Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 233 posts

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#201

Post by robomartin »

jarek wrote: post #115
robomartin wrote: post #57

I've actually had time over the past few weeks to spend time watching the various duscussions in the Senate. In other words, I chose to go to the source and take the time to understand rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: Obamacare is a complete disaster. Don't take my word for it, go research what unions are saying, what businesses are doing an go figu…

> a president who isn't even qualified to run a cookie baking operation Obama's at 811,417,118.8 Cps in Cookie Clicker - what have you done that's so great?

Read my prior post on this for support of my assertion.

As to what I have done vs. Obama. Well, first of all, neither you or I should be the scale by which a President is measured. A President ought to be better than most of us in areas relevant to running a country, an economy.

You are an educated man. I presume you studied logic and know full well that shooting the messenger does not refute what the messenger might be claiming. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest you might want to run through the exercise I suggested in an early post in response to similar criticism [1]. I would be very interested in your reasoning showing how 2008 Obama was qualified to become CEO of a non-trivial enterprise, particularly when compared to seasoned and tested C-level executives.

I am not going to engage in a "what have you done?" conversation. I'll simply say that I have been an entrepreneur my entire life. I have started businesses, employed people from varied disciplines and backgrounds --including software engineers like you. I have succeeded and failed. I have been bankrupt. More than once. And I have pulled myself up and out of such circumstances through hard work, dedication and a healthy dose of risk taking. My life, for better or worst, has given me a unique perspective. And, while I freely admit that I am far from infallible I really don't think I am wrong on this one. There's nothing in Barack Obama's 2008 history that even approaches the development of an understanding of how a non-trivial business operates, much less an entire economy of this scale.

A sailing analogy is apt here. As a long time sailor I can tell you that anyone can sail under typical benign Sunday-Sailor conditions. There are two conditions that separate the hobby sailor from those who really know what they are doing: the extremes. It takes a lot more work to sail a boat when there's very little wind and you need to waste nothing in order to move. It also takes a lot of experience and knowledge to sail a boat under heavy winds and dangerous swells. Neither of those conditions are suitable for someone who has no experience whatsoever at the helm. One does not give you enough feedback. The other could kill you and your passengers if you need to learn on the job. You want to hire an experienced skipper, particularly for the second scenario. A Sunday-Sailor is likely to get you killed. That's as close as I can get to explaining who we gave our country to in 2008 (and, arguably, in 2012).

Our government has been steadily and systematically destroying our country from the inside for the last fifty years. It is hard for me to imagine a way to refute this. Shoot the messenger if you must, but he message stands on it's own. Regardless of who I am.

Yet I am nobody. I'm just a bunch of words you read on this screen. Read them. Decide for yourself. The irony of all of this is that regardless what you or I say we will both have to live with the reality our government is creating. I can't possibly imagine anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence and education thinking that this reality is one headed towards anything other than a disaster.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6474544

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#202

Post by darkarmani »

cantrevealname wrote: post #87
jbooth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One facet of the 'shutdown' is that they're not authorized to hand out federal money to states anymore. The states and municipalities are feeling it for every day that this stupid theatre persists.

If what the state government is doing is useful and wanted, then the state should tax more and the federal government should tax less. This is yet another inefficiency of federal government to act as a middleman.

It shouldn't be that hard right? I'm sure we can make those changes in a few days. We'll feed people idealism in the meantime until we have it all switched over.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#203

Post by robomartin »

Steko wrote: post #101
robomartin wrote: post #57

I've actually had time over the past few weeks to spend time watching the various duscussions in the Senate. In other words, I chose to go to the source and take the time to understand rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: Obamacare is a complete disaster. Don't take my word for it, go research what unions are saying, what businesses are doing an go figu…

"rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: " Take your astroturf back to Fox News.

Have you actually watched the debates in the House and the Senate and then compared to how they are being spun by the various TV networks? The contrast is nothing less than disgusting.

Please, do it. Fox News is irrelevant.

As if shooting the messenger is going to refute the argument.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#204

Post by ars »

icambron wrote: post #199
ars wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I misunderstood you, I thought you were talking about the DOD being the largest employer, and our priorities about it existing. As for funding it, it's just because it was an easy vote, not because of priorities.

Er, right. Reading back through the thread, I can see how that was confusing. My fault. As you've now surmised, I was just complaining about the military's special status vis-a-vis the shutdown, for which "that's a lot of jobs!" is inapposite. But while we're on it, I guess I should say this: I'm for the government providing jobs, but I am against them being in the military, and strongly believe they should be employ…

These days the military is violent very very rarely. And it could be just as violent even if it's was a 1/10 of the current size.

Most of the money goes toward hardware, which means engineers, construction, and the like. And toward eduction - of all sorts, from simply paying tuition to basic training to self discipline.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#205

Post by ars »

quanticle wrote: post #111
cantrevealname wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what the state government is doing is useful and wanted, then the state should tax more and the federal government should tax less. This is yet another inefficiency of federal government to act as a middleman.

One of the roles of the federal government is to redistribute funds from states that have populations to tax to states that don't. It's difficult to "tax more", if there's no one to tax (e.g. Montana). It's no coincidence that the most rural, most Republican states are massive consumers of federal funds (via farm subsidies and transportation subsidies, mainly) and the most urban, most Democratic states are net produc…

> via farm subsidies and transportation subsidies, mainly

A transportation subsidy might be local (maybe - interstates are national, not local), but farm subsidies end up being distributed nationally since they basically just mean that certain types of food are cheaper than they otherwise might be. So you can't count farm subsidies as "consumers of federal funds".

(It's definitely an artificial distortion of the market, but that's a different argument.)

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#206

Post by icambron »

ars wrote: post #204
icambron wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, right. Reading back through the thread, I can see how that was confusing. My fault. As you've now surmised, I was just complaining about the military's special status vis-a-vis the shutdown, for which "that's a lot of jobs!" is inapposite. But while we're on it, I guess I should say this: I'm for the government providing jobs, but I am against them being in the military, and strongly believe they should be employ…

These days the military is violent very very rarely. And it could be just as violent even if it's was a 1/10 of the current size. Most of the money goes toward hardware, which means engineers, construction, and the like. And toward eduction - of all sorts, from simply paying tuition to basic training to self discipline.

> And it could be just as violent even if it's was a 1/10 of the current size.

While the number of people actively shooting other people is in relative terms small, to the extent it does happen, it happens because we have a large enough force to occupy other countries and make the absolute numbers pretty high. For example, almost half the active military from 2002-2005 was at one point deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan [1]. We just couldn't have had those wars without 1/10th the military without significantly changing how we wage war. At some level, it's possible that we could be equally violent with a tiny fraction of the military manpower and budget, and the same is true of, say, the Netherlands. But it would be wildly impractical, so in practice countries like the Netherlands don't do it. We're violent because our budget makes being violent easy for us.

> Most of the money goes toward hardware, which means engineers, construction, and the like

I need to be convinced of two things there. First, that it's actually true. The two largest categories (which together make up a solid majority) are "Operations and maintenance" and "Military personnel" [2]. I don't understand what's in that first category, but since there are separate categories for procurement, R&D, and construction, it's not those (education does presumably fall under "military personnel"). (In general, I've always found good numbers on exactly how the military spends its money hard to come by.)

And second, I'm very skeptical that as far as job programs go, the military is a very good one compared to other ways of spending that money. To begin with, the military doesn't create nearly as many useful things. Designing and building bombers might have ancillary positive effects in terms of R&D and employment, but the bombers themselves are only useful for bombing, and mostly just sit around and being ready to bomb things. But what if we made really fancy civilian aircraft instead? It would have those effects and we'd end up with all these really useful planes! Similarly, a lot of the infrastructure the military builds is in far-away countries, or is of transient or at least limited use. Soldiers are getting paid and engineers are building, but they're not really adding much value. Compare that to building bridges or researching solar panel technology.

Next, the primary reason for having make-work programs is that the people receiving all the money are also consumers, meaning the money is fed back into the economy and stimulating further economic activity. The military is terrible at that because a lot of the money is actually spent overseas developing other country's economies.

All of that is to say: assuming we want to spend a few billion dollars on construction, training, R&D, and personnel, why do we prefer to spend through the military instead through other stuff? My guess is that we do it that way because we've always done it that way, and not because it's optimal or even rational.

[1] http://usmilitary.about.com/od/terrorism/a/deploymentrates.h... [2] http://medillonthehill.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/DOD-Bu...

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#207

Post by Steko »

robomartin wrote: post #203
Steko wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: " Take your astroturf back to Fox News.

Have you actually watched the debates in the House and the Senate and then compared to how they are being spun by the various TV networks? The contrast is nothing less than disgusting. Please, do it. Fox News is irrelevant. As if shooting the messenger is going to refute the argument.

Sorry you didn't make an argument. You claimed to be impartial and then let the truth slip with your tirade about Obama and right wing talking points.

You don't need to watch CSPAN to know exactly what is happening here: one half of one branch of the government decided they wanted to take the US economy hostage and run it back into recession if their demands weren't met.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#208

Post by jbooth »

superails wrote: post #80
jbooth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One facet of the 'shutdown' is that they're not authorized to hand out federal money to states anymore. The states and municipalities are feeling it for every day that this stupid theatre persists.

They don't hand out money everyday to the same people. And it is not stupid theater. It is our government NOT at work. We may temporarily recover some of our debt. In fact, if they keep this going for an extended period of time, it might actually help- a lot. Our country has become much too dependent on our government, and now that the two political parties can't get along, there may actually be room for another soci…

Actually, I'm pretty sure it costs us money to shut down the government, what with all the disruptions. Less efficient.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#209

Post by true_religion »

quanticle wrote: post #126
superails wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't hand out money everyday to the same people. And it is not stupid theater. It is our government NOT at work. We may temporarily recover some of our debt. In fact, if they keep this going for an extended period of time, it might actually help- a lot. Our country has become much too dependent on our government, and now that the two political parties can't get along, there may actually be room for another soci…

And it is not stupid theater. It is our government NOT at work. We may temporarily recover some of our debt. In fact, if they keep this going for an extended period of time, it might actually help- a lot. Our country has become much too dependent on our government, And tell me, when was the nation not dependent on its government? When did this era of "rugged individualism" you speak of exist? Right from its very ince…

I think many people understand the need for government at the local and state level, its when we get to the federal government that there's problems.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#210

Post by robomartin »

Steko wrote: post #207
robomartin wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually watched the debates in the House and the Senate and then compared to how they are being spun by the various TV networks? The contrast is nothing less than disgusting. Please, do it. Fox News is irrelevant. As if shooting the messenger is going to refute the argument.

Sorry you didn't make an argument. You claimed to be impartial and then let the truth slip with your tirade about Obama and right wing talking points. You don't need to watch CSPAN to know exactly what is happening here: one half of one branch of the government decided they wanted to take the US economy hostage and run it back into recession if their demands weren't met.

You are showing exactly why we are in trouble. You refuse to look at facts and, instead elect to engage in personal attacks. I have news for you: reality does not change in any way as you do this.

Please launch your favorite spreadsheet and do a little work to understand the financial mess we are in. It really doesn't take that much work to speak from a very different reference frame, one armed with facts.

Post reply on HN