The theme seems to be “reduce operating spending, increase capital spending”. We’ll see how that will blow over with the opposition.
The theme seems to be “reduce operating spending, increase capital spending”. We’ll see how that will blow over with the opposition.
The fundamental flaw is equating corporate efficiency with public effectiveness. A company’s goal is shareholder returns, so it serves profitable customers and abandons the rest. We see this taken to its extreme with certain venture capital and private equity firms: they can buy a company, burden it with the debt used for its own acquisition, extract massive fees and dividends, and leave it a hollowed out shell. When it collapses, the architects of that failure are shielded from the consequences.
A government’s mission is the opposite: to serve everyone, especially the vulnerable. Applying this profit extraction model to public service doesn’t eliminate costs it just shifts them, following the destructive maxim of ‘privatize the profits, socialize the costs.’ For a corporation, this might be a successful short-term play. But for a government it’s long-term ruin
Getting back to 2019 spending levels over a few years is hardly hollowing out the government.
And what that freed up money is doing is investing in stuff that makes those services work better.
For example in healthcare, which is hanging on by a thread, I think a few billion are going to building and renovating hospitals and investing in a new medical school. Those all make the services more efficient and sustainable in the long run.
Edit: My goodness, the cuts are something like 13 billion out of a 500 billion budget.
Most of the money got reallocated to the military though.
They’re cutting 13 billion. 51 billion (over 10 years) is going to local infrastucture; housing, roads, health and sanitation facilities.
Yes, military got more (~82 billion) and I don’t love that. Though, one part I do love is that a chunk of that military is also dual use, so climate emergencies like wildfires, floods etc.
Then give it to firefighters, climate scientists and forestry. The military is reactive not preventative.
Sure, you can dislike the military spending.
That doesn’t mean the budget isn’t investing more in the public than it is withdrawing.
I dislike the increase in spending on military because the returns to the public are minimal, the US has proven that, decades running.
Again, that’s a fine and valid critique of the budget.
This position however, does not seem valid when the budget is putting in more than it removes from actual public services, 51 billion v 13.
That part wasn’t a critique of the budget, it was a critique of your pitch for efficiency. You pivoted the discussion, I followed.