Cutting existing benefits is the only way to avoid bankruptcy in many states and cities. The long term solution is to switch to a defined contribution plan instead of defined benefits.
The reason why many on the right are wary of government programs is because they’ve watched the government horribly mismanage their tax money over and over and over again. It’s not necessarily because politicians and bureaucrats are necessarily stupid or evil, it’s because the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market.
> the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market.
Isn't that exactly the kind of mindset that facilitated this whole situation in the very first place?
"Government can't handle money, that's why we gotta privatize everything".
And if that would be true, how come it wasn't a private business that took us the moon, with all the resulting auxiliary inventions, but the combined effort of a whole nation in education and research [0]?
"A better job" isn't always the one that "makes more money", some ventures don't need to be directly financially profitable, in some fields introducing a profit-incentive can have rather negative consequences (Education, Healthcare) and in others, it's just perverse (for-profit prisons).
Would any private company have taken the risk, of flying to the moon, back then? Hell no, because there was literally no money in it back then, it was all just a big venture of "wasting money".
That's why I don't think literally everything needs to be "profitable", we can't eat money and money doesn't make anybody a better person.
It's also friggin weird how on issues like this there's never "enough money", but when it's about tax-cuts for massive corporations, which is, in essence, nothing but handing out free money to private businesses, then there seems to be always plenty of enough money to justify it.
1. So, what tangible benefits did you get from the country going to the moon? How has it affected your everyday life? Sure, we have more space based stuff, but most of those things don't contribute anything to our well-being. No new mining operations on the moon for new resources. Nothing. Sure, maybe in the very long term it will have a return, but now, nothing. All the auxiliary inventions from it were already possible without going to the moon itself, just continuing space exploration.
2. And the government was facing competition like a private business. Soviet Russia provided the competition. If Russia didn't, there's no reason for the US to. In that way, even the moon landings were operating capitalistically, just on a higher level. Most of the resulting inventions from it anyways were for bettering weapons of war than anything truly substantial for the people. So, we went to the moon, cool.
The reason why many on the right are wary of government programs is because they’ve watched the government horribly mismanage their tax money over and over and over again. It’s not necessarily because politicians and bureaucrats are necessarily stupid or evil, it’s because the government is generally not incentivized to do a good job, since they don’t face competitive pressure like businesses in the private market.