Quote:
Originally Posted by adios
Grunching:
Basically the pushback in this thread is that eliminating Medicare would be undesirable, pointing out the merits of Medicare. Of course reforming Medicare to increase the probability it remains sustainable is what he's arguing for. He didn't indicate that he wants to eliminate Medicare and he certainly didn't argue that there is no merit to the entitlement.
#creatingstrawmenftw
Everyone in this thread talking about how we can just raise revenue to pay for Medicare is part of the problem.
The problem is that we're spending 150-250% of what other first world nations are spending on healthcare. Throwing more money at the problem is literally the worst thing you could do.
I'm fine with giving money to the government that is going to get used somewhat well, but there are multiple things the government spends money on that are straight up counter productive. Corn subsidies for instance have resulted in sugar being added to basically everything in the grocery store to the massive detriment of public health.
The government needs to simplify and automate to improve. The goal should be to get 95%+ of the money taken in through taxes back out to the citizens. This means we need to get rid of things like means testing for welfare (give it to everyone and instantly get rid of all the state employees who decide if people qualify or not... Also should make it possible for the federal government to get out of the employee regulation game entirely besides OSHA.)
Every administrative part of the world has gotten MUCH faster over the last 30 years because of the IT revolution. The executive branch has about 6% fewer employees than they had in 1980. That doesn't cover the relatively massive expansion in government contracting during that time period. When liberals pretend that the problem with government is that it isn't big enough it makes you look stupid. The common people interact with the government a fair bit, and they have basically nothing good to say about it.
And let's not pretend like you west coast liberal types love government whole heartedly. You guys hate working for the government so much that healthcare.gov hasn't found a competent web design company yet. A basic ecommerce site that can scale, something any company can create as many of as it wants within any reasonable time window, was beyond the government with a MASSIVE budget and over a year to execute. And now several years later it's still hot garbage. Please don't tell me that what I'm seeing with my own eyes isn't real.
Liberals are right that we can't just let the free market run rampant. It needs a traffic cop there to stop it from running over pedestrians. Also some big stuff needs something with government sized scale. There are also specific businesses with serious issues when private (natural monopolies and special price elasticity of demand situations). Everything else competition improves.
We should all get a lot less ideological and recognize the areas where the other side is just right. Liberals need to own the fact that the organization they love giving money to isn't doing a great job with the money. Conservatives need to own the fact that business is frequently a much worse actor than big government and requires significant amounts of regulation to allow social trust to exist... And social trust is one of those super special things countries should be optimizing for.
Conservatives also need to recognize that if you don't give the poors enough to buy in to society they'll choose to be outlaws. If enough of them make that choice you'll have an actual revolution with guns and everything. Conservatives also need to recognize that too much inequality is bad for social trust and GDP because of resentment and demand effects. People are going to say to themselves "I work 8-10 hard hours a day at a restaurant, why can't I afford a place to live, decent food, and a car that runs?" You don't want that question asked at all. Poor people also spend 100% of what they earn on consumption which drives the economy, many successful people (myself included) spend <50% of our income on consumption.
Conservatives also need to stop denying climate change. It's just stupid when you can physically see the changes happening in the real world. Saying 'I don't see it' makes it physically impossible for me to vote for you. You just look so ****ing bad on this. Nobody is saying we're going to stop using fossil fuels overnight, but pass cap-and-trade please? It's a conservative solution to the problem that I happen to like a lot.
Same for weed and LGBT stuff. You're behind the times and you're not going to win. Let it all go. It's people wanting the freedom to live their lives how they want, it's a fundamentally conservative position.
Basically can we all just agree on reality? What's really real? Not just silly positions we're taking because that's what our party decided was true in the 80's.