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Comment by Aerroon | Hacker News Reader

Maybe governments need to stop spending 40-50% of the entire GDP?

For example, the US federal government + state governments spend about $10 trillion a year. The US has a GDP of about $25 trillion. And the US isn't exactly known as a high tax country. France is estimated to be at 58%...

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Hmm, lots to dig into here.

The expectation that government provides certain services...

The nature of fiat currencies and what actually makes the USD worth anything or even usable as a medium of exchange...

Basic economics. Government spending == business revenue; the money doesn't just vanish.

> the money doesn't just vanish

Of course not.

Laughs in government contractor

LOL. Between how much Matt Stoller has made it to the top page of HN over the years and the waste I've seen anecdotally this made me chuckle.

The money might not vanish, but you're still working Monday through Wednesday for the government in France. It's as though the government was partly the business owner. The question this raises is whether the benefit for society in the long-term is actually worth it. The larger the share the government takes the less motivated people will be to make things better themselves.

Those numbers are not directly comparable. GDP is a measure of added value, not spending. Public sector spending may be ~50% of the GDP, but private sector spending is something like ~200%, making public sector ~20% of the total.

Interesting. I always think private spending is GDP - public spending.

Can you share where you get this numbers?

Total spending is not something that gets reported very often. I've seen the numbers for Finland but not for other countries. In the US, consumer spending seems to be ~70% of GDP, but I can't find any numbers for business spending.

Why wouldn't they be comparable? It's a measure of how much government taxes take out of 'your' paycheck - tax receipts don't tell the whole story, because they don't show inflation caused by money printing. Government spending does.

It effectively indicates that you're working for the manor lord Monday and Tuesday (and Wednesday in France), and are allowed to work on your own field from Wednesday to Friday. At the extreme it is obvious that this would discourage work and starting businesses. If the government took 100% it wouldn't make sense to do anything (legally). Therefore the question is: at what percentage does this start happening too much?

This is an important question, because government budget as a percentage of GDP has been increasing over the last century. At the start of the 20th century this percentage was around 3-5%. Today it's around 40-60%. And it seems to be increasing even today.

People don't like austerity, but if our current system is built on an ever-increasing share of government spending of the economy, then eventually we're going to be hit with austerity x10.

They are not comparable, because the whole economy is ~250% of GDP when you measure it by spending. The government spends ~50% of GDP. Households spend ~70%. And businesses spend >100%. You should either compare government spending to total spending or the part of GDP produced by the government to total GDP. Either way, the government is ~20% of the economy.

Universal healthcare and welfare systems aren’t free.

The welfare systems (in Europe at least) don't work. They work if you're old right now, but once the young people of today become old they won't get anything meaningful out of it. At least that's the impression I have and everyone else my age has.

And healthcare is unavailable anyway. Several month long waits to see a specialist.

So how come the US has worse health outcomes?

I'm not sure. I don't think anyone knows for sure, but obesity probably heavily factors into it.

53% of Europeans are overweight or obese. The same figure in the US is 72%. That's a 36% difference.

More than that, 17% of Europeans are obese (BMI >30) compared to the US's 42%.

The fact that the US has a life expectancy of 79.1 compared to the EU's 81.5 years with that kind of difference in obesity levels is actually surprising. You would expect it to be lower than that in the US.

> compared to the EU's 81.5 years with that kind of difference in obesity levels is actually surprising

It's probably considerable higher in EU15 i.e. if we exclude all the poor (currently or previously) ex-socialist Central and Eastern European countries that have a lot of baggage

Or at least men in those countries:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/2/...

Worse in some ways, better in others. The USA generally has higher 5-year cancer survival rates, and shorter waits for specialist visits and advanced imaging procedures. Of course there's a high variance in outcomes based on location and affluence.

> shorter waits for specialist visits and advanced imaging procedures

Those are not health outcomes, but merely services KPAs. The KPAs may be better, because a portion of population can't afford the services, so they don't have to be serviced at all.

> can't afford the services, so they don't have to be serviced at all.

If that's true how could:

> The USA generally has higher 5-year cancer survival rates

Still be true? Not providing any services to a significant proportion of population would result in a much lower average.

Not if they are not part of statistic as they cant afford it.

Any evidence that a significant proportion of people (compared to other countries) who died of cancer in the US were never diagnosed?

43% vs 13% obesity is a theory

Actually, given that, it's kinda remarkable the US life expectancy is only 2 years less.

About public healthcare it's pretty similar on Brazil! Many people can't pay for specialists, exams and etc. So, they have to go early morning (when it's dark yet), wait on long queues and many of them when finally is attended the local doesn't have more vacancies and need to go back another day.

I know multiple people whose cancer was successfully cured (or, at least, treated) in the healthcare system you can "unavailable". The systems in Europe typically focus more efforts on critical care (like cancers), and less so on mere annoyances, hence the queues for non-critical stuff. Compare that with the US, where for a sizable portion of population, treating their cancer leads to being bankrupt and homeless.

Here you have tons of USA citizens living in EU (and around the world) and ask them for first hand expirience on alternative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1yT8swtVvg

Dont miss part 2, part 3,... and skip non health care related, you might not want to hear them.

And anyway, believe me that everyone rather waits in line (which is not really the case, if you are an urgent case, you trough the line), that not even go to the line as their medical insurance doesnt support the needed therapy as it would make their family bankrupt.

Funny fact, check the price of insuline.

>Here you have tons of USA citizens living in EU

And yet, the only country in the world with more Americans living in it than the other way around is Australia.[1] Revealed preferences expose the truth that no number of videos with cherry-picked participants do not.

[1] That's on an absolute basis. Since the US has 20 times as many people as Australia, the odds an Australian will move to the US is still far higher than the odds an American will move to Australia.

Sure, you have quite a few USA citizens living in Australia talking about how messed up the USA is. You just need to study the material.

And feel free to show "cherry picked" material, where such amount of people are claiming otherwise. From the people that have left USA for more than vacations.

Did you?

Asking as I have always loved this Mark Twain quote, “Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

I regularly use it on local far right "peasants" in my country, that are sure, there is nothing better than their own turf while never stepping far away from it.

No but some countries such as Singapore provide them at a far lower cost than any western country.

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