Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[kandrathe]

But this money doesn't go to families. It goes to schools. So, if you managed to completely eliminate this type of fraud, what would the effect be? A net savings? No, just a cut in education funding. If you wanted to keep education funded at the same level, you'd save nothing at all.

Both actually. The food goes into the child, which offsets feeding them with food purchased at home. And, schools get a bonus of money for each "low income" child to boot, albeit unverified. So, the parents have incentive to cheat, and the schools have incentive to allow it, and when caught in the fraud, there is no real punishment.

You're going to "vastly reduce poverty"? Without redistribution, or "treating the symptoms"? I'd love to hear this one.

I would focus on promoting employment, and training until poverty disappears.

[kandrathe]

The US needs to back off, and let people take care of their own issues.

And this relates to taking money from state A and spending it in state B how?

In the case of States, you can look at the "2009 stimulus bill" for which the bulk of the so-called stimulus went to bail out States whose falling revenue could no longer sustain their social programs.

. . . politicians having a spine, . . .

Do you have x-rays supporting this claim?

Jon Stewart does.

. . . changing the systems to require people to apply for their handouts (where they would need to detail their assets and income).

Have you ever applied for any type of government assistance? Because all who I know that have applied had to do exactly that -- document that they qualified for the assistance they were requesting. If there's a government office that one can just walk into, ask for money, and walk out of with cash, then I've missed seeing it.

Come to Minnesota. We give away General Assistance checks every month to all who show up to collect them. The main requirement is that you have an address in Minnesota, and it is known to be rife with fraud. The cost to our state is only 45 million though. That aside. Yes, I've even been one of the destitute, homeless wretches who needed help.

Any system where you give away money has the problem of fraud, and nothing changes here except the amount of cash you are handing out.

Is the problem helping people or is the problem fraud? Because to stop the one in order to prevent the other is, IMO, a vast overreaction. Like closing the roads because some people drive drunk.

That is not the gist of what I was saying. If you reduce the need for the handouts, and increase the accountability for the handouts then you reduce the amount being given away, and you reduce the amount of fraud.

The point was that 17 different agencies are working on the 400 trade agreements. Why would corporate mergers ever save money? Of course consolidation would remove duplication and increase coordination of effort.

OK, so you are *for* consolidation.

You don't like it much when people put words in your mouth. Please don't do that to me. There is a difference between consolidating within the federal government, and consolidating to a federal government.

Our economy is in the toilet, and a record number of people are losing their homes, unemployed, and going bankrupt. The government doesn't have enough money to pay its bills, nor can it continue to borrow a trillion or so per year to keep up paying for all we spend. Not to mention, that all those trillions we borrowed will need to be paid back.

True or false, what does this have to do with to taking money from state A and spending it in state B?

Let me reiterate, "In the case of States, you can look at the "2009 stimulus bill" for which the bulk of the so-called stimulus went to bail out States whose falling revenue could no longer sustain their social programs." This was reauthorized in 2010, to again bail out the states, and there is no doubt that they are working out the 2011 bailout of State shortfalls as we speak.

I'd say it's time to justify every expenditure, and be very thoughtful about where our money is spent.

At what cost? Since we've gotten to that part in the thread where we're recycling our arguments, let me reiterate; "But when it comes to the government, many seem to be willing to spend any amount, no matter how large, to prevent the misuse of any amount, no matter how small."

There is no dichotomy here. It isn't all or nothing, and we are smart enough to identify and begin with the biggest savings first. I'm intimately familiar with audit, and routinely use AI audit heuristic models to reveal anomalies in financial streams. We have the technology to increase the accountability and drastically reduce the costs of keeping the accounts clean.

I wouldn't call it de-consolidation, so much as getting the federal fingers out of the states business.

So, you're *against* consolidation. Let's see: Consolidation is good when the federal government does it. No, consolidation is bad when the federal government does it. No, consolidation is good when industry does it.

Let me reiterate, "There is a difference between consolidating within the federal government, and consolidating to a federal government."

Much like "intercourse", the context and subject of the sentence vastly changes the meaning.

[Jester]

I would focus on promoting employment, and training until poverty disappears.

That's a little vague to solve a famously insoluble problem. Everyone wants to "promote employment". The specifics are a little hazier. And then there's that unfortunate relationship between employment and inflation...

I'm all for education and training, but expecting that to solve the problem of poverty is dreaming in technicolor. Unemployment is not 10% in the US because employers suddenly found their employees to be undereducated.

-Jester

[Jester]

Let me reiterate, "In the case of States, you can look at the "2009 stimulus bill" for which the bulk of the so-called stimulus went to bail out States whose falling revenue could no longer sustain their social programs." This was reauthorized in 2010, to again bail out the states, and there is no doubt that they are working out the 2011 bailout of State shortfalls as we speak.

I'll let Pete handle the bulk of this, since he seems to have it well in hand, but I must point this out. The stimulus breaks down like so:


As should be obvious, the largest sum is tax breaks, and there are also plenty of other substantial parts, including infrastructure and education.

So, "the bulk" of the stimulus bill was not bailing out states. That's just factually wrong. It wasn't even the largest single part. It makes up less than 1/6 of the whole bill.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

As should be obvious, the largest sum is tax breaks, and there are also plenty of other substantial parts, including infrastructure and education.

So, "the bulk" of the stimulus bill was not bailing out states. That's just factually wrong. It wasn't even the largest single part. It makes up less than 1/6 of the whole bill.

Here is a better source to see the details.

[attachment=24]

More than 1/6 is going to offset state costs, like the money under taxation which is going to refurbish schools. That would otherwise be a state, or local tax payer cost. The simple bubble breakdown doesn't show how the money will be used.

---

That's a little vague to solve a famously insoluble problem. Everyone wants to "promote employment". The specifics are a little hazier. And then there's that unfortunate relationship between employment and inflation...

I'm all for education and training, but expecting that to solve the problem of poverty is dreaming in technicolor. Unemployment is not 10% in the US because employers suddenly found their employees to be undereducated.

Poverty is a primary results of un- and under-employment. Focusing on how to get most people, who are able, employed at a rate above the poverty level will resolve the problem of poverty. We live in a global market. There is no reason why we can't get close to full employment in the US, if we would allow it.

[Jester]

More than 1/6 is going to offset state costs, like the money under taxation which is going to refurbish schools. That would otherwise be a state, or local tax payer cost. The simple bubble breakdown doesn't show how the money will be used.

Obviously stimulus will be spent in states, on things that states might otherwise, in an alternate reality, spend money on. Restricting the stimulus entirely to federal jurisdiction would be stupid - you'd miss the vast majority of projects that might actually help, at the state or local level. Whether or not that enormous list breaks down as you claim it does is beyond my patience to figure out - I strongly suspect it doesn't, but I can't be bothered to add up all the stray millions.

However, those are quite specifically stimulus projects, things that states would not have done, or would have deferred. They are discretionary expenses. One does not need to be "bailed out" from something you have discretion to spend money on. I don't mean to split hairs, but the money spent keeping states solvent is money spent on their obligatory expenses, not their optional ones. No state is (with their own money) embarking on new infrastructure while they can't pay their employees, or cover their debt service. Indeed, this is the whole point of stimulus - to counteract contraction. Without that money, states are paralyzed, and that means a lot of potential jobs that simply never exist.

Poverty is a primary results of un- and under-employment. Focusing on how to get most people, who are able, employed at a rate above the poverty level will resolve the problem of poverty. We live in a global market. There is no reason why we can't get close to full employment in the US, if we would allow it.

I'm still not hearing very much "how" in there. If you have a simple solution (how to "allow" unemployment and poverty to vanish, as if it were so simple), you have several Nobel prizes headed your way, not to mention honorary doctorates at every Econ department in the world. But, of course, I don't think you have one.

Or, put another way, unemployment is currently 5% over full employment, with another few % discouraged from entering the job market. That's millions of job seekers with no jobs. Can you really solve this problem?

-Jester

[kandrathe]

Obviously stimulus will be spent in states, on things that states might otherwise, in an alternate reality, spend money on. Restricting the stimulus entirely to federal jurisdiction would be stupid - you'd miss the vast majority of projects that might actually help, at the state or local level. Whether or not that enormous list breaks down as you claim it does is beyond my patience to figure out - I strongly suspect it doesn't, but I can't be bothered to add up all the stray millions.

However, those are quite specifically stimulus projects, things that states would not have done, or would have deferred. They are discretionary expenses. One does not need to be "bailed out" from something you have discretion to spend money on. I don't mean to split hairs, but the money spent keeping states solvent is money spent on their obligatory expenses, not their optional ones. No state is (with their own money) embarking on new infrastructure while they can't pay their employees, or cover their debt service. Indeed, this is the whole point of stimulus - to counteract contraction. Without that money, states are paralyzed, and that means a lot of potential jobs that simply never exist.

I see most of the big stuff is not discretionary, and not really stimulus (from my understanding of what grows an economy). Like, a 13% increase in payouts for food stamps doesn't really grow the economy, other than that people can still eat food (a desirable thing). Optimal stimulus spending is at least two sided, where the money employs someone who is out of work to build something that contributes to the productivity of everyone, like a fast freight line from St. Louis to NYC. Much of what can even be considered stimulus here is one sided, in that it creates some work for someone, but won't help grow the economy.

Poverty is a primary results of un- and under-employment. Focusing on how to get most people, who are able, employed at a rate above the poverty level will resolve the problem of poverty. We live in a global market. There is no reason why we can't get close to full employment in the US, if we would allow it.

I'm still not hearing very much "how" in there. If you have a simple solution (how to "allow" unemployment and poverty to vanish, as if it were so simple), you have several Nobel prizes headed your way, not to mention honorary doctorates at every Econ department in the world. But, of course, I don't think you have one.

Or, put another way, unemployment is currently 5% over full employment, with another few % discouraged from entering the job market. That's millions of job seekers with no jobs. Can you really solve this problem?

Yes, its solvable. If you want to do it quickly, put a short term moratorium on the minimum wage. This would at least get people into the rhythm of working, and improving themselves. Next, create gentle incentives for people to improve their skills and training, such as a tax deduction for qualified training and schooling. Incent employers to also grow their employees skills, and you might set standards for literacy, and skills testing for completing high school. If you don't pass the tests, you don't get a high school diploma. A unintended consequence of setting the bar higher, is that people actually will stretch to get over the bar.

Ok, then we need to work on the incentives for growing more businesses. Have the SBA, work with banks to create many regional incubators, and focus on creating many new innovative start up companies. This would have been a tremendous use of at least a couple of those billions. This is not rocket science. If you want more people employed, create more employers, and help the current ones to grow bigger such that they need to employ more people. Next, go to Denmark, or Hong Kong, take notes on how their government gets out of the way of business.

[Taelas]

Yes, its solvable. If you want to do it quickly, put a short term moratorium on the minimum wage. This would at least get people into the rhythm of working, and improving themselves. Next, create gentle incentives for people to improve their skills and training, such as a tax deduction for qualified training and schooling. Incent employers to also grow their employees skills, and you might set standards for literacy, and skills testing for completing high school. If you don't pass the tests, you don't get a high school diploma. A unintended consequence of setting the bar higher, is that people actually will stretch to get over the bar.

Removing minimum wage, even for a short time, is about the worst idea I have ever heard. That would reduce the wages for actual jobs, not magically create new ones, as you seem to believe. It would create more poverty, not less. Even if it would legalize jobs that are currently illegal due to it being below the minimum wage level, which might create a few more, I don't see it balancing out in your favor at all.

I'm reasonably certain there are plenty of jobs which do not actually require the skills necessary to get a high school diploma while still requiring the actual diploma even today (and it would be worse afterwards). You'd just be putting the people who were going to get those jobs out of work, since now they can't get their diploma. I would normally approve of upping the standards of education, but you can't accomplish that simply by setting higher standards and giving out tests. You have to actually educate, or you just end up with a higher failure rate.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I'm reasonably certain there are plenty of jobs which do not actually require the skills necessary to get a high school diploma while still requiring the actual diploma even today (and it would be worse afterwards).

You are right. However, the reason those jobs do require the diploma is because of the worthlessness of that diploma. It has become a cheap filter. Anyone who didn't get a diploma is considered either a quitter (i.e., dropout), criminal, or very stupid. While that isn't universally true, and there are people who didn't get a diploma for other reasons, employers take the easy way out. In a situation where there is a shortage of jobs, it is to the employer's benefit to hire people that are slightly overqualified.

The same thing is happening all over. Teachers once only needed a bachelor's degree. Now, in many places, they need a masters. In many places, they use bachelor level engineer as a technician. Either a masters, or a PE certification (and sometimes both), is needed to actually be allowed to do engineering. And in math and science, the doctorate is your union card -- and it is very much a closed shop.

A person's credentials have to keep getting better as the value of credentials in general keep getting worse.

I would normally approve of upping the standards of education, but you can't accomplish that simply by setting higher standards and giving out tests. You have to actually educate, or you just end up with a higher failure rate.

Oh, wow. That is so muddled. I cannot think of any way of increasing the standards of education without setting higher standards. The two are pretty much synonymous. And I cannot think of any way that those standards could be ensured across more than a school district (and even that might be hard to do) without tests. Now, if you think that the tests being used and the resulting 'teaching to the tests' is wrong, then I agree with you. But it is not the concept of standardized testing that is wrong, it is the implementation.

Finally, if you set the standards higher, you will get a higher failure rate. I suspect that a majority of graduating high school students have never been challenged. If the standards are raised, then some of them will be challenged, and some of them will not be able to meet that challenge. Those that do will show some level of scholastic ability, those that don't will not. The diploma then becomes a meaningful document of a person's abilities in a restricted arena.

I do not believe that it is possible 'to educate' or 'to teach'. I believe that it is only possible 'to learn'. That is the active process. The others are, at best, ways to facilitate learning, and, all too often, no more than a waste of time that could actually have been spent learning. The primary function of a school is not to teach, but to determine and record how much a person has learned.

But that's another book.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Removing minimum wage, even for a short time, is about the worst idea I have ever heard. That would reduce the wages for actual jobs, not magically create new ones, as you seem to believe. It would create more poverty, not less. Even if it would legalize jobs that are currently illegal due to it being below the minimum wage level, which might create a few more, I don't see it balancing out in your favor at all.

I don't see employers running headlong into lowering salaries. The minimum wage sets an artificial line on the natural competition that should be occurring is the job market. With a low income neighbor,like Central and South America, which has so many people willing to work for less than the minimum, it creates a large supply of low-skilled labor. In order to compete with that, our government should help facilitate raising our citizens to a higher level, but to begin with, they must be in the thick of it. Otherwise, yes, the jobs will go underground, and be given to those who will do them illegally. Once the market has soaked up all the citizens looking for work, then natural competition for the best employees will commence. This will then lift salaries, and those with the best credentials and experience will be lifted out of poverty. This is a global issue, and so our (US) goal should be to have the largest number of highly educated and skilled workers in the entire world. Job security is intimately tied with having credentials from education and experience.

I'm reasonably certain there are plenty of jobs which do not actually require the skills necessary to get a high school diploma while still requiring the actual diploma even today (and it would be worse afterwards). You'd just be putting the people who were going to get those jobs out of work, since now they can't get their diploma. I would normally approve of upping the standards of education, but you can't accomplish that simply by setting higher standards and giving out tests. You have to actually educate, or you just end up with a higher failure rate.

Well, yes, I assumed education and skills were the goal. Testing is just a fair measurement of achievement. Once the general citizenry is better educated, and has higher skill sets, then employers will choose them over the illiterate and unskilled masses. Yes, there may be jobs that Americans won't do, but that should be their choice, not some arbitrary government law. This is not different than what Denmark has done, right? Do you think your social system might be threatened if it bordered Mexico? How important would border security be if you had millions of people, many armed with guns, invading through your borders to find a better life in your country?

[Taelas]

I do not believe that it is possible 'to educate' or 'to teach'. I believe that it is only possible 'to learn'. That is the active process. The others are, at best, ways to facilitate learning, and, all too often, no more than a waste of time that could actually have been spent learning. The primary function of a school is not to teach, but to determine and record how much a person has learned.

But that's another book.

--Pete

Maybe it's different in the States, but over here, the primary function of a school is to teach.

[ShadowHM]

I do not believe that it is possible 'to educate' or 'to teach'. I believe that it is only possible 'to learn'. That is the active process. The others are, at best, ways to facilitate learning, and, all too often, no more than a waste of time that could actually have been spent learning. The primary function of a school is not to teach, but to determine and record how much a person has learned.

But that's another book.

--Pete

Maybe it's different in the States, but over here, the primary function of a school is to teach.

I think this is a quibble over semantics. Students attend school (ostensibly) to learn. Schools are required to teach students so that they may learn. However, our society insists on measuring everything. And thus schools are required to determine and record how much students have learned so that said students may continue on to other endeavors with certificates in hand that have a value in society - socially or economically or both.

Teaching is the process but production of the certificates is the required outcome.

Schools that fail to produce such documents don't last long here. I suspect the same is true in Denmark.

[kandrathe]

Teaching is the process but production of the certificates is the required outcome.

Schools that fail to produce such documents don't last long here. I suspect the same is true in Denmark.

I think we need to return to the motivation for why we undertake the endeavor, by force of law, that every child be educated (or at least led to the oasis of learning, drinking is optional).

We do this to ensure that every new adult we add to the society has a basic set of skills. It would be nice to know that every person who receives a high school diploma has this similar basic set of skills, but this is not the case. A high number of students get passed along, graduate, remain illiterate, and woefully ignorant. This becomes much worse when you look at things which are needed in our society, but not required in our schools, such as math and science fundamentals. I think we are far too tolerant of failure. A college that I work with has an overall graduation rate of 62%, which is actually higher than the national average. I'm helping them to focus on the 38% who don't make it. Also, they have a fundamental problem getting enough males due to their higher requirements for GPA/SAT/ACT test scores. There is a high drop out rate for males around 8th grade that results in a gap of males who are qualified and prepared for college.

And, to what Pete alluded to with college diploma's... The curriculum gets watered down, and the grades all float higher, thus a previously prestigious attainment becomes run of the mill, and the dumbing down of education is to blame. I suspect, that criteria for education are higher in Denmark, Germany, and some other highly industrial European nations. The skill of their workforce is their economic power, as they cannot indefinitely mine or farm GDP from their tiny nations to produce wealth.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I think this is a quibble over semantics. Students attend school (ostensibly) to learn. Schools are required to teach students so that they may learn.

To some extent that is true. But in a real sense, it is more than semantics. When students in the USA do worse than their contemporaries in other countries, when the SAT scores drop little by little over the years, when graduating students can only read at the eight grade level and do arithmetic at the sixth, the blame always goes to the teachers.

Now, indeed, there are probably teachers out there who, through incompetence, indifference, or just plain burn out, are not doing their jobs. I've actually known one or two. But the vast majority do all they can and often strive for more. So, we have the highest funded per capita educational system in the world. It is, for the most part, staffed by competent, dedicated professionals. And we're getting terrible results. What is the underlying problem?

To a large extent, I think it is an indifference to education in the country as a whole. I suspect a poll asking the purpose of education would come back nearly 100% with 'getting a better job'. I suspect that a lot of students have given up on education because they just don't see where it would help them. I suspect that when students see that sports figures and drug dealers make more and live better than their teachers, they doubt the usefulness of their education.

In this environment, is it any wonder that many students do not even make an effort to learn anything? So, call the exposition of knowledge anything you like. But, is it teaching if no one is listening? Is it teaching if no one cares or makes use of it?

At one time, which some of us still remember, school was run by "the rule of the ruler." That has long since been banned. But nothing was instituted to replace it. With neither fear nor hopes of reward, why should the average student care. And, if they do not wish to learn, how can anyone teach?

--Pete

[Jester]

I don't see employers running headlong into lowering salaries.

This is key. If wages are not going to drop by a lot, then very few jobs will be created. If, conversely, lots of jobs are created, then they're not going to pay very much. Jobs that pay $10,000 a year for full-time work are not going to go a long way towards eliminating poverty.

I really don't think you're going to solve a credit crisis-induced unemployment explosion by opening up a raft of low-end jobs at 4 or 5 bucks an hour. No doubt you'd get some boost out of it, but most of the unemployed are used to working for a hell of a lot more than that.

Training is always a good thing, but it's a longer term advantage, not a short term solution. You can't retrain people for jobs that no longer exist, and if your big plan for making new jobs is innovation (which takes time, and no guarantees of success) and lowering the minimum wage (which creates jobs that require neither education nor training), then you'd largely just be creating human capital that people cannot put to good use. I'm all for it anyway, but it's not going to put millions of people back to work in the near future.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

I'm all for it anyway, but it's not going to put millions of people back to work in the near future.

The reason I suggested the change on minimum wage be temporary is that it will be an incentive for new companies, not much of an answer for the unemployed. Companies that can survive a re-implementation of a minimum wage will be the ones to lift the poor out of poverty, and every dollar they earn is one that doesn't need to be taken from someone else. The problem with the contraction in the economy is that essentially, the jobs are destroyed. It will take time for people to transform themselves, which means often they must start over at the bottom of a new industry. Or, wait for a new company to be formed to which they can be hired. There is no way to flip a switch to return to mid 2007. Case in point, the US auto industry is transformed forever, and the tens of thousands of people whose specialty was to design, or build cars is not needed (at least in Detroit, maybe they can learn Mandarin).

But, the sooner we get to doing it the better.

[Jester]

The problem with the contraction in the economy is that essentially, the jobs are destroyed. It will take time for people to transform themselves, which means often they must start over at the bottom of a new industry. Or, wait for a new company to be formed to which they can be hired. There is no way to flip a switch to return to mid 2007.

But there is bad, and there's worse. There are jobs that vanished because they were only supportable because of the value of the asset bubble. Those jobs are relatively few. Most of the jobs that vanished were not 'destroyed', in the sense that their reason for existing ceased to be. They became unsupportable as a consequence of the crisis itself: the freezing up of credit, the shock to consumer confidence, the sudden state budgetary crisis. Those are not permanent, structural changes to the economy. They do not represent education lost, factories burned, or resources depleted.

Is is this loss that stimulus is designed to counteract. It won't return the economy to the peak of a bubble, but it will cut down on the needless loss from recession. The economy has to be built up, but if you let it burn to the ground first, you're going to have a lot more to reconstruct.

The auto industry has certainly had a rough period, and not just in the US. But there are still signs of life there - Ford isn't doing too badly. Whether some of the others can pull it together remains to be seen.

-Jester

[--Pete]

Hi,

The US needs to back off, and let people take care of their own issues.

And this relates to taking money from state A and spending it in state B how?

In the case of States, you can look at the "2009 stimulus bill" for which the bulk of the so-called stimulus went to bail out States whose falling revenue could no longer sustain their social programs.

Your original remark was about US military presence outside the USA. I still don't see how that relates to the transfer of money from state to state by the federal government.

Come to Minnesota. We give away General Assistance checks every month to all who show up to collect them.

From your link:

Eligibility requirements

Program participants must fit at least one of the 15 categories of eligibility specified in state statutes. Eligibility categories are primarily defined in terms of disability and unemployability. Most applicants and recipients are required to apply for benefits from federally funded disability programs for which they may qualify, such as Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income. In addition, the person or couple must have income and resources less than program limits. The resource limit for all units is $1000. After subtracting certain income disregards, a single person must have net income less than $203 per month, and a couple must have net income less than $260 per month

Hardly sounds like a walk in and get get money situation.

That is not the gist of what I was saying. If you reduce the need for the handouts, and increase the accountability for the handouts then you reduce the amount being given away, and you reduce the amount of fraud.

You have two different things going on here. One is reducing the need for handouts, which will indeed reduce both the amount handed out and the amount of fraud (although it might increase the percentage of fraud). However, I'm not sure how you propose to do that. Or, rather, I've read your ideas on how to do that, but I don't think most, if any, would work. Historically, many of them have been tried and had no success or even worsened the situation.

The second point is "increase the accountability". That doesn't come for free. I am not in a position to either calculate how much is lost to fraud nor what it would cost to reduce it. It may be that the state could spend a bit more in monitoring for a net savings. It may also be that a practical increase in monitoring (and not just some window dressing proclamation) would cost more than it saves. Indeed, it could even be the case that a reduction in monitoring would yield a net savings if the money being spent on monitoring is more than that lost to fraud.

You don't like it much when people put words in your mouth. Please don't do that to me. There is a difference between consolidating within the federal government, and consolidating to a federal government.

It seemed to me that those were the words coming out of your mouth. But, fair enough, my apologies.

However, I do fail to see the difference you claim. Economies of scale, better utilization of resources, uniformity of 'product', elimination of redundant efforts. All those and more apply to any consolidation. Indeed, the only difference I see is that one agrees with your point of view and the other doesn't. One reduces the federal government, the other increases it. However, the increase in the federal government should be more than offset by the reduction in the state, county, district, and city levels. Unlike you, I'm more interested in reducing the total size of government, not just the federal.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

However, I do fail to see the difference you claim. Economies of scale, better utilization of resources, uniformity of 'product', elimination of redundant efforts. All those and more apply to any consolidation. Indeed, the only difference I see is that one agrees with your point of view and the other doesn't. One reduces the federal government, the other increases it. However, the increase in the federal government should be more than offset by the reduction in the state, county, district, and city levels. Unlike you, I'm more interested in reducing the total size of government, not just the federal.

Programs can be sized and tailored to fit the needs of the locality. A simple example would be that the department of agriculture in Arizona would be intimately familiar with water resources, where one in Maine might have more insight on cranberries. I would certainly encourage cooperation, and resource sharing where possible across states, but that hardly needs a federal agency to manage it, nor billions per year of spending. More importantly is that they already exist within the 50 states, for this very reason of specialty, so we have the 50 state sized agencies plus the humongous federal agency. This is not consolidation, it is eliminating the superfluous one grand papa agency that becomes a temptation for Congress to abuse for their benefit.

Multiply this same problem across the spectrum of things that the States do already, that the Federal government does not need to do. In essence, the Federal agency just becomes the funnel that redistributes tax money back to the States agencies. No state is going to eliminate its government, and just let the Feds run everything, nor would the Feds be able to run any States business. In essence, there is no need for a Federal department of Education, Transportation, Agriculture, or Health and Human Services. These are domestic things that we do within the States, and even within Counties, and due to pandering for votes, over time the Feds have spawned more and more of these oversight agencies, that have been cluttered up with programs which are a way to justify separating fools from their money.

[Jester]

But this is just ideology. There is no economic rationale for doing agriculture, transportation, education, health, and so on exclusively at the State rather than Federal level. Your own logic of consolidation saving money would imply the opposite, but yet, you oppose it. Why? What's so much better about State governments than the Feds?

-Jester