Sansui said:
One thing neither party does very well is justify and explain spending. To me, Republicans tend to marginalize any spending other than defense spending. Yet tax and spend anyway (hello Mr. Bush 1 and 2). Democrats slip in small programs because they get shut down by the Republicans on anything big, and then get demonized for this.
And yet many of these programs are not about increasing the size of our government (sometimes that is a side effect yes), but about improving our infrastructure. Ensuring our work force is healthy and happy and can actually get to work (roads and public transportation). Encuring our upcoming work force, our children, are educated and have the means to take advantage of the opportunities before them.
A republican would look at a young girl, and then slash any spending on access to birth control for her. When she becomes a young unwed mother, they slash spending on programs that would give her any kind of support to raise her child and support that child's health. When that child is in a public school system, they slash spending on a program that would give that child the tools it needs in today's age to succeed. When that child is a high school dropout, a young girl herself, she repeats the same mistakes her mother made.
The way I see it? A lot of democratic spending is to provide solutions for problems created by Republicans. Now, I know I'm overemphasizing that and myself marginalizing a lot of business practices that I think the Dems are wrong on, but I think it's a fair point.
Not all government spending is bad. It's just like a business investing during a downturn instead of cutting expenses - when things look up again, they're in a much better position to take advantage of the market than the companies that wildly cut spending and jobs just to please their shareholders.
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Defense spending serves many purposes. It provides high-quality jobs and keeps America at the forefront of technology through its innovations. It, of course, also provides defense of the nation. It's a bad comparison to social programs, which provide little or no tangible benefit to the economy and often heavily detract from it. Of course, this is excluding wars, but that's a different subject altogether.
Your second paragraph all boils down to opinion. Where you see a government institution, I often see the possibility of a lightly regulated private institution doing the same work for less. It's not always possible to contract work to privateers but in many cases, real savings could be found if you removed the "government tax" overhead. It's a difference in principles and I'll leave it at that.
No offense but I don't feel the third paragraph is worth responding to. All of those problems could be fixed with a better education system, which is held back from making progress by those bastards in the Teacher's Union and the education infrastructure at large. Don't get me started on them.
Your fourth paragraph is related to the third.
No, not all government spending is bad. People fall down and need help getting back up. How much help is where our opinions are sure to differ. Also, comparing business to government is downright wrong. In most cases, if a business fails, they are acquired or go under and are supplanted by a more efficient model. If a government system fails, they generally throw more money at it in hopes of the ship righting itself. There is little or no benefit for a government employee to work harder or save money. They simply don't give a shit and are virtually assured a long-lasting job provided they don't do anything insanely stupid like rape a farm animal.
