Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | s1artibartfast's commentslogin

What about banking regulations that mandated that SBC put those deposits into treasury bonds?

The bailout did not accelerate bond maturity. Those were picked up by other Banks when assets were sold off.

Last, who is the other banks that paid for the bailout, not taxpayers, at least not directly. If you call higher FDIC insurance rates for JPMorgan Chase a taxpayer cost, how does that logic scale to the rest of the economy?


now you are talking about replacing not judges, but your elected representatives.

I think it is more than just tolerance and stink eyes.

Some cultures actively celebrate children and families. They center them in social life in an inclusive way. This covers inclusion in social events, institutions, and civic design.

Kids are not only FUN, but interesting, challenging, and rewarding.

I would be very interested in a breakdown of how the American perception changed over time and what the drivers were.


Since total fertility rates have the same trend all around the world, why restrict the breakdown to Americans?

Seems kind of obvious that doing adult things with freedom during one’s 20s and 30s is deemed more fun than raising children, which necessarily includes foregoing many or all of the adult things due to lack of funds and time.


> Seems kind of obvious that doing adult things with freedom during one’s 20s and 30s is deemed more fun than raising children

This is exactly what I am talking about. Is the obviousness of this statement constant across time? Would someone in the 1960 or 1980 have found it equally obvious?

Alternatively, is it the emphasis on prioritizing fun that changed?

Alternatively, has both the perception and reality of fun given up changed?

Im mostly interested in breakdown in America because I am an American. Some countries match, some dont. If the underlying drivers are common, I would still find them the most relatable and interesting in the American context.


yes. As long as they are more valuable to people than the lives cost, they will stick around. Part of this is a pragmatic utilitarianism the world run on.

How many people can a doctor kill and still survive? Nobody expects perfection because they like having doctors.


If what you say is true, why ever would the US want to defend them?

I would not want to risk American money or lives defending defending a country that doesn't want to defend itself.

That said, your anecdotes don't match my experience with sentiments in taiwan


> If what you say is true, why ever would the US want to defend them?

Ho Chi Minh went to the Americans and asked for help because the French were raping the Vietnamese and other things. The Americans refused to help them. So the Vietnamese asked the Communists for help. It is strongly believed that the American-Vietnamese war would have been adverted and Vietnam would have had a similar economic trajectory as Japan and South Korea after WWII if the Americans had helped.

Bill Clinton who learned from history did the opposite as Harry Truman and put two aircraft carrier strike groups between the island and the mainland during Taiwan's democratic election defending both democracy and Taiwan self determination.

There were a few American presidents who promoted and defended democracy. Unfortunately the whiny snowflake administration in power now isn't one of them.


Why not?


Tax rates are not the same as effective taxes paid, and US taxes as a percent of GDP are at an all time high. This is besides the fact that gdp is many times higher, growing geometrically.

It is an interesting question of what changed in terms of ability to execute, but lack of funding isn't the answer. I suspect it is a combination of scope creep, application to intractable problems, and baumols cost disease at work.


Don't forget vetocracy.

Every regulation, whether it's environmental, DEIA or anti-fraud, adds a few steps to each project. With enough regulations and enough steps, things just slow down to a crawl.

As governments and legal systems get older, they get into more and more situations where a bad thing happens, and the politicians must show that they've done something to stop a similar thing from happening again. Nobody can publicly admit that it's fine to letting a 5-year-old kid die once in a while, even if that would be the right call. This results in more and more layers of regulation being added, which nobody has an incentive to remove.


> Nobody can publicly admit that it's fine to letting a 5-year-old kid die once in a while, even if that would be the right call.

Sure, there are such cases, but a lot of regulation was written in blood, and the price that affected individuals or even our whole species paid was often monumental:

Having cancer literally eat the workers faces is not acceptable (=> radium girls), nor are mistakes like leaded gas or CFCs.

Everytime people advocate for big immediate gains from abolishing regulations, you can be almost certain that they are selling toxic snake oil.

Current US admin seems no exception, especially when comparing related promises with actual results (e.g. Doge).

edit: I'm not saying that pruning back regulations is bad, but it needs to be a careful, deliberate effort and big immediate payoffs are often unrealistic.


> Tax rates are not the same as effective taxes paid

Correct, but the tax system is nonetheless quite effective at setting behavioral incentives and disincentives. Higher income and estate tax rates incentivize capital being locked up in investments instead (for lower capital gains taxes); those investments put people to work and are subject to Labor negotiating higher compensation. Allowing donations to non-profits to deduct from other taxes allows private individuals (compared to a government bureaucracy) to more efficiently fund social welfare programs, which incidentally, also put people to work in the administration of such programs.

Funding government is not the sole goal of higher taxation rates, but rather, also how incentives in society are shaped.


    > US taxes as a percent of GDP are at an all time high
I found this from the Federal Reserve: "Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product"

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

It looks pretty steady around 17%. It was as high as 20% in the late 1990s. However, this does not include state and local taxes. I could not find a source for it. What is your source of information?


I was thinking something along the lines of this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1CFpQ

However, my main point was to refute the idea of some mythical past where the government was massively more funded, and therefore more competent and capable.

This also ignores the effect of the growing pie over time, but that is somewhat a tangent.

If someone is referencing back to the 1930s tax rates, those total receipts were closer to 10% of GDP when things like the Hoover Dam and Interstate System were being built.

Today, the rates are closer to 30% and the GDP being taxed is 25-30 times larger, controlling for inflation.

To me, this suggests that the reason we can't perform infrastructure projects is not lack of funding


By way of analogy, imagine someone making a $20k salary that can do big things while spending 10% of their salary projects. However, someone making $600k, spending 30% of that on projects can't get get meaningful work done.

These are the proportions we are talking about. It begs a lot of questions.

Are the projects really comparable? Did competence change? Did the working environment?


And nasal didn't build the new rocket! They have paid Boeing 93 BILLION to design and manufacture it.


Yes, won that battle but not the war.

I think the dissent is about the latter. It's not over yet, so people should not give up.

The root comment clearly has ambiguity that people take both ways.


Ownership matters and some owners may have preferred uses independent of market price.

I might not want to sell the spare room in my house to creepy stranger, and I shouldn't have to outbid them if I already own it.

Who owns the water?


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: