Politics
Out of context: Reply #3680
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- TheBlueOne0
"TBO, do you think that under Obama the government will get larger or smaller?
- JazX"Beats me. And are you equating "big government" with bad and "small government" with good? Look, big government is good for some things and real shitty for others. I think what we want to ideally strive for in our society, and this might be a strength of democracy (if it works well), is to have quick transitions between big and small eras of government based on historical contexts. Look - need to fight a giant fucking war, build massive infrastructure, etc.? Well, you need big, smart government to do it. It's simple. It's a matter of scale. If you understand business, you understand that you can do some things when you are big better than when you are small. Walmart outcompetes the local hardware store. Why? Because it's fucking big. And smart. And very responsive.
Small is great at other times. The thing to strive for is the the quicker phase transition between being "big" or "small" dependig on your needs of society. You can't spend too much time at either stage if the context requires you to be different.
Look, IMHO, under Obama, I think we WILL need big government type spending to get us through the recession - especially with infrastructure. I'm not neccessarily adverse to deficiet spending - I don't like it, but I understand it's a tool to be used. There is good debt and bad debt to incur. Look, it's smart to get a mortgage. That's good debt. It's dumb to blow $200,000 on hookers and cocaine on your credit card. The amount of money is the same, but the benfits change over time. So yeah, some good deficiet spending right now on big government projects might be neccessary to keep the economy going and keep unemployment under control.
Will we see more social spending under Obama? Probably. Good, bad? That's as much an ethical question as it is monetary policy. I know lots of people hurt by lack of access to medical care. I don't mind personally seeing some of my tax money spent for fixing that, as long as it's done smartly.
Bush Lite has wrecked the government. It's been politicized and alot of the people who actually work in it who might give an actual damn have been driven out by political appointees. You want to know what makes us more like the old Socialist Soviet Union? Making the Civil Services chocked full of political hacks and replacing the mostly unpoliticed functioning meritocracy it has been.
All of a sudden shit stopped working? I mean FEMA broke down, elections don't seem to work right, the military is fucked, the FDA isn't doing it's job...why? Because of political hacks. I want money spent on fixing this problem. I want people who are actually employed by the government to provide services to actually care about their fucking jobs and not worry if they aren't "conservative" or "liberal" enough.
Obama better change that or I'll vote his sorry ass out in 2012. If you know, the voting system still works.
- Totally agree about needing to make our gov smarter. The past couple decades have been the epitome of dumb moves.tommyo
- War in Iraq, increasing home ownership to those who can't afford it, public services like FEMA proved ineffectual. etc. etc.tommyo
- I see your point TBO. One thing's for sure, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out in the future.********