71–80 of 231 posts
This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is. Medicaid: 10% "Safety Net": 7.1% Social Security: 22.6% Medicare: 14.2% 53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.
If the US had a credit score, I wonder what it would be?
S&P: "AA+ with stable outlook"
Moody's: "Aa1 stable"
DBRS: "AAA stable"
In terms of FICO scores this would be ~820 or so. The US won't have any problem any time soon getting some more private sector money.
Which is just the tiniest bit worse than Germany, but not much. And it's a lot higher than France.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always think as an individual I would like this. But at scale I worry it would incentivize each department to advertise themselves to the public, which seems to me like a waste of funds. I already dislike the reelection cycle (politicians incentivized to always be fundraising) and would hate to see that happen per department.
Whatever hypothetical law allowed individual citizens to allocate funds could also ban departments from advertising or misrepresenting what they do.
This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is. Medicaid: 10% "Safety Net": 7.1% Social Security: 22.6% Medicare: 14.2% 53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.
This is great. I'd also recommend Covid money tracker. US printed nearly $12 trillion in response to Covid, something like 25% increase in money supply. And it is my contention that this has driven inflation (both asset - think meme stocks, rise in crypto etc - as well general levels that started to appear by 2022) https://www.covidmoneytracker.org/
It has, as has similar efforts worldwide which also saw similar or worse levels of inflation. We were dealt a shit hand and the thinking was it's less pain overall compared to the alternative. That said, the amount of fraud that was perpetuated here without any follow-through on enforcement is ... extremely not good.
If each claim was investigated closely before paying out, it may have resulted in higher unemployment and lower economic output.
This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is. Medicaid: 10% "Safety Net": 7.1% Social Security: 22.6% Medicare: 14.2% 53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.
Given that reality, I wonder why it is that spending in this category seems to be so much less effective in the US relative to other nations? Why is the US #22 in general quality of life [1], and the bottom of many rankings of health system performance [2]? Speaking as a Canadian, I wonder if at least part of it is the attitude that investments in these areas are "welfare" and not simply a part of the portfolio of es…
This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is. Medicaid: 10% "Safety Net": 7.1% Social Security: 22.6% Medicare: 14.2% 53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.
Also, as other commenters mention, the specifics of how money is disbursed or spent, matters. If, say, pharmaceutical companies are allowed to massively over-charge, than the same level of care would mean a higher level of spending than in other world states.
Since that party doesn’t exist I am politically homeless.
As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go. Agencies could recommend funding levels, Congress could recommend an allocation and if a taxpayer didn't change it, that default would take effect. But if a taxpayer preferred, they could say, "no, I won't be fun…
I would guess that's a poor thought experiment, because most of us - myself included - don't have a good grasp of what various things cost to make work. And then when you look at the relative points on the sliders you think "Oh, but X is much more critical than Y, surely I can't spend so little on it relative to my spending on Y". Not to mention the complex semantics and effects of debt in sovereign finance, and acti…
Still, yeah, as an experiment it doesn't seem likely to work. There is probably something to putting people a little closer to the action though.