21–30 of 131 posts
Our military budget is substantially larger today than it was when we were actively engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan just a few short years ago Our military budget will soon pass $1 trillion annually Our elected representatives now routinely provide the Pentagon with more money than it even requests Every NYTimes article on Ukraine is riddled with comments suggesting we provide a blank check for weaponry The Wash…
> The deregulation of the banking system in the 1980s heightened competition among banks. Many responded by raising fees and requiring customers to carry minimum balances. In 1977, over a third of banks offered accounts with no service charge. By the early 1990s, only 5 percent did. I would think that increased competition would improve conditions for customers?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The usps is the only well functioning government organization left and Republicans are set on kneecapping it so they can privatize it
well-functioning? 95% of the mail in my box goes directly to my recycling bin literally a no-op...junk mail is printed, USPS delivers it against my will, I put it in my recycle bin...another truck comes and empties that bin this is well-functioning?
It's not that the government doesn't have the money or that we're not paying enough in taxes. It's that we're spending it on the wrong things (if we want to have a generally prosperous and stable society).
Our military budget is substantially larger today than it was when we were actively engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan just a few short years ago Our military budget will soon pass $1 trillion annually Our elected representatives now routinely provide the Pentagon with more money than it even requests Every NYTimes article on Ukraine is riddled with comments suggesting we provide a blank check for weaponry The Wash…
The US government already spends more on healthcare and social security than on the military.
Most of that military spending is salaries for US workers. Guess where that $15 billion carrier is getting built? In the US from US parts. Its a jobs programs that conservative senators can support.
What was the answer?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aye, and the Postal Office can also be a solution here. Personnel distribution, processes, etc. would be fairly straightforward to re-implement. https://www.aarp.org/money/investing/info-2022/restarting-po...
The usps is the only well functioning government organization left and Republicans are set on kneecapping it so they can privatize it
In literally any other context you would be cheering this on.
Congress has done a lot of terrible things but the burden they have placed upon USPS isn't one of them.
> The deregulation of the banking system in the 1980s heightened competition among banks. Many responded by raising fees and requiring customers to carry minimum balances. In 1977, over a third of banks offered accounts with no service charge. By the early 1990s, only 5 percent did. I would think that increased competition would improve conditions for customers?
I think there's an implicit assumption that as options increase, variability in those choice options offered increases as well, which isn't always the case.
To the extent that the competitors all are constrained by some common variable (a business model oriented around loaned money, for example), they will not vary along some variables, which might result in the absence of some critical choice option.
I guess I'm feeling nitpicky about this but sometimes I think the US really needs some collective reflection on the meaning of competition, who is supplying it (private, public, government, etc.), how it is attained (choice expression through monetary-based purchases or non-monetary mechanisms such as votes) and so forth.
Often I think you can think of government services or regulation as another competitive mechanism; it's just attained indirectly through votes, and might encourage competition in different ways (e.g., either by acting as a competitor directly, as in the case of the USPS, or by changing the constraint landscape as in the case of regulation).
1. Raising health care costs
2. Very little poverty spending actually goes to the recipients' pockets
3. Decline of union membership
4. Home ownership is out of reach and the rent is too damn high
5. Banking is expensive for poor people
Most of these issues can be traced back to corporate lobbying.
The moral of the story is that poverty is a policy choice.