The upside of participating on MN Publius is that I find some ideas that are so fascinating that they need to be shared and discussed further. Below is one such discussion... It seems the definition of Wants and Need seem to vary greatly... So what do you think? See the original discussion at the linked site. _____________________________________
"The reality though is that Democrats and Liberals seem to be supportive of Government / Society costs growing significantly faster than the GDP and incomes. (ie CPI, inflation)" The realilty is that Democrats do not support spending for its own sake. You seem to think that the goal is just to increase the budget (or, to use the familiar whine, "spend my money") without any particular reason. That is a distortion. Democrats and liberals generally support spending to meet legitimate social needs. Fiscal responsibility means that taxes are levied to meet those needs, rather than merely borrowing, or shifting funds, or, as Irving Kristol once put it, leaving it to the other side to fix (don't remember the exact quote, but that's the gist of it). Conservatives favor cutting taxes as an end in itself. This is where the distortion comes from. Republicans and conservatives have fallen into the seductive fallacy that all opposition to them must be complete, 180 degree opposition to everything, including the premises of their thinking. The syllogism, if you want to call it that goes something like this: We oppose raising taxes, because taxes are evil. Democrats want to raise taxes. Therefore, Democrats believe all taxes are good and should be raised. Yes, politicians have to prioritize. They also have to serve constituents, and do so responsibly. Waiting for the Money Fairy to leave several billion dollars under the state's pillow is not responsible. ________________________________________________
Randy, I think this statement is the core of all the challenges between the Left and Right... "Democrats and Liberals generally support spending to meet legitimate social needs." It implies that the "Republicans and Conservatives generally DO NOT support spending to meet legitimate social needs." Now doesn't that seem a bit condescending and judgemental? The reality is that they each truly define SOCIAL NEEDS differently. In truth, neither is Right or Wrong. Gov't/Society providing via wealth transfer vs Citizens being Self Reliant is a continuum, and it is only healthy when the pendulum swings back and forth near center. (either extreme would be very very bad... USSR vs Egypt) This link shows that the cost of Gov't / Society is increasing faster than the GDP. This is not sustainable over the long run. G2A Promote Effectiveness By the way, you did not take a shot at answering my questions. By the way, when did bike paths, light rail, buying land for pheasant habitat, offering many languages in HS, maintaining 370 school districts, etc, etc, etc qualify as a social NEED? I think Democrats just have a hard time saying NO to anyone or Anything... I mean it is hard when the Lobbyist/Citizen is in your face and its not your money... By the way, same for the Republicans... ______________________________________________________
Yes, perhaps it is not entirely accurate to say that Republicans don’t want to spend money for social needs. On the other hand, they have shown an unhealthy reluctance to raise taxes to pay for those needs. The solution has been either to borrow money, whether through actual deficit spending or through bookkeeping legerdemain, or to water-down the definition of “needs” to avoid raising taxes. There is a choice that is being made. When we let preservation of the wealth of the richest members of society take precedence, we have created a social need that is unacceptable. Your last paragraph is telling. The programs that you question are easily defended. Bike trails and light rail are important parts of the transportation infrastructure, and will become more so in the future. The current reliance on private cars and untrammeled highway construction is unsustainable. Pheasant habitat is a part of a spectrum of environmental protection measures. The marketplace has been a poor way to protect the environment (green marketing notwithstanding). Schools have always been the bête noire of conservatives. Teaching a range of foreign languages in high schools is more than just an intellectual ornament, it is a necessity (don’t make me repeat the tire clichés about globalization). As far as the number of school districts go, isn’t that about local control vs. a centralized bureaucracy? When you lay out programs like that, and sneer at them, you are writing a recipe for stagnation. If we, as a society, intend to progress in the future, we have to start now. The marketplace responds mostly to short-term trends and wants. It has been a poor place to look for long-range planning.* I did not take a shot at answering your question. Away from the context of actual expenditures, saying how high taxes should be is a pointless exercise. *No, I do not advocate a planned economy. I do advocate a realization that it isn’t going to be 2011 forever, and that we have to prepare for change.
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I think you are stretching the definition of Social NEED... These sound like Social WANTS... And if you want to support them, please write out a separate check at anytime. I am certain the Gov't will be happy to take additional contributions. Globalization is a fascinating thing. My peers from all over the world keep reminding me that I am lucky. I have an American passport and am fluent in English. 2 things they strive for because of the ability it gives me to travel to and do business in all modern countries. (Thank God for the British empire and the USA) I'll post some of our discussions on G2A after I am done torturing my far right readers. We'll see what they think of NEEDS vs WANTS... Have a great week!!! _______________________________________
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11 comments:
The problem is what we need to pay for grows at it's own rate, not necessarily at the rate of any index or other economic number. That's what "out of control" means. We don't and we can't control the fact that we are growing older. We don't and we can't control the fact that the population is growing and that more children are coming to our schools. These are facts of life in a very fundamental sense. We can deal with them, or we can ignore them, but neither choice will make those life facts go away.
Personally, I am a glass is half full kind of a guy. I believe we are the richest country in the world, the richest country the world has ever seen. I believe we can afford the challenges of being both old and young at the same time. I really don't have any extensive economic analysis to back that up, but I do know that we just extended the Bush era tax cuts, so really how dire can our financial situation be?
--Hiram
Need vs. Want is only a matter of your assumptions. Needing food water and shelter is only needed if you assume that you want to live long. But you really don't. You want to live long.
Good roads aren't really needed. You just want them in order to make traveling convenient.
Schools aren't really needed. We could all just homeschool.
Is this really a measure of how much we can get rid of?
How about a shared value in a community and that community being willing to pay for the value they receive. A lot of people want something for nothing. It doesn't happen that way.
I think you're going about this discussion all backwards. The question is not whether a particular need or want is a need or want, but whose need or want it is? And, having established that, we must ask who is responsible to provide it? To me the distinction between liberals and conservatives is that liberals believe that government is the answer to all these questions, and conservatives believe that individuals should have the freedom to decide and the responsibility to provide for themselves.
Sorry for those of you who have already heard this, but we can look at it another way. There are four kinds of spending, listed here in order of decreasing efficacy – that is, productive of the desired results for the least cost.
The most efficacious form is spending is when you spend your own money on yourself. You know exactly what you need or want, how much you have to spend on it (and all other things), and thus what you are willing /and able/ to pay to get it.
The second most efficacious form of spending is when you spend your money on somebody else. You know exactly how much you are willing to spend, but you have little or no idea of what the other person needs or wants. Most private charity works this way, where you give cash to a charity rather than directly to an individual. If, on the other hand, you give directly to an individual, for example offering transitional housing to an abused woman and her kids, it's even better, almost as good as spending your own money on yourself.
Less efficacious still is when you spend somebody else's money on yourself. You don't consider how much is being spent because your incentive is to simply spend it all. You don't necessarily care about the price you pay and whether or not what you buy is a need, a want or completely frivolous. This is characteristic of those who receive government checks. For example, when building a new taxpayer-funded building, do we really NEED marble fountains, gold statuary, and pearl-inlaid floors? If the money is there, why not? A better example: would anybody in their right mind build a light rail system with their own money, even if they had the billion dollars?
The least efficacious form of spending is when you spend somebody else's money on a third party. you have no idea what the third party needs or wants and you don't care what it costs. The sole incentive seems to be to rid oneself of the responsibility for the spending as quickly as possible. THIS is what all government wealth transfer programs are. [Note: government programs that provide essential services to the general public, such as courts and law enforcement, are closer to category three. Not necessarily as effective as private business would be, but if they can't be contracted out they should be scrutinized occasionally for inefficiencies.]
J. Ewing
It appears to me the the GOP in MN senate is making deep cuts to many HHS programs that I would condsider needs for people. I agree with Hiram that the state has enough wealth to continue to provide for growing needs of both young and old.
I would also say the state continues to be wealthy enough to provide for some public amenities such as state parks, and bike trails that may more appropriately be labeled as wants. Hunters can contribute to wildlife habitat through the fees for their licenses, but I say we all benefit from conservation $ well spent.
I think our parks and other public amenities should be commensurate with our collective level of affluence.
At least this discussion is going better than it did with Randy, we seem to at least be acknowledging that some of what MN is funding are wants... I got the perception that he believes everything in the budget is a need...
I think we agree that HHS expenses are needed at some level, though some believe that charities could bear a greater share of the burden. And maybe families should bear some of the burden for their Parents that failed to save adequately.
I think Light Rail is definitely a point of contention. Why are we subsidizing and simplifying suburban sprawl, and folks running from the downtown area? Wouldn't more people stay downtown and help to rebuild it if commuting from Elk River was painful and expensive?
Same thing for Road Improvement projects. (169/81, 169/494, 35W/62, 610, 394/12, etc) If money is NEEDED by HHS due to a demographic shift, why aren't we cutting back here?
And for Bike paths... I can understand the benefit in town as more people ride to work. (ie high pop'n density) But how about a totally stand alone bike path from Two Harbors to Grand Marais??? Complete with its own bridges...Gitchi-Gumi State Trail C'mon, pave the shoulders of 61 and call it good people. The nursing home folk NEED that money.
Finally, just how many languages do we NEED to offer in HS? How many District Administrations do we NEED to fund? How many new Library buildings do we NEED to build?
How many Education Minnesota TV commercials do we NEED to fund indirectly? It seems there is plenty to cut during the period in which we have a large population of older citizens. It means delaying our wants until we have the money... Kind of like at home.
By the way, remember that HHS "CUTS" are sometimes HHS "INCREASES"... Just less than the opposition wants.
about charities providing HHS, I believe they are most capable of filling the gaps in what the govt provides and do not have the capacity to step in and take over major portions of HHS lost due to budget cuts.
about roads and transit. I think tax $ are needed for both. Many people are already choosing to live in the core cities and downtowns and those of us who don't spend too much time stuck in traffic (though my commute isn't bad)
about bike trails like the Gitchi Gumi, I think we have Oberstar to thank for bringing some fed tax dollars back to the state for projects like this (we always get back less than our fair share). I enjoy biking and the north shore is my fav part of the state, so it seems like money well spent to me. The country/state is not so poor that we can't afford to spend some tax $ on recreation.
Laurie, I'm going to disagree with you. You are correct over the short term that private charity doesn't have the capacity for everybody that HHS hands checks to today. BUT, a great many of those people COULD get by without the HHS check, or a reduced check, if we simply scale the program back to the "poorest of the poor" and require more work from those able to do so. Over time, private charity could do a much bigger part of the job remaining to be done. If charitable people had more of the money in their hands instead of paying taxes, it would go to private charity.
Second, we have spend gazillions on poverty programs, but our church still operates a homeless shelter, a food bank, and gives a lot of stuff to Goodwill or transitional housing programs. If government welfare was solving the problem, these private charities wouldn't need to exist, right?
As for bike trails, there's no reason we shouldn't do as we've done with cross country ski trails. If you want to ski on publicly funded trails, you buy a license. User fees rather than taxes let those who use it pay for it.
I say the same for light rail: Right now when somebody pays $1.50 for a rail ride, the taxpayer kicks in 5-6$ more. I say the rider should be paying the full $7.50, but of course nobody would. So why have it? If we need transit, then for the cost of building light rail we could run a fleet of eco-friendly hybrid busses up and down the Central Corridor line, two minutes apart, for the next 750 YEARS! The people that use it should pay for it, but even more importantly, just because we may "need" transit doesn't mean we have to be stupid about it. It ought to be done in the most efficacious way.
And that's where we should all agree, if possible. You may believe all HHS spending is a need, I claim it is a want at best, but we should both be looking at it to see if the results we get are the best value for the dollars spent, and if it could be done better for less. That's my claim with the education budget, that it would be possible to do more with less, because we have already PROVEN it all over the state. We keep spending more and more, much more than inflation, yet student achievement isn't rising by much if any. We did it BEFORE, why can't we do it now? Or better yet, keep the money we're spending now and deliver the student achievement we thought you promised us.
J. Ewing
J, It's hard to imagine charities covering over a $1 billion In HHS cuts. Also, I don't believe much of the HHS budget is given in the form of cash assistance. I would guess for many people the form it takes would be a some sort of insurance card that provides access to health care. Having never received this type of assistance this is only a guess. I believe nearly all the students I teach benefit from HHS programs. As someone who believes in universal health care, I am in favor of expanding medicaid rather than cutting it, although there should be much scrutiny of the effectiveness of treatments it covers. Star Trib today had a long story on therapies for Autism and are they worth their high cost.
About transit, While I think it should be subsidized for the fact that it cuts down on traffic congestion and wear on the roads, I agree with you that the high cost of building a light rail line seems very inefficient.
When more people are in the wagon than pulling the wagon, the politics get strained. Those pulling the wagon give up and those in the wagon pass more laws to make them pull harder.
No one wins.
The problem, of course, is that government is incented to put as many people in the wagon as possible.
BS,
First. Welcome !!!
Second. Tell me why you believe this... "government is incented to put as many people in the wagon as possible".
I understand that Politicians are strongly incented to keep their jobs. (ie seems people like that like power, popularity and influence...) So wouldn't they be incented to keep their constituents satified? (ie pullers or riders)
If this is the case, then isn't it us citizens that are demanding more room in the wagon?
This reminds me that I need to do another Atlas Shrugged summary soon... It makes your point well...
"J, It's hard to imagine charities covering over a $1 billion In HHS cuts." -- Laurie
That is because you cannot imagine providing assistance to the poor by any method other than throwing gobs of taxpayer cash at them, indiscriminately. If charity were provided by people spending their own money, those who were freeloading on the system wouldn't be funded at all, and those who did receive charity would receive it only while they were making an effort to get back on their own 2 feet. As I've pointed out before, government spends enough to put every poor family into the middle class. Cutting 10% out of that doesn't change the assessment that government welfare of all kinds is wasteful beyond imagining.
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