost of education to infinity, while results get worse and worse.

Emergency services? The ones that people are increasingly having to pay extra fees just to use?

Special interests already control the items you listed. In case you missed that whole Federal unions thing; or the protected road workers unions that typically dominate at the state level. Or the teachers unions that protect their own to the harm of students, which is why we spend so much more than anybody else and get such radically worse results.

Government services in the US are about as far away from being in your hands of control as they could get. Which is why the TSA gets away with such extreme abuse, or why our infrastructure is collapsing despite the government having doubled in size in the last 13 years.

Social Security is a pension system and should not be counted as an expense. Or, at the minimum the payments to vested retirees should not be counted. Social Security is not in trouble and the part that has trouble is easily fixable.

Medicare is actually a benefit to corporations. Corporations shifted retiree benefits (health care among such benefits) to Social Security, 401(k), and Medicare. Without Medicare worker would demand more money. Besides, it is unseemly for a country as rich as the U.S. to have millions of uninsurable people dying prematurely. Millions more than it currenlty has, that is.

Your statements about unions are without a basis is fact. It is quite obvious that labor, overall, has very little power in the country. Furthemore a majority of non-defense workers for the U.S. government are contractors. We live in an environment of regulatory capture. At the very minimum, the large corporations ought to at least pay to keep the system that they've captured.

> Or, at the minimum the payments to vested retirees should not be counted.

There's no such thing as "vesting" wrt Social Security. All benefits are at the whim of Congress. Yes, including those being paid now.

Congress could decide tomorrow to divert all SS payouts to hookers and blow and retirees would have no legal recourse. (They could, of course, vote out incumbents in the next election, but that's no guarantee that the new rascals would restore the benefits.)

> Besides, it is unseemly for a country as rich as the U.S. to have millions of uninsurable people dying prematurely.

The US doesn't have "millions of uninsured dying prematurely". The available research suggests that insurance improves quality of life but doesn't have much effect on life-span. (The error bar goes from "no effect" to "there seems to be a very small effect".)

Social Security pays some benefits to people who have not fully paid enough into the system to have their benefits covered. I wished to exclude these people from consideration and talked about the portion of beneficiaries who have. The latter group is a very large majority of beneficiaries and I used the term "vested" w.r.t. to this group. The point ought to have been clear and being pedantic on it is pointless.

Congress could decide tomorrow to divert all SS payouts to hookers and blow and retirees would have no legal recourse.

You don't understand the role the judicial branch plays in the U.S. if you think this is true.

It's clear that millions of peoples' lives are adversely affected by lack of access to health coverage. I should have phrased my statement differently. As it is, it is incorrect. It is true to say that at present the situation is unseemly (and immoral).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21308569

>>Congress could decide tomorrow to divert all SS payouts to hookers and blow and retirees would have no legal recourse.

> You don't understand the role the judicial branch plays in the U.S. if you think this is true.

Are you suggesting that there's some law that gives SS recipients a claim on payouts or a constitutional provision?

In the case of "a law", theu can be repealed by Congress and the judiciary won't stop (and shouldn't) stop them.

If you're suggesting a constitutional provision, precisely which provision do you think guarantees SS "rights"?

For example, http://www.ssa.gov/estimator/ says "Your estimated benefits are based on current law. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2033, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 75 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits."

> It's clear that millions of peoples' lives are adversely affected by lack of access to health coverage.

Not in the US. They have health coverage. What they don't have is insurance.

Yes, there are limits on the "free" coverage in the US. Surely you don't believe that any place else is different.

> Social Security is not in trouble

This is a fringe viewpoint at best. With our current policies, the Congressional Budget Office predicts SS will become completely insolvent between 2036 and 2038 (p. 54 of http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-2...). The "easy" fix will require significant payroll tax increases, which seems politically unlikely considering we just REDUCED the FICA tax by 2%.

From the document:

Under its extended-baseline scenario, CBO estimates that over the next 75 years, the program has an actuarial shortfall equal to 1.6 percent of taxable payroll, or 0.6 percent of GDP (see Table 4-1). Thus, to bring the program into actuarial balance through 2085, payroll taxes could be increased immediately by 1.6 percent of taxable payroll and kept at that higher rate, or scheduled benefits could be reduced by an equivalent amount.

The fix is easy (not taking into account the Republican party's irrational view on tax increases). Repeal the tax cut. And not increasing taxes leaves a small actuarial imbalance.

Or just raise the wage base above the current $110,100.

Social Security cannot ever go "completely insolvent", which a cursory amount of education on the subject would teach you.

The level of ignorance and sheer stupidity in this comment is astounding.

- The government isn't inflating the cost of education. Education itself is. The 'technical' courses are requiring more and more expensive equipment and buildings. Combine this with the drop in funding from state governments and that is why tuition costs are increasing. It isn't just specific to the US but is happening worldwide.

- Education in the US definitely needs work but it is not radically worse than the rest of the world. The biggest problem with education isn't with the teachers it's with the general attitude of Americans. Frankly it sucks. There is an anti-intellectual, anti-work streak that doesn't in many other countries. People overwhelmingly PREFER university sports over university science achievements. So blaming teachers and teachers unions is misguided.

- TSA policies are similar to what exists elsewhere in the world so it isn't a US government issue. It is an airport safety issue.

- Of course infrastructure in the US needs work. But again the hold up seems to be with the politicians. How about elect someone else ?

>The government isn't inflating the cost of education.

Well, there is a semi-legitimate argument that the government making it easy to borrow large sums of money is encouraging price increases in higher education, especially in for-profit higher education where most of the students are borrowing the entire cost of their education.

Ad hominem is not a valid form of argumentation.

The government is massively inflating the cost of education. They back student loans with an unlimited supply of printed currency, and increase the backing every year, making it possible for the universities to conspire to increase costs. Which explains how EDU costs have continued to skyrocket through a intense recessionary period.

The TSA is a US Government issue. It is not similar to what exists elsewhere, unless you're talking about countries dominated by abusive police services. In my observation, Europeans are typically shocked at the abuse and ridiculous hoops Americans now jump through just to fly.

Infrastructure in the US needs work? We had 22 major power outages in 1992. We had 344 in 2011. Such has increased on average every year for 20 years. It doesn't need work, it's collapsing due to the misappropriation of tax funds. Or call it what it really is, theft by taxation and standard issue political lies.

- Government isn't massively inflating costs of education. It is rising in all major countries. What you are talking about is the cost of paying for education. Which is a completely different story.

- I am European. I fly 20 times a year. It is exactly what exists elsewhere. Or did you forget that it was the Netherlands that first introduced those scanners ?

- And you would have the money for infrastructure if you didn't go into two wars. So it seems the issue isn't taxation but how it is being spent. Which is an issue for the people who voted them in. You.

I agree with some of your points, but the last round of ridiculous checks at airports was pushed by American and British governments. Other countries were more than happy to lap it up, sure, but even the ones who would now like to scale back efforts, cannot effectively do that, because US authorities would screw them hard.

Part of the US competitive advantage during the XX century was a first-class air transportation network which was fast and flexible, spreading commerce and culture quickly and cheaply across a whole continent. As you noticed, now it's pretty much on par with what you'll find in that mess of balcanized frontiers and bureaucracy that is our beloved Europe. For them, it's a huge step back.

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