Krugman: Spend Now, Save Later

[Squilliam]

richardhutnik said:

Squilliam said:

The real issue is bad government, not government = bad. If you had a government which functioned better, without petty self interest of various parties getting in the way which if it does intervene in the economy sets explicit time limits on that involvement then most of the complainsts would simply evaporate.

Do you believe that government functions better or worse than society as a whole.  If worse, then why is that?  If better, than how do you expect it to be even better than it is now?  If it is the same, then why would you expect it to be better?  What is intrinsic in government to make it not get bogged down in petty self-interests?

By the way, I have seen private charity.  It is FAR more humane than the government in helping those out who are in need.

Government here functions as good, better than and worse than society as a whole depending on what function you're talking about. We have government organisations which turn a profit, we have schools which are better than the equivalent private institution and its not because private schools aren't funded by the government as well. Our equivalent of a DMV takes around 5 minutes to do and more than that is outside the norm. Like I said, it depends.

Functionally the American government is set up to fail because its a two party representative democracy where the representatives have as much if not more in many cases incentive to represent those who are paying the bills given the abundance of safe seats and lack of electoral competition. Like I said before, its more because the U.S. system sucks rather than anything else which causes the problems.

Anyway I've seen private charity break down into bickering and excess. I was a part of a few charities where that happened.