Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is right. We have a bigger government than we did historically, and the past few years have led to massive increases in the size of the government.

Rather, there seems to be a change in the role of the government. At one point we wanted the government to engage in big projects. Now we just want the government to redistribute wealth and engage in irrelevant expressive acts (yay/nay gay marriage, faith based blah blah, forcing christian hospitals to pay for birth control).

But this tends to mirror changes in the private sector as well, so I imagine it's just a cultural shift rather than something government related.

View on HN

> Now we just want the government to redistribute wealth and engage in irrelevant expressive acts

This seems like a gross oversimplification.

> Now we just want the government to redistribute wealth and engage in irrelevant expressive acts

Whether or not these things are irrelevant is a personal political judgement, right? And what is "distribution of wealth" for one might be an investment in society or demand-side economics for another.

But your comment precisely demonstrates this lack of trust in government, or, the way you put it, in your fellow citizens.

And what is "distribution of wealth" for one might be an investment in society or demand-side economics for another.

It's not a moon shot, nuclear energy, the interstate highway system, or anything of the sort the article is actually discussing.

> the past few years have led to massive increases in the size of the government

Except, of course, that's a big lie. The "public Sector Has Lost Over 550,000 Jobs Since Mid-2009".

Expenditures are up at both the federal and state level.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FGEXPND

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/SLEXPND

It's true that the states chose to spend on the money increasing worker pay (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG) rather than hiring more workers, but that's a separate issue. (Call it anti-Keynesian spending during a recession.)

Historically we did things like hiring a bunch of unemployed people and having them build stuff (trails in national parks, fancy downtown landscaping, transit projects, etc). In the most recent recession, all we did was give the unemployed 99 weeks of free money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com