Yeah and the military is a third of our budget and no one in politics ever wants to cut that. There’s so much excess spending there we could cut $300 billion a year from it and still be the world’s bully. China builds infrastructure in other countries as a carrot to insinuate themselves in global affairs but we just build military bases as a stick. Seems like the former is a little bit better even if both approaches have issues.
Say what you will about Clinton, but slashing the military budget is what made the math actually work, and lead to a budget surplus. The austerity and efficiency stuff was peanuts in comparison.
Clinton's cuts were ultimately only temporary, since the military-industrial complex got fat again in the post 9/11 gold rush. A correction is long overdue.
That this isn't really even considered is pretty telling about the real motivations of the current regime.
And, remove the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations. It's out of control. A friend of mine told me her church bought a five-story office building. They dedicated the minimum amount of office space to "religious services", and they rent out the rest of the offices. They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
> They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
Was a Deacon at a church that bought a strip mall (fire sale price). They had to pay regular taxes on income from the other businesses. Even the church's own thrift and book sales had to collect and pay sales tax.
That church is 100% committing tax fraud. One of the non-profit colleges I worked at owned farm ground and buildings they rented out. They had to pay taxes on the rental income.
The point is that churches are exempt from some of the oversight requirements that other tax-exempt charitable organizations have to comply with. This makes it much easier for them to commit fraud.
> They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
That seems fraudulent.
I was a member of a non-profit org that owned a building and rented out some of it. We paid no taxes on the parts that were used for the non-profit, but owed property taxes on the rental.
The military is not a third of the budget, it's about 13% of spending this FY so far which is a lot, but almost 3x lower than you suggest (closer to 1/8th than 1/3rd).
I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities without hitting DOD civilians or military employees immediately. There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years, if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point. I've seen IT efforts that cost $25-50 million/year and are already 5 years late and delivering no value (no partial version + updates over the years, these are big bang failed Waterfall projects).
Probably more by improving how other functions perform and identifying people like a guy I worked with a decade ago who literally slept at his desk all day and never got fired for it (not even a union shop, just supervisors refusing to do their job).
> I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities
What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!)
DoD before the rise of China (and Russia) could afford to cut back. But China is an enormous problem, and an enormous problem of resources.
Wealth drives victory in war more than anything else, except maybe population. Obviously China far exceeds the US and allies in population. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economy was (much, I think) smaller than the US, and the Warsaw Pact's was smaller than NATOs. By 2050, with four times the population, if China is only half as wealthy as the US per capita, it would have an economy twice as large. The US has never faced a threat like that.
DoD already cuts and restricts many programs because they can't afford them. For example, the NGAD fighter plane - the next generation fighter plane, a big deal - faces great uncertainty (despite Trump's showboating) because the US can't really afford it. That's just one program of many.
Allies help share the burden, but we are alienating all of them.
> There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years
Which ones? And programs exist to solve problems - what better ways do you have for solving the problems? The problems don't go away.
> if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point
We should cancel every late program? Again, what better solutions do you have? Start a new program and lose the progress of the existing one?
Now these are all just words backed by suspicions. Give us some reason to believe!
> What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!)
It's based on the sections of DOD I worked in, with, and had visibility into around me, along with reading GAO reports (there are too many to read them all, but grab a few and you'll see some remarkable waste and failures). At one point I had a job to help a group become more efficient (in context: delivering on time instead of late, delivering on or at least near budget instead of grossly over), what I saw looking under the hood was exactly what I suspected. A small corner of the DOD that was wasting at least 10-20% of their budget every year because of ineffective coordination across teams often over absolutely stupid things, and that was just the parts I studied relevant to my job at the time. I'm extrapolating from that experience and the other information I've seen over the years.
And, importantly, I'm talking about what can be cut before it impacts capabilities and readiness. Somewhere in this range you'll have to do reorganizations and realignments to continue reducing the DOD budget while maintaining capabilities.
If we went back in time 7 or 8 years I could give you a lot better information than that because I was more actively tracking things. Here are a couple reports though that demonstrate the kinds of things I saw at the time:
I haven't gone over it all but it's not a pretty picture. Most of the projects they examined are delayed by more than a year, some as much as three, and have had median budget increases of $163 million. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. IT procurement in DOD is fundamentally broken, and accounts for billions in wasted spending.
$1.84 billion spent on modernizing ships that will never sail.
It's possible that some efforts will start, become OBE and abandoned after spending a lot of money (maybe even billions) but this is normal in DOD, rather than extraordinary.
The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families.
The individual agencies collectively spend only around $100b.
Likewise the other large fraction of the total budget outside the DoD is healthcare spending. We spend a huge amount of money and we don't seem to have healthcare outcomes which justify these costs.
Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. 85% of that money comes from individual tax payers and only 7% from businesses. The system is flailing from top to bottom.
> has changed much more substantially during that time (lower).
The burden has shifted /more/ onto individual tax payers and less from business and excise taxes was the particular point I was driving at. It suggests more clearly who actually got those "lower" taxes and why our linked graphs paint a bad future.
> The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families.
Imagine the benefits to defense if the US reduced health care costs from the 2x-3x it spends relative to peers. I've thought that would be an appealing way to sell healthcare reform to Republicans.
To be fair- Hegseth has said he wants to cut 8% a year for five years from the pentagon. I strongly disagree, the military should be getting more money. Now is not the time for cuts.
I'm not sure they have the authority to do this anyway they lack power of the purse and all that.
Why do you think that? I would think the technological advantage the US military currently has doesn’t need more money to maintain, but maybe I’m missing something.
Most of the airframes are in their twilight years. The Navy is in a conundrum... the surface fleet strategy is probably not strategically sound, and we slowed down submarine production at one point so many of those assets are also aging and in need of maintenance.
The Ukraine war is full of learnings that should be driving transformation and investment. Reality is that a rogue billionaire could probably build drones that could threaten strategic military assets in the field. As time goes on, that capability will likely get cheaper and better.
The US does not have a technological advantage. This is the type of American Exceptionalism that needs to die. If we got into a full-scale war with China, we would lose. A big part of the US military strength is the logistical network with allies that Trump is systematically destroying.
22.4% of the US Military budget goes to salaries of military personnel. Civilian contractors are part of the separate operations budget but I can’t find the breakout of their salaries. So there’s a lot of consumer spending and economic activity supported by military spending.
Executive orders were meant for national emergencies. Apparently we're under threat from everyone from whom we have a trade imbalance, even islands with no humans on them!
(And it's not like partisans are locking up Congress to spite him.)
We are literally two days away from Trumpers hating penguins because Trumps people are such amateurs they put tariffs on these islands and now the cult has to defend it.
> We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.
Would you just start spending when the war starts? Then you'll get a war much sooner (the enemy will see your weakness) but you'll save money (the war will end quickly).
> We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.
We were in a (physical) proxy war with Russia via Ukraine until very recently, and we are currently in a digital war against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and probably other nation-states.
Should this be under the purview of the actual military? I don't know, although that arrangement is effective for Israel's cybersecurity command.
Regardless, there is an active need for defense spending now, just not the way we've been spending it.
> War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist.
> The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself.
I just don't see how states like California would go along with that, not to mention the EU, Russia (because of control over the arctic) or China (maybe Trump gives them the go ahead on Taiwan).
Ah don't worry they'll just cut the history professors at the military academies. That's what we want, an officer class with no media literacy skills or an understanding of the context that they live in.
They never say 'I'm jailing / prosecuting these people to suppress my enemies', they accuse them of fraud, corruption, etc. Xi Jinping did it in China, the new dictator in Saudi Arabia did it, ... it's an old one.
Note that dictators are vulnerable - they still need to justify themselves to the public.
And between legal costs and the farm bailout for the tariffs, it shouldn’t be surprising that this “efficiency” administration is blowing out our deficit by a few trillion dollars.
The current flavour of politics is not pragmatic. It’s a luxury belief system.
The left wing excesses of the 2010s were luxury beliefs, the current thing is all just luxury beliefs too.
Basically, when people are economically comfortable and have no real problems, they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something.
I have luxury beliefs of my own, many people do. We are free to hold them in North America. But there’s a cost, and that cost shouldn’t be surprising.
The defense of this regime's economic strategy (particularly the market crash and looming economic hardships) is doing political horseshoe theory and entering Maoist territory with surprising speed.
"You'll be rich because we're so good with the economy" has raced over to "We've been rotting in decadent lifestyles, true strong patriots will be happy to sacrifice for the glory of the fatherland."
"Tons of people globally are screwing screws into iphones. We are going to bring those jobs here."
"Inexpensive goods from overseas aren't actually prosperity. You don't want these things."
"You probably didn't earn your job in the government anyway."
True decadence is looking at a society that is broadly functioning and deciding "we need a fight" and blowing it up just for some aggressive notion of dominance.
It’s an apt description of a perennial feature of politics. People have a pain in the foot, so they shoot a hole in it and complain about having a bullet wound.
More like: they are no longer starving, and can now tend to the pain in their foot.
I've heard similar versions of this argument, usually something about modern poor people having it pretty good because they have microwave, while Carnegie didn't.
>I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. [0]
We're now complaining about people studying painting, poetry, etc.
That Adams quote is nice, and has a similar historical flavour to some of Milton Friedman’s arguments.
That said, choosing a field of study only has the risk of bankrupting yourself.
The excesses of the 21st century, whether that’s blowing up the supply chains that got you out of stagflation, or injecting Maoist rhetoric into academia, will have a much larger and more destructive blowback.
This is the fallacy of composition. A party is made up of diverse independent groups who are demanding different things. When one of those groups gets "comfortable", it allows other groups to become (relatively) louder and steer the party toward their demands.
It's not all the same person, getting comfortable and making up problems.
This isn't the issue. What people choose to do in their personal lives should be accepted or at least tolerated, as long as it's not harming anyone.
> what bathroom they use
This is the problematic part. A male using the women's bathroom is committing a violation against women.
> etc.
This includes males in women's prisons, males in women's changing/locker rooms, males in women's sports. All of which are violations against women.
It isn't about "hating LGBT people" as you suggest, but about compelling males to respect women's and girls' boundaries.
For far too long, a subset of males have been getting away with not doing so, just because these males express a desire to be female. It's quite absurd that it's taken Trump of all people to attempt to rectify this. The political left should have reeled in their activists, who were promoting all this, a long time ago.
> This is the problematic part. A male using the women's bathroom is committing a violation against women
It's mostly men saying this [1]. (Specifically, uneducated men over the age of 50. Especially if they're conservative, Republican or attend weekly religious service.)
Traditional gender roles and stereotypes are part of the reason why some males end up desiring to be women, because they've confused female with feminine. There's nothing wrong with men wearing dresses or indeed any feminine clothing. But thinking this somehow transitions them into being women is ludicrous and sexist.
Ideally we'd be rid of these stereotypes. They're part of the problem.
> Yours, worried and authoritarian, focused on an imaginary moral panic propagated by reactionary Internet forums.
The authoritarian side is the one insisting that males who call themselves women actually are women, and punishing those who disagree. In some states it is actually illegal to have a female-only space. It has to be female plus any male who says he's a woman.
That's not liberty is it, certainly not for women who want or need spaces without any males present.
There are so many cases where this type of policy has demonstrably harmed women. At the most extreme end is males being incarcerated in women's prisons on this basis, who have then raped, sexually assaulted and even impregnated the women locked up with them.
This is the consequence of these "luxury beliefs" capturing institutions of the state.
Alternatively, consider the hugely negative effect their advocacy movement has had on workers' rights and women's rights and the environment.
They've effectively destroyed the most progressive party from the inside, by having it push ludicrous and unpopular policy that privileges males and actively harms women and girls.
Now we have to put up with Trump for the next four years or more because the political left refused to rein in their most extreme activists.
It _could_ be that, too, but as it turns out, in this particular case, it was the scary scary transes (see their response elsewhere in the thread).
With people who go on about 'luxury beliefs', the belief that they're referring to is nearly always 'trans people are people', I assume because it's such a new coinage (it's only a few years old) and that was what the far-right were mostly scared of at the time.
You are the only one who brought up gender minorities, as well as the TERF I disagreed with.
Anyone wingbrained enough can have luxury beliefs, and I’m not immune.
For example, I previously supported a very liberal drug policy, and still do in many respects… though I realize it failed spectacularly in the fentanyl era and have had to live with the consequences of that.
Better than the alternative? Well, we aren’t ruining as many lives over cannabis…
Maoist rhetoric and hyperpoliticization in academia, seeping out to the broader society.
Or in internet cultural terms tumblr/redditization of environments that should be intellectually neutral, because “it’s called being a good person sweatie”
I’m brown. I’m fine. This administration is at war with Americans who aren’t rich.
My taxes are being cut. I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods. They’re mostly white. But they’re not rich.
> you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump?
I’m buying cropland from creditors. They can sell it because the farmers are behind on their loans. They’re failing to make payments because we’re in a trade war.
As an ethical limit, yes, I look up the property owner and have only been buying if they’re registered Republican. That doesn’t mean they voted for Trump. (Though they’re all in heavily Trump-voting precincts.) And I don’t think people should lose their farms just because of how they voted. But it does increase the chances I’m not profiting from someone who had nothing to do with a mess they found themselves in versus someone who sort of brought it on themselves.
I’m doing work that makes me money. It’s entirely orthogonal to my skin tone. My point is this administration isn’t helping poor white men, the folks who voted for him, he’s just advantaging those who were lucky enough to start this imperial transition with capital on hand.
Poor people get hurt most by wasteful belief systems. Sure the demographics might correlate positively or negatively with poverty, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s primarily economics.
After all, rich people can eat the extra $$$ imposed by tariffs. Maybe with grumbling… but, at a certain income level paying $5 vs $2 for a can of corn or soup won’t materially affect you, so you can use that extra $3 you paid to complain about immigration, or hierarchies or whatever.
We are living in a post-argument rhetorical landscape. Untruths aren't stated openly, they're baked into words via the constant abuse of of the english language.
The budget for the NPS is so small that if they shut it down, the effect on the deficit would be too small to measure. But someone would still need to manage those properties so it would be "necessary" to sell them off to private interests.
I really hope that's not going to happen, but that fits with strangling the parks for the necessary resources needed to operate. (And then mandating that they remain open.)
> Turns out all the cuts are only a fraction of a percent of the federal budget.
Looking at it another way, the cuts are actually decreasing overall efficiency since they're cutting things that deliver decent benefits given that they only cost a small fraction of federal spending. Maintaining things like hiking trails and parks is incredibly cheap compared to the benefits they produce in terms of intangibles like well being and related economic activity. The National Parks Service for example helps generate a huge amount of tourism dollars that exceeds their budget several times over.
> It's an ideological purge...
See that's the part I really struggle with. Cratering foreign aid has an obvious ideological component, but who hates hiking trails? Like I'm sure there are a few people who hate the outdoors and a handful of oligarchs who want to privatize everything, but where's the constituency for it?
> Looking at it another way, the cuts are actually decreasing overall efficiency since they're cutting things that deliver decent benefits given that they only cost a small fraction of federal spending.
And especially when they're targeting the IRS. What use is it cutting 1% if you lose 10% of your revenue because you don't have the resources to pursue outright cheats or lawyered-up people.
The IRS makes a huge profit margin on average from audits on the 1%-and-up folks because so many of them are cheating on their taxes.
Even before all this, the IRS was spending most of its auditing resources on auditing the poor - especially people using the earned income credit - and losing thousands of dollars or more on each audit because they either didn't find anything, or it was an inconsequential amount of money.
The IRS cuts are the most obvious ones, since they will clearly end up losing the government far more money than they save. But it would be an interesting, if challenging, project to try to do the same kind of thing with other government agencies. And unlike the IRS, most federal agencies don't generate revenue directly for the government but likely have indirect economic benefits.
National parks generate tourism dollars, funding for science research leads to new advances with economic impact, etc. The "savings" from the cuts assumes the money is being set on fire with no economic benefits, but even if you disregard the obvious direct impacts like federal employees or recipients of federal dollars buying stuff just like everyone else, the impact of the service being provided is almost certainly non-trivial if admittedly harder to measure. Any reasonable approach to efficiency and cost cutting needs to take that into account.
Sub out “who hates hiking trails?” and sub in “who hates having popular government programs?”
Answer: people who don’t want constituents to believe that the government can be effective and deliver good services. That’s the ideological component.
“Government bad” is amazing platform to run on because it’s pretty easy to deliver.
Other countries are issuing travel advisories for the US and I know at least two Canadians who have said that not only are they not buying anything made in the US, but everyone they know has declared they will be crossing the border - both because of the danger but also as part of their boycotting the states. Lawful border crossings between the US and Canada have plunged. Canadian tourism is a significant part of the economy, though the effect won't really be felt until summertime.
I don't blame them in the slightest for either.
The tariff situation is a disaster that will only further increase the tax burden and cost of living on the poor and middle class. For rich people, a 30-50% increase in their grocery costs is barely a drop in the bucket of their budget they won't feel beyond getting annoyed.
The low income energy assistance program LIHEAP just got shut down, not even with any notice so states can try to spool up something. If this had happened a month or two ago we'd be seeing news stories about seniors freezing to death in the midwest and northeast. Soon we're going to see hyperthemia stories. In some areas AC isn't a luxury, it's a necessity as much as heating is in the cold winter states, if not more so. You can't "bundle up" from the heat.
For a large swath of America, this will mean people going hungry. And turning to property crime to try to make ends meet....or to get into jail where conditions might really suck, but at least their most basic needs are (kind of) being met.
As an Australian I would avoid any travel to the US at the moment. Especially after reading about the MMA coach who got detained and jailed on entry to the country.
It's one thing to be denied entry and put on a plane back to your original country, entirely another to be put into federal prison for an indefinite amount of time before being sent back.
America clearly doesn't want visitors at the moment.
I think all of the high profile detentions have happened at land borders. For this MMA coach, Renato Subotic, I can't quite tell, he says he was stopped at the border, which could be at an airport, but sounds more like at a land border.
It's a lot easier to put you on a return flight if you're at the airport.
It might be reasonable to consider visiting the US but being sure to arrive by air, and not by land. But it's understandable if you choose to visit somewhere that's more friendly.
Not if the person isn't a national of either country. At least currently for the US and Mexico and the US and Canada, if a person crosses the land border and is refused entry to the other country, there's no procedure to act as if they never left the first one; it's treated as a new entry, which may likely be refused (having been refused by another country is a risk factor for refusal).
Both countries can't refuse, so one will have to detain.
> See that's the part I really struggle with. Cratering foreign aid has an obvious ideological component, but who hates hiking trails? Like I'm sure there are a few people who hate the outdoors and a handful of oligarchs who want to privatize everything, but where's the constituency for it?
They don't care about constituency. They could pass these cuts as part of a deal but choose not to specifically because it wouldn't be popular. They are trying to sell national parks to oligarchs.
They need to win any ideological battle that they can get in order to start the "assault" against Medicaid and Medicare, which I guess it's where most of the money goes to (that and the Military, but I don't think they'll drastically touch that, no matter the current discourse).
In other words, if you show people that the Government can be dismantled little by little without any big revolution coming their way, then they'll next have the impetus to go for the jugular, i.e. Medicaid and Medicare.
> Turns out all the cuts are only a fraction of a percent of the federal budget. It's an ideological purge, nothing to do with efficiency at all.
It always ways. It is a media campaign where significant damage is caused to a large number of programs - with the claim that they are cutting expense. But actually none of these cuts will cause any meaningful reduction in government or deficit because these programs never were the big ticket items. The biggest ticket item is tax handouts to the rich. They are not touching that.
Many people can see through this presidential scam. But the MAGA cult is so full of vitriol and hatred for others that they don't see the scam. They don't realize that MAGA voters are themselves being scammed by their beloved Trump.
And thus, we still have always Trumpers. America is just a sad country right now.
I'm sorry that reality has a well-known liberal bias, but the Brookings link that was posted is simply data - it's not opinion or analysis:
> This data tool allows users to track the flow of federal funds in real time. It shows actual daily, weekly, monthly, and annual processed outlays to key programs and departments, as well as to states, Congress, and the Judiciary. This tool only reports outlays of federal funds, meaning the actual transmission of funds from the federal government to another entity.
> This tool makes few to no adjustments to the data, meaning that cyclical, seasonal, idiosyncratic, and expected variation in patterns of outlays over time remain. Because this tool only reports outlays, one cannot discern directly whether there is a gap between obligated funds and their outlay. Furthermore, if federal agencies have changed the rate at which they are newly obligating funds (e.g., by declining to sign new contracts), those changes would only gradually be reflected in outlays.
The fact that you attack the messenger (and not in any way questioning the methodology of the data collection, for example) explains why so many of us in the current environment are so sick and tired of these lazy attempts at "argument". I'm sure you have your own alternative facts, though.
Calling someone a communist or socialist is the latest duckspeak from minitrue. It’s intended to suppress all thought. It’s also intended to be impossible to refute. It’s like if you were trying to muscle in on a cave dive rescue of some kids and suggested the rescuers use your submarine, and then they tell you your submarine is useless, so you insinuate that they are pedophiles. It’s a meaningless tar-baby statement meant to distract from meaningful discussion.
The irony of these statements is Harris’ father is an actual Marxist who doesn’t speak to his daughter partially because she is an ideological opposite.
I feel like either -
A) people hurling Karl Marx around have never actually read and considered his writings
B) they are being intellectually dishonest and creating the pretext for ideological oppression
Or, mostly likely c) all of the above
I am sad our future has taken this turn into darkly oppressive dystopia. I still think we can save things and get back to a world where all political views hash out compromise, but I fear we aren’t going in the right direction with no clear leader of right minded cooperation emerging from the cacophony. I mourn that my daughter will live in the world the conservative right is constructing for her generation - one that rolls back everything my grandparents generation gifted to me.
I mean Fox news removed the stock market ticker and started saying saying 'we will be poor and we will be happy' and 'we shouldn't be consuming so much stuff' so the Fox News/Trump administration talking heads?
It’s my understanding that debt is mostly held in the US by Americans and that a country that runs a debt in a currency it controls isn’t anything like household debt.
That said, what would it mean for the US to go bankrupt?
No, it's not. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of many people who get ginned up about this. Debt is the most powerful tool of a nation.
The US is a sovereign, the sovereign. The country can borrow until the faith and credit in our ability to pay is lost. There's no such thing as bankruptcy, you can default or print money.
The US is rocketing towards depression. Slowing down the velocity of money is the single worst thing you can do for an economy. We're implementing the largest tax increase in history, taking away pensioner benefits, and pushing the cost of healthcare up, nuking consumer demand. There's no adults keeping Trump away from doing stupid shit -- he'll set off an economic death spiral.
These cuts are particularly nasty because federal spending on public trail maintenance is already razor thin. A ton of the Pacific Crest Trail and other scenic trails are already primarily maintained by volunteer groups doing work like log clearing, brush removal, and tread work. Trail users ourselves—hikers, mountain bikers, or trail runners—already put in hundreds of volunteer hours every season doing the basic trail work, and that's just regular seasonal maintenance. Significant work rebuilding parts of the Appalachian Trail and PCT after wildfires or hurricanes will likely not happen this year, or for years to come, unless volunteers fill in more gaps.
Let's also pool some money to help the sick pay for health care, the young pay for education and those affected by layoffs tackle the transition. Heck, we could even start our own government.
why not? all the socialists can start "the big socialist fund" and contribute part of their paychecks to this fund while the rest of us libertarians/right-wingers will contribute nothing. win/win right?
Are the libertarians and right wingers going to not use the services they don't want to pay for? Or receive the benefits? Are they going to leave the educated society and start their own somewhere else?
Such a nonprofit exists, it's called the federal government.
Maybe the super-rich can create their own nonprofit to fund commercial space tourism or whatever absurdity they've deemed so important that it needs spending elsewhere to be cut and diverted to them.
The government has proven to be extremely inefficient at managing our money. Look at how little they care about the trails. If we want actual money to go places we care about we have to do it ourselves.
We can hold non profits accountable in ways that we can't with the government. Accountability in government takes 4-6 years when we get an election cycle. If a non profit is mismanaging funds it takes 4-6 minutes for me to give my money to a different non profit.
At this point why don’t we just go back to the Articles of Confederation.
If we accept the federal government can’t do anything what are we paying taxes for?
Get rid of social security too, I’m not going to make it to whatever stupidly high age they raise retirement to.
I used to be a big government liberal, but the problem is eventually people you disagree with start running super government.
The federal government does an amazing number of things despite some inefficiencies. FEMA, FDA, EPA, SEC, FTC, FCC, national defense, interstate highways, border security (for better and worse), social security, Medicaid, Medicare, maintain embassies, foreign diplomacy, etc. As these things are gutted their absence or lack of capacity will be felt for decades.
I’m thinking these responsibilities can be shifted to the states. That’s defacto what’s going to happen as the federal government keeps cutting services.
If I want to live in a high tax state with a social safety net, cool. Others can move to Mississippi pay no taxes and brag about how they have a higher GPD than Spain ignoring the actual quality of life is much worse
Good for them I guess. I prefer a country where I don't have to move as the political winds change, just to maintain rights and benefits my ancestors fought for.
There's no such country. Authoritarianism is always around the corner, because the only thing that really prevents society from slipping into it is broad social consensus that it's undesirable, and you can't guarantee that it will remain long term. Constitutions etc fundamentally are just pieces of paper; they matter only to the extent people choose to believe they do.
I don't disagree with you, but it's the political reality of the situation being foisted upon us with violence by the far right. That was one of the reasons why I left Texas ASAP in late 2022 when I saw the winds changing.
The systems are cracking and breaking and I think the only outcome is going to be balkanization.
Fun fact: Canadian healthcare system, which generally tends to be the envy of US liberals, originated on provincial level and is still run primarily by the provinces.
There are many local, and not-so-local, groups that do this volunteer trail maintenance, and they could definitely use some monetary donations. There is the PCTA, mentioned up-thread ( pcta.org ). I volunteer for Trailkeepers of Oregon, based in Portland, and is active in many parts of the state. trailkeepersoforegon.org . There is also the Washington trails Association, and many more.
This feels like the trend of Americans having to start GoFundMe campaigns for surgeries and health care. (!) I mean, do what you feel you have to do in the urgent moment. But come on. What's the plan? This is not civilized.
You work towards reality tv where you vote on who lives and who dies. Used to be the domain of things like black mirror but the reality is coming far sooner than you think.
What would you suggest? I mean, we have a legitimate government that has been duly elected in what everyone broadly recognizes were free and fair elections. It just happens to be a government of crazies and grifters who our neighbors genuinely believe can save the country (whatever that means to them).
I’ve read some exchanges from an American friend with their other American friends on social media years ago. I noticed that many of the people were very against the idea of people they don’t think are deserving from benefiting from them. Even in abstract ways. For example people getting welfare who are actually scamming the system. Or having an outside benefit, like poor people getting free healthcare even if they can’t pay taxes. Trails would have been a good example for this group, “why am I paying for trails I don’t use?”.
I have a hypothesis that Americans are so scared of others benefitting from themselves that they miss that many, many more people are deserving and it makes for a better society. But they don’t see that and would rather punish the deserving and themselves, if it means the undeserving will hurt more. I think this thinking also bleeds into your social justice movements.
You don’t have to be communist to believe in maintaining public access to publicly-owned lands. Turns out National Parks, national forests, state parks, campgrounds, etc attract millions of people annually, and most of us are very glad that access is for everyone. As taxpayers we in fact pay for that public infrastructure, just like we pay for roads.
It’s really a weird effect. Like, how enjoyable even is a world where you’re rich, but surrounded by poor, uneducated, sick people, and all you can do is stay inside because the outside is caustic and ravaged?
Is it too much mental gymnastics that it’s a lot more interesting to talk to happy, sophisticated, educated people? To enjoy maintained public parks? To learn from the past in museums that present all kinds of viewpoints? To have a strong workforce that is confidently going to the doctor?
I’ll never get what’s so hard about things affecting other things, even if it doesn’t immediately yield a profit.
These people understand this. However they are not willing to have waste in the system. They want to help exactly who needs help and not scammers. If this cannot be done, then help no one.
I’m all for having better checks and stopping fraud. But not at the expense of helping no one. I’d rather keep a system running even if there is waste as long as it mostly works.
The problem is that the people who aren't contributing forget who is actually contributing and start tearing down the system because they have no clue how the world works anymore.
Given how it’s mostly states that take more from the federal government than they give, that are trying to destroy the federal government, my view on keeping the federal government has begun to soften. If Mississippi actively wants to shoot themselves in the foot, at some point, you just have to give up trying to disrupt their plan. Of course not everyone in Mississippi wants that, and many people who don’t will be seriously negatively affected, and won’t have the means to move, so they are why my position hasn’t changed yet.
The difference of course is that almost everyone uses or benefits from the economy of roads. Relatively very few people use trails and they use them for personal enjoyment.
You really can’t think of any ancillary benefits to the presence of accessible nature?
I feel like this sort of comment (from someone with 14k+ “karma” points) is a kind of DoS attack on their self-perceived opponents.
But nonetheless, here’s three benefits for all, regardless of usage:
- reduction in healthcare costs, both physical and mental
- increased tourism
- increased appreciation for environment which in turn loops back into this list from the top
Just focusing on health alone has wide ranging benefits. And if all you care about are tax revenues and GDP, a healthy, happy workforce goes quite a way to improving both.
I’m not going to list anymore because I got other things to do and think about. And this isn’t going to change your mind anyways.
I wonder if the parent to this comment is another "I don't use trails, so no one does!".
If you actually walk along a few trails on a regular cadence, it's clear that there are many different people - it's not just the same people every weekend.
The real difference is that people in cities pay huge amounts of tax to support the roads out to a relatively few houses in the country. Roads are the biggest outlay in every county I’ve lived in.
if we’re going to suggest silly stuff like that, let’s also suggest that cities stop subsidizing suburbs and their expansive infrastructure. sound good?
let’s take it a step further, let’s cut spending to anything that brings people joy! let’s all be crabs in a bucket together. convert public beaches to private beaches, public parks to private parks, make every school in the country a private school.
this will surely increase the well being of our society (sarcasm).
where does this crazy fallacy end? Taxes (and life) is not about min-maxing what benefits YOU personally. It’s about min-maxing your community and society. Kind of like how there is no “I” in team…
If you searched for "Arizona Trail southern terminus" you'll see what the terminus looks like today: a beautiful* monument shadowed by a half built useless wall that cost way more than the government spending to maintain some of the most beautiful trails in the world.
These cuts would not just put trail users (which aren't just hikers but also firefighters, hunters) in danger but also cause damage to national parks and national forests as trail users would have to find alternate routes that go off trail.
* It is, in my opinion, the most scenic terminus of all national scenic trails. The (half built) ugliness of the looming wall is an insult to the beauty of the American West.
The government has unions right? I'm surprised by now that no one called for a strike. Sure, it'd be rendered illegal, but if your job is being cut haphazardly, what have you got to lose?
Yes, it's a prisoners dilemma. But solidarity is pretty important here no matter what. We forget that the best case scenario in such a dilemma is to all work together. They know already that they cannot literally fire every employee in order to keep operating.
It’s been illegal for Feds to strike for a long time, regardless of union membership. The federal employees unions have been pretty active in coordinating legal action though - IIRC both main lawsuits leading to reinstatement of the probationary employees who were fired were coordinated by unions
>It notably excludes law enforcement. "Police and firefighters will continue to collectively bargain
I hate this timeline.
But yea, we are well overdue for a reminder on why we made unions to begin with. For their sakes they better hope all these lawsuits save them from much more disruptive actions.
Meanwhile the Interior Secretary, who oversees the National Parks Service, insists on freshly baked cookies:
> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum likes chocolate-chip cookies—preferably freshly baked and still warm.
> This peculiar fact became the talk of the Department of Interior in recent weeks after his chief of staff, JoDee Hanson, made an unusual request of the political appointees in his office: Learn to regularly bake cookies for Burgum and his guests, using the industrial ovens at the department headquarters.
> How rich? Forbes estimates Burgum’s net worth to be at least $100 million—enough to place him among the most loaded 2024 hopefuls (only Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy are richer), but far from enough to qualify for our World’s Billionaires list.
> Burgum sold the company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001. While working at Microsoft, he managed Microsoft Business Solutions. He has served as board chairman for Australian software company Atlassian and SuccessFactors. Burgum is the founder of Kilbourne Group, a Fargo-based real-estate development firm, and also is the co-founder of Arthur Ventures, a software venture capital group.
Automation is inevitable, but we must ensure displaced workers are retrained and supported in the transition. The government should incentivize companies to invest in upskilling employees. Short-term layoffs may be necessary, but the focus should be on adapting the workforce to new economic realities.
Brookings Institute has a good plot showing how much federal spending is being cut by this administration:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-federal-expendit...
Turns out all the cuts are only a fraction of a percent of the federal budget. It's an ideological purge, nothing to do with efficiency at all.
Yeah and the military is a third of our budget and no one in politics ever wants to cut that. There’s so much excess spending there we could cut $300 billion a year from it and still be the world’s bully. China builds infrastructure in other countries as a carrot to insinuate themselves in global affairs but we just build military bases as a stick. Seems like the former is a little bit better even if both approaches have issues.
Say what you will about Clinton, but slashing the military budget is what made the math actually work, and lead to a budget surplus. The austerity and efficiency stuff was peanuts in comparison.
Clinton's cuts were ultimately only temporary, since the military-industrial complex got fat again in the post 9/11 gold rush. A correction is long overdue.
That this isn't really even considered is pretty telling about the real motivations of the current regime.
And, remove the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations. It's out of control. A friend of mine told me her church bought a five-story office building. They dedicated the minimum amount of office space to "religious services", and they rent out the rest of the offices. They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
> They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
Was a Deacon at a church that bought a strip mall (fire sale price). They had to pay regular taxes on income from the other businesses. Even the church's own thrift and book sales had to collect and pay sales tax.
Perhaps that church is committing tax fraud?
Perhaps that church is committing tax fraud?
Perhaps it’s the third-or-fourth-hand story telling.
>Perhaps it’s the third-or-fourth-hand story telling.
Likely after having passed through several motivated reasoning filters along the way.
That church is 100% committing tax fraud. One of the non-profit colleges I worked at owned farm ground and buildings they rented out. They had to pay taxes on the rental income.
The point is that churches are exempt from some of the oversight requirements that other tax-exempt charitable organizations have to comply with. This makes it much easier for them to commit fraud.
Churches don't even have to maintain any financial records for the IRS. They're impossible to audit.
> They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.
That seems fraudulent.
I was a member of a non-profit org that owned a building and rented out some of it. We paid no taxes on the parts that were used for the non-profit, but owed property taxes on the rental.
The military is not a third of the budget, it's about 13% of spending this FY so far which is a lot, but almost 3x lower than you suggest (closer to 1/8th than 1/3rd).
“The budget” and “spending” are not the same things in the federal government.
Point still stands. It would be responsible to cut at least $300B.
> Point still stands. It would be responsible to cut at least $300B.
It never stood - what facts and reasons have you provided to support it?
What do you reckon is the right amount to spend on defense?
I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities without hitting DOD civilians or military employees immediately. There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years, if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point. I've seen IT efforts that cost $25-50 million/year and are already 5 years late and delivering no value (no partial version + updates over the years, these are big bang failed Waterfall projects).
Probably more by improving how other functions perform and identifying people like a guy I worked with a decade ago who literally slept at his desk all day and never got fired for it (not even a union shop, just supervisors refusing to do their job).
Thanks. Though I was hoping to hear how SequiaHope arrived at his estimate of what the correct level of defense funding should be.
> I suspect we could cut the DOD budget by 10-20% and maintain current capabilities
What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!)
DoD before the rise of China (and Russia) could afford to cut back. But China is an enormous problem, and an enormous problem of resources.
Wealth drives victory in war more than anything else, except maybe population. Obviously China far exceeds the US and allies in population. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economy was (much, I think) smaller than the US, and the Warsaw Pact's was smaller than NATOs. By 2050, with four times the population, if China is only half as wealthy as the US per capita, it would have an economy twice as large. The US has never faced a threat like that.
DoD already cuts and restricts many programs because they can't afford them. For example, the NGAD fighter plane - the next generation fighter plane, a big deal - faces great uncertainty (despite Trump's showboating) because the US can't really afford it. That's just one program of many.
Allies help share the burden, but we are alienating all of them.
> There are a lot of programs that are failing to execute and have for years
Which ones? And programs exist to solve problems - what better ways do you have for solving the problems? The problems don't go away.
> if they're already late then we aren't getting any value from them at this point
We should cancel every late program? Again, what better solutions do you have? Start a new program and lose the progress of the existing one?
Now these are all just words backed by suspicions. Give us some reason to believe!
> What is that based on? Just suspicion? (At least that honest!)
It's based on the sections of DOD I worked in, with, and had visibility into around me, along with reading GAO reports (there are too many to read them all, but grab a few and you'll see some remarkable waste and failures). At one point I had a job to help a group become more efficient (in context: delivering on time instead of late, delivering on or at least near budget instead of grossly over), what I saw looking under the hood was exactly what I suspected. A small corner of the DOD that was wasting at least 10-20% of their budget every year because of ineffective coordination across teams often over absolutely stupid things, and that was just the parts I studied relevant to my job at the time. I'm extrapolating from that experience and the other information I've seen over the years.
And, importantly, I'm talking about what can be cut before it impacts capabilities and readiness. Somewhere in this range you'll have to do reorganizations and realignments to continue reducing the DOD budget while maintaining capabilities.
If we went back in time 7 or 8 years I could give you a lot better information than that because I was more actively tracking things. Here are a couple reports though that demonstrate the kinds of things I saw at the time:
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106912
I haven't gone over it all but it's not a pretty picture. Most of the projects they examined are delayed by more than a year, some as much as three, and have had median budget increases of $163 million. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. IT procurement in DOD is fundamentally broken, and accounts for billions in wasted spending.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106749
$1.84 billion spent on modernizing ships that will never sail.
It's possible that some efforts will start, become OBE and abandoned after spending a lot of money (maybe even billions) but this is normal in DOD, rather than extraordinary.
No idea. But let’s unleash DOGE on it. Cut 50%. If, “oopsie doopsie our bad!”, that causes problems, we can raise it up a bit.
military bases are also a carrot.
theyre stocks to the neighbors but not the host
The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families.
The individual agencies collectively spend only around $100b.
Likewise the other large fraction of the total budget outside the DoD is healthcare spending. We spend a huge amount of money and we don't seem to have healthcare outcomes which justify these costs.
Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. 85% of that money comes from individual tax payers and only 7% from businesses. The system is flailing from top to bottom.
Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government.
Why prefix with "Right now"? It's been roughly 20% since 1975, and only marginally lower for the 25 years before that.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
The other side of that (taxes) has changed much more substantially during that time (lower).
> Why prefix with "Right now"?
I'm probably just a bit older than you might assume.
> and only marginally lower for the 25 years before that.
Really I was doing a bad job of highlighting this problem:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S
> has changed much more substantially during that time (lower).
The burden has shifted /more/ onto individual tax payers and less from business and excise taxes was the particular point I was driving at. It suggests more clearly who actually got those "lower" taxes and why our linked graphs paint a bad future.
> The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families.
Imagine the benefits to defense if the US reduced health care costs from the 2x-3x it spends relative to peers. I've thought that would be an appealing way to sell healthcare reform to Republicans.
To be fair- Hegseth has said he wants to cut 8% a year for five years from the pentagon. I strongly disagree, the military should be getting more money. Now is not the time for cuts.
I'm not sure they have the authority to do this anyway they lack power of the purse and all that.
Look at what passed the house, Medicaid cuts and major military increase
> Now is not the time for cuts.
Why do you think that? I would think the technological advantage the US military currently has doesn’t need more money to maintain, but maybe I’m missing something.
25 years of warfare have taken their toll.
Most of the airframes are in their twilight years. The Navy is in a conundrum... the surface fleet strategy is probably not strategically sound, and we slowed down submarine production at one point so many of those assets are also aging and in need of maintenance.
The Ukraine war is full of learnings that should be driving transformation and investment. Reality is that a rogue billionaire could probably build drones that could threaten strategic military assets in the field. As time goes on, that capability will likely get cheaper and better.
Because the “rules based international order” is a god that requires regular sacrifices of american blood and treasure.
Where do you see technological advantage over China? There is some, but not in everything and not by the large margins the US was accustomed to.
You are missing:
The technological edge is unknown against a near peer.
Any edge has a non-zero maintenance cost.
Adversaries are not going to stop improving their capabilities so any advantage naturally decays.
The US Military directly employs a couple million people.
Our current military industrial complex is highly reliant on free trade agreements with allies.
The US does not have a technological advantage. This is the type of American Exceptionalism that needs to die. If we got into a full-scale war with China, we would lose. A big part of the US military strength is the logistical network with allies that Trump is systematically destroying.
22.4% of the US Military budget goes to salaries of military personnel. Civilian contractors are part of the separate operations budget but I can’t find the breakout of their salaries. So there’s a lot of consumer spending and economic activity supported by military spending.
We spend Elon Musk’s entire net worth accumulated over a lifetime on the US military every 75 days or so.
We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.
Executive orders were meant for national emergencies. Apparently we're under threat from everyone from whom we have a trade imbalance, even islands with no humans on them!
(And it's not like partisans are locking up Congress to spite him.)
You guys are under threat - from your President.
and an even greater threat was from whatever's in people's underwear - that was covered early on [0].
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defe...
We are literally two days away from Trumpers hating penguins because Trumps people are such amateurs they put tariffs on these islands and now the cult has to defend it.
> We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.
Would you just start spending when the war starts? Then you'll get a war much sooner (the enemy will see your weakness) but you'll save money (the war will end quickly).
> not under threat
China, most of all? Russia? Iran?
None of those countries want a war with the US.
That doesn't mean they don't want things that may lead to war, and may want them badly enough to risk war, such as Taiwan or parts of Europe.
If the US is weaker militarily, the risk is less and they are more likely to take it.
that puts musks net worth at 150b. you might want to update your numbers.
> We’re literally torching two billion dollars a day on the military when we’re not at war and not under threat.
We were in a (physical) proxy war with Russia via Ukraine until very recently, and we are currently in a digital war against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and probably other nation-states.
Should this be under the purview of the actual military? I don't know, although that arrangement is effective for Israel's cybersecurity command.
Regardless, there is an active need for defense spending now, just not the way we've been spending it.
>and we are currently in a digital war against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and probably other nation-states.
Not according to this administration - they recently ended "cyber operations" against Russia:
https://apnews.com/article/cyber-command-russia-putin-trump-...
So, we're basically going to just let Russia do whatever they want.
It would be foolish to cut the military now, since the US will soon need it to pacify its 51st state, Canada.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or obtuse.
Why not both?
From Prof. Tim Snyder, https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point
> War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist.
> The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself.
The US is preparing for war. It’s not a joke.
I just don't see how states like California would go along with that, not to mention the EU, Russia (because of control over the arctic) or China (maybe Trump gives them the go ahead on Taiwan).
Ah don't worry they'll just cut the history professors at the military academies. That's what we want, an officer class with no media literacy skills or an understanding of the context that they live in.
/s, of course.
Find the government doing something you disagree with. Call it "fraud" and axe it. Announce to the world how much "fraud" you found. Rinse. Repeat.
All the while not prosecuting anyone for all the "fraud" you're finding.
That's right from the dictator's basic playbook:
They never say 'I'm jailing / prosecuting these people to suppress my enemies', they accuse them of fraud, corruption, etc. Xi Jinping did it in China, the new dictator in Saudi Arabia did it, ... it's an old one.
Note that dictators are vulnerable - they still need to justify themselves to the public.
And between legal costs and the farm bailout for the tariffs, it shouldn’t be surprising that this “efficiency” administration is blowing out our deficit by a few trillion dollars.
>it shouldn’t be surprising
The current flavour of politics is not pragmatic. It’s a luxury belief system.
The left wing excesses of the 2010s were luxury beliefs, the current thing is all just luxury beliefs too.
Basically, when people are economically comfortable and have no real problems, they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something.
I have luxury beliefs of my own, many people do. We are free to hold them in North America. But there’s a cost, and that cost shouldn’t be surprising.
The defense of this regime's economic strategy (particularly the market crash and looming economic hardships) is doing political horseshoe theory and entering Maoist territory with surprising speed.
"You'll be rich because we're so good with the economy" has raced over to "We've been rotting in decadent lifestyles, true strong patriots will be happy to sacrifice for the glory of the fatherland."
Yeah its remarkable.
"Tons of people globally are screwing screws into iphones. We are going to bring those jobs here."
"Inexpensive goods from overseas aren't actually prosperity. You don't want these things."
"You probably didn't earn your job in the government anyway."
True decadence is looking at a society that is broadly functioning and deciding "we need a fight" and blowing it up just for some aggressive notion of dominance.
That's an authoritarian one in general, though, not just Maoist by any means.
Don’t let internet memes like “luxury beliefs” do too much of the heavy lifting of actual thinking for ya
It’s an apt description of a perennial feature of politics. People have a pain in the foot, so they shoot a hole in it and complain about having a bullet wound.
Is there better, less charged terminology?
More like: they are no longer starving, and can now tend to the pain in their foot.
I've heard similar versions of this argument, usually something about modern poor people having it pretty good because they have microwave, while Carnegie didn't.
>I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. [0]
We're now complaining about people studying painting, poetry, etc.
[0]https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L178005...
That Adams quote is nice, and has a similar historical flavour to some of Milton Friedman’s arguments.
That said, choosing a field of study only has the risk of bankrupting yourself.
The excesses of the 21st century, whether that’s blowing up the supply chains that got you out of stagflation, or injecting Maoist rhetoric into academia, will have a much larger and more destructive blowback.
This is the fallacy of composition. A party is made up of diverse independent groups who are demanding different things. When one of those groups gets "comfortable", it allows other groups to become (relatively) louder and steer the party toward their demands.
It's not all the same person, getting comfortable and making up problems.
> they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something.
Does this mean that when we're all poor the Right will stop demonizing trans people?
> The left wing excesses of the 2010s
What on earth does that even mean
99% of the time, it means that the speaker is deeply offended that trans people exist.
Hating LGBT people is itself a luxury belief.
The spendthrift belief is to just not care what people do with their personal lives, what bathroom they use, etc.
And, of course, comprehensive sex ed that reduces the negative externalities of human sexuality on society, and doesn’t interfere with the positive.
> what people do with their personal lives
This isn't the issue. What people choose to do in their personal lives should be accepted or at least tolerated, as long as it's not harming anyone.
> what bathroom they use
This is the problematic part. A male using the women's bathroom is committing a violation against women.
> etc.
This includes males in women's prisons, males in women's changing/locker rooms, males in women's sports. All of which are violations against women.
It isn't about "hating LGBT people" as you suggest, but about compelling males to respect women's and girls' boundaries.
For far too long, a subset of males have been getting away with not doing so, just because these males express a desire to be female. It's quite absurd that it's taken Trump of all people to attempt to rectify this. The political left should have reeled in their activists, who were promoting all this, a long time ago.
> This is the problematic part. A male using the women's bathroom is committing a violation against women
It's mostly men saying this [1]. (Specifically, uneducated men over the age of 50. Especially if they're conservative, Republican or attend weekly religious service.)
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/645704/slim-majority-adults-say...
The survey you linked did not ask that question.
Look at that, our luxury beliefs collide!
Mine, lax and libertarian, perhaps too unconcerned with traditional gender roles and stereotypes.
Yours, worried and authoritarian, focused on an imaginary moral panic propagated by reactionary Internet forums.
So, which luxury belief costs more? Mine might require a transition to single user bathrooms, yours depriving a gender minority of liberty…
Traditional gender roles and stereotypes are part of the reason why some males end up desiring to be women, because they've confused female with feminine. There's nothing wrong with men wearing dresses or indeed any feminine clothing. But thinking this somehow transitions them into being women is ludicrous and sexist.
Ideally we'd be rid of these stereotypes. They're part of the problem.
> Yours, worried and authoritarian, focused on an imaginary moral panic propagated by reactionary Internet forums.
The authoritarian side is the one insisting that males who call themselves women actually are women, and punishing those who disagree. In some states it is actually illegal to have a female-only space. It has to be female plus any male who says he's a woman.
That's not liberty is it, certainly not for women who want or need spaces without any males present.
There are so many cases where this type of policy has demonstrably harmed women. At the most extreme end is males being incarcerated in women's prisons on this basis, who have then raped, sexually assaulted and even impregnated the women locked up with them.
This is the consequence of these "luxury beliefs" capturing institutions of the state.
Alternatively, consider the hugely negative effect their advocacy movement has had on workers' rights and women's rights and the environment.
They've effectively destroyed the most progressive party from the inside, by having it push ludicrous and unpopular policy that privileges males and actively harms women and girls.
Now we have to put up with Trump for the next four years or more because the political left refused to rein in their most extreme activists.
I think racism accounts for a bigger chunk than you're leaving for it here.
It _could_ be that, too, but as it turns out, in this particular case, it was the scary scary transes (see their response elsewhere in the thread).
With people who go on about 'luxury beliefs', the belief that they're referring to is nearly always 'trans people are people', I assume because it's such a new coinage (it's only a few years old) and that was what the far-right were mostly scared of at the time.
You are the only one who brought up gender minorities, as well as the TERF I disagreed with.
Anyone wingbrained enough can have luxury beliefs, and I’m not immune.
For example, I previously supported a very liberal drug policy, and still do in many respects… though I realize it failed spectacularly in the fentanyl era and have had to live with the consequences of that.
Better than the alternative? Well, we aren’t ruining as many lives over cannabis…
It means the guy is stupid.
Maoist rhetoric and hyperpoliticization in academia, seeping out to the broader society.
Or in internet cultural terms tumblr/redditization of environments that should be intellectually neutral, because “it’s called being a good person sweatie”
> We are free to hold them in North America
You are, as long as you're not brown.
> You are, as long as you're not brown
I’m brown. I’m fine. This administration is at war with Americans who aren’t rich.
My taxes are being cut. I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods. They’re mostly white. But they’re not rich.
> I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods.
I don't understand this sentence.
Are you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump?
> you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump?
I’m buying cropland from creditors. They can sell it because the farmers are behind on their loans. They’re failing to make payments because we’re in a trade war.
As an ethical limit, yes, I look up the property owner and have only been buying if they’re registered Republican. That doesn’t mean they voted for Trump. (Though they’re all in heavily Trump-voting precincts.) And I don’t think people should lose their farms just because of how they voted. But it does increase the chances I’m not profiting from someone who had nothing to do with a mess they found themselves in versus someone who sort of brought it on themselves.
Isn’t the trade war only a few days old?
Anything smaller than the largest factory farms have been fighting for survival for an entire generation, sometimes longer.
There was one in the first term too. Farmers suffered quite a bit if I remember correctly.
Thank you for doing the lord’s work.
I’m doing work that makes me money. It’s entirely orthogonal to my skin tone. My point is this administration isn’t helping poor white men, the folks who voted for him, he’s just advantaging those who were lucky enough to start this imperial transition with capital on hand.
Poor people get hurt most by wasteful belief systems. Sure the demographics might correlate positively or negatively with poverty, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s primarily economics.
After all, rich people can eat the extra $$$ imposed by tariffs. Maybe with grumbling… but, at a certain income level paying $5 vs $2 for a can of corn or soup won’t materially affect you, so you can use that extra $3 you paid to complain about immigration, or hierarchies or whatever.
he said brown, not poor.
You didn't even mention the immense new tax giveaways to the rich.
We are living in a post-argument rhetorical landscape. Untruths aren't stated openly, they're baked into words via the constant abuse of of the english language.
It's sad to see how many are utterly defenseless.
The budget for the NPS is so small that if they shut it down, the effect on the deficit would be too small to measure. But someone would still need to manage those properties so it would be "necessary" to sell them off to private interests.
I really hope that's not going to happen, but that fits with strangling the parks for the necessary resources needed to operate. (And then mandating that they remain open.)
Was always going to be when you looked at the areas he promised not to cut.
But 70 million Americans don’t think that way.
> Turns out all the cuts are only a fraction of a percent of the federal budget.
Looking at it another way, the cuts are actually decreasing overall efficiency since they're cutting things that deliver decent benefits given that they only cost a small fraction of federal spending. Maintaining things like hiking trails and parks is incredibly cheap compared to the benefits they produce in terms of intangibles like well being and related economic activity. The National Parks Service for example helps generate a huge amount of tourism dollars that exceeds their budget several times over.
> It's an ideological purge...
See that's the part I really struggle with. Cratering foreign aid has an obvious ideological component, but who hates hiking trails? Like I'm sure there are a few people who hate the outdoors and a handful of oligarchs who want to privatize everything, but where's the constituency for it?
> Looking at it another way, the cuts are actually decreasing overall efficiency since they're cutting things that deliver decent benefits given that they only cost a small fraction of federal spending.
And especially when they're targeting the IRS. What use is it cutting 1% if you lose 10% of your revenue because you don't have the resources to pursue outright cheats or lawyered-up people.
The IRS is political - the Republicans have made cutting (some say eliminating) the IRS a priority for many years now.
The IRS makes a huge profit margin on average from audits on the 1%-and-up folks because so many of them are cheating on their taxes.
Even before all this, the IRS was spending most of its auditing resources on auditing the poor - especially people using the earned income credit - and losing thousands of dollars or more on each audit because they either didn't find anything, or it was an inconsequential amount of money.
The IRS cuts are the most obvious ones, since they will clearly end up losing the government far more money than they save. But it would be an interesting, if challenging, project to try to do the same kind of thing with other government agencies. And unlike the IRS, most federal agencies don't generate revenue directly for the government but likely have indirect economic benefits.
National parks generate tourism dollars, funding for science research leads to new advances with economic impact, etc. The "savings" from the cuts assumes the money is being set on fire with no economic benefits, but even if you disregard the obvious direct impacts like federal employees or recipients of federal dollars buying stuff just like everyone else, the impact of the service being provided is almost certainly non-trivial if admittedly harder to measure. Any reasonable approach to efficiency and cost cutting needs to take that into account.
Sub out “who hates hiking trails?” and sub in “who hates having popular government programs?”
Answer: people who don’t want constituents to believe that the government can be effective and deliver good services. That’s the ideological component.
“Government bad” is amazing platform to run on because it’s pretty easy to deliver.
Other countries are issuing travel advisories for the US and I know at least two Canadians who have said that not only are they not buying anything made in the US, but everyone they know has declared they will be crossing the border - both because of the danger but also as part of their boycotting the states. Lawful border crossings between the US and Canada have plunged. Canadian tourism is a significant part of the economy, though the effect won't really be felt until summertime.
I don't blame them in the slightest for either.
The tariff situation is a disaster that will only further increase the tax burden and cost of living on the poor and middle class. For rich people, a 30-50% increase in their grocery costs is barely a drop in the bucket of their budget they won't feel beyond getting annoyed.
The low income energy assistance program LIHEAP just got shut down, not even with any notice so states can try to spool up something. If this had happened a month or two ago we'd be seeing news stories about seniors freezing to death in the midwest and northeast. Soon we're going to see hyperthemia stories. In some areas AC isn't a luxury, it's a necessity as much as heating is in the cold winter states, if not more so. You can't "bundle up" from the heat.
For a large swath of America, this will mean people going hungry. And turning to property crime to try to make ends meet....or to get into jail where conditions might really suck, but at least their most basic needs are (kind of) being met.
As an Australian I would avoid any travel to the US at the moment. Especially after reading about the MMA coach who got detained and jailed on entry to the country.
It's one thing to be denied entry and put on a plane back to your original country, entirely another to be put into federal prison for an indefinite amount of time before being sent back.
America clearly doesn't want visitors at the moment.
I think all of the high profile detentions have happened at land borders. For this MMA coach, Renato Subotic, I can't quite tell, he says he was stopped at the border, which could be at an airport, but sounds more like at a land border.
It's a lot easier to put you on a return flight if you're at the airport.
It might be reasonable to consider visiting the US but being sure to arrive by air, and not by land. But it's understandable if you choose to visit somewhere that's more friendly.
It's even easier to send someone back across the land border, surely?
Not if the person isn't a national of either country. At least currently for the US and Mexico and the US and Canada, if a person crosses the land border and is refused entry to the other country, there's no procedure to act as if they never left the first one; it's treated as a new entry, which may likely be refused (having been refused by another country is a risk factor for refusal).
Both countries can't refuse, so one will have to detain.
> See that's the part I really struggle with. Cratering foreign aid has an obvious ideological component, but who hates hiking trails? Like I'm sure there are a few people who hate the outdoors and a handful of oligarchs who want to privatize everything, but where's the constituency for it?
They don't care about constituency. They could pass these cuts as part of a deal but choose not to specifically because it wouldn't be popular. They are trying to sell national parks to oligarchs.
It's sabotage under the cover of efficiency.
They need to win any ideological battle that they can get in order to start the "assault" against Medicaid and Medicare, which I guess it's where most of the money goes to (that and the Military, but I don't think they'll drastically touch that, no matter the current discourse).
In other words, if you show people that the Government can be dismantled little by little without any big revolution coming their way, then they'll next have the impetus to go for the jugular, i.e. Medicaid and Medicare.
> Turns out all the cuts are only a fraction of a percent of the federal budget. It's an ideological purge, nothing to do with efficiency at all.
It always ways. It is a media campaign where significant damage is caused to a large number of programs - with the claim that they are cutting expense. But actually none of these cuts will cause any meaningful reduction in government or deficit because these programs never were the big ticket items. The biggest ticket item is tax handouts to the rich. They are not touching that.
Many people can see through this presidential scam. But the MAGA cult is so full of vitriol and hatred for others that they don't see the scam. They don't realize that MAGA voters are themselves being scammed by their beloved Trump.
And thus, we still have always Trumpers. America is just a sad country right now.
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I'm sorry that reality has a well-known liberal bias, but the Brookings link that was posted is simply data - it's not opinion or analysis:
> This data tool allows users to track the flow of federal funds in real time. It shows actual daily, weekly, monthly, and annual processed outlays to key programs and departments, as well as to states, Congress, and the Judiciary. This tool only reports outlays of federal funds, meaning the actual transmission of funds from the federal government to another entity.
> This tool makes few to no adjustments to the data, meaning that cyclical, seasonal, idiosyncratic, and expected variation in patterns of outlays over time remain. Because this tool only reports outlays, one cannot discern directly whether there is a gap between obligated funds and their outlay. Furthermore, if federal agencies have changed the rate at which they are newly obligating funds (e.g., by declining to sign new contracts), those changes would only gradually be reflected in outlays.
The fact that you attack the messenger (and not in any way questioning the methodology of the data collection, for example) explains why so many of us in the current environment are so sick and tired of these lazy attempts at "argument". I'm sure you have your own alternative facts, though.
Where are the Marxists?
Calling someone a communist or socialist is the latest duckspeak from minitrue. It’s intended to suppress all thought. It’s also intended to be impossible to refute. It’s like if you were trying to muscle in on a cave dive rescue of some kids and suggested the rescuers use your submarine, and then they tell you your submarine is useless, so you insinuate that they are pedophiles. It’s a meaningless tar-baby statement meant to distract from meaningful discussion.
The irony of these statements is Harris’ father is an actual Marxist who doesn’t speak to his daughter partially because she is an ideological opposite.
I feel like either -
A) people hurling Karl Marx around have never actually read and considered his writings
B) they are being intellectually dishonest and creating the pretext for ideological oppression
Or, mostly likely c) all of the above
I am sad our future has taken this turn into darkly oppressive dystopia. I still think we can save things and get back to a world where all political views hash out compromise, but I fear we aren’t going in the right direction with no clear leader of right minded cooperation emerging from the cacophony. I mourn that my daughter will live in the world the conservative right is constructing for her generation - one that rolls back everything my grandparents generation gifted to me.
I mean Fox news removed the stock market ticker and started saying saying 'we will be poor and we will be happy' and 'we shouldn't be consuming so much stuff' so the Fox News/Trump administration talking heads?
The USA is rocketing towards bankruptcy, it's just not sustainable.
It’s my understanding that debt is mostly held in the US by Americans and that a country that runs a debt in a currency it controls isn’t anything like household debt.
That said, what would it mean for the US to go bankrupt?
No, it's not. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of many people who get ginned up about this. Debt is the most powerful tool of a nation.
The US is a sovereign, the sovereign. The country can borrow until the faith and credit in our ability to pay is lost. There's no such thing as bankruptcy, you can default or print money.
The US is rocketing towards depression. Slowing down the velocity of money is the single worst thing you can do for an economy. We're implementing the largest tax increase in history, taking away pensioner benefits, and pushing the cost of healthcare up, nuking consumer demand. There's no adults keeping Trump away from doing stupid shit -- he'll set off an economic death spiral.
We're spending a trillion a year to service debt. The equivalent of ~45% of all income tax revenues.
Utter insanity.
A lot of Trump supporters would identify the super-rich as the right demographic to pay that.
These cuts are particularly nasty because federal spending on public trail maintenance is already razor thin. A ton of the Pacific Crest Trail and other scenic trails are already primarily maintained by volunteer groups doing work like log clearing, brush removal, and tread work. Trail users ourselves—hikers, mountain bikers, or trail runners—already put in hundreds of volunteer hours every season doing the basic trail work, and that's just regular seasonal maintenance. Significant work rebuilding parts of the Appalachian Trail and PCT after wildfires or hurricanes will likely not happen this year, or for years to come, unless volunteers fill in more gaps.
Can we start a non profit where people can donate for things like this so we can actually get funding without relying on government?
Let's also pool some money to help the sick pay for health care, the young pay for education and those affected by layoffs tackle the transition. Heck, we could even start our own government.
You know what makes the government the government, right?
You’re missing the key piece.
It'll be a government for the people, by the people.
Those people will have to be well-armed.
Don't worry, we'll get help from the French and the Spanish.
why not? all the socialists can start "the big socialist fund" and contribute part of their paychecks to this fund while the rest of us libertarians/right-wingers will contribute nothing. win/win right?
Sure. We don't pay tax to you, though. We can be trade buddies.
Are the libertarians and right wingers going to not use the services they don't want to pay for? Or receive the benefits? Are they going to leave the educated society and start their own somewhere else?
Hey, I don't see why libertarians shouldn't join in. This is essentially a guild.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Security...
Such a nonprofit exists, it's called the federal government.
Maybe the super-rich can create their own nonprofit to fund commercial space tourism or whatever absurdity they've deemed so important that it needs spending elsewhere to be cut and diverted to them.
The government has proven to be extremely inefficient at managing our money. Look at how little they care about the trails. If we want actual money to go places we care about we have to do it ourselves.
We can hold non profits accountable in ways that we can't with the government. Accountability in government takes 4-6 years when we get an election cycle. If a non profit is mismanaging funds it takes 4-6 minutes for me to give my money to a different non profit.
At this point why don’t we just go back to the Articles of Confederation.
If we accept the federal government can’t do anything what are we paying taxes for? Get rid of social security too, I’m not going to make it to whatever stupidly high age they raise retirement to.
I used to be a big government liberal, but the problem is eventually people you disagree with start running super government.
The federal government does an amazing number of things despite some inefficiencies. FEMA, FDA, EPA, SEC, FTC, FCC, national defense, interstate highways, border security (for better and worse), social security, Medicaid, Medicare, maintain embassies, foreign diplomacy, etc. As these things are gutted their absence or lack of capacity will be felt for decades.
I’m thinking these responsibilities can be shifted to the states. That’s defacto what’s going to happen as the federal government keeps cutting services.
If I want to live in a high tax state with a social safety net, cool. Others can move to Mississippi pay no taxes and brag about how they have a higher GPD than Spain ignoring the actual quality of life is much worse
Good for them I guess. I prefer a country where I don't have to move as the political winds change, just to maintain rights and benefits my ancestors fought for.
There's no such country. Authoritarianism is always around the corner, because the only thing that really prevents society from slipping into it is broad social consensus that it's undesirable, and you can't guarantee that it will remain long term. Constitutions etc fundamentally are just pieces of paper; they matter only to the extent people choose to believe they do.
I don't disagree with you, but it's the political reality of the situation being foisted upon us with violence by the far right. That was one of the reasons why I left Texas ASAP in late 2022 when I saw the winds changing.
The systems are cracking and breaking and I think the only outcome is going to be balkanization.
Fun fact: Canadian healthcare system, which generally tends to be the envy of US liberals, originated on provincial level and is still run primarily by the provinces.
There are many local, and not-so-local, groups that do this volunteer trail maintenance, and they could definitely use some monetary donations. There is the PCTA, mentioned up-thread ( pcta.org ). I volunteer for Trailkeepers of Oregon, based in Portland, and is active in many parts of the state. trailkeepersoforegon.org . There is also the Washington trails Association, and many more.
That's what I'm encouraging but people wanna downvote because they're convinced government is doing a great job with our money.
This feels like the trend of Americans having to start GoFundMe campaigns for surgeries and health care. (!) I mean, do what you feel you have to do in the urgent moment. But come on. What's the plan? This is not civilized.
You work towards reality tv where you vote on who lives and who dies. Used to be the domain of things like black mirror but the reality is coming far sooner than you think.
What would you suggest? I mean, we have a legitimate government that has been duly elected in what everyone broadly recognizes were free and fair elections. It just happens to be a government of crazies and grifters who our neighbors genuinely believe can save the country (whatever that means to them).
I kind of like the idea of the people using the trails paying for them in kind.
I’ve read some exchanges from an American friend with their other American friends on social media years ago. I noticed that many of the people were very against the idea of people they don’t think are deserving from benefiting from them. Even in abstract ways. For example people getting welfare who are actually scamming the system. Or having an outside benefit, like poor people getting free healthcare even if they can’t pay taxes. Trails would have been a good example for this group, “why am I paying for trails I don’t use?”.
I have a hypothesis that Americans are so scared of others benefitting from themselves that they miss that many, many more people are deserving and it makes for a better society. But they don’t see that and would rather punish the deserving and themselves, if it means the undeserving will hurt more. I think this thinking also bleeds into your social justice movements.
There's a very vocal segment of Americans — I live among many of them — who very much believe this. It's not all Americans.
It’s enough of us. A couple pockets of pro-community mutualists here and there don’t make enough of a difference to influence domestic policy.
You don’t have to be communist to believe in maintaining public access to publicly-owned lands. Turns out National Parks, national forests, state parks, campgrounds, etc attract millions of people annually, and most of us are very glad that access is for everyone. As taxpayers we in fact pay for that public infrastructure, just like we pay for roads.
It’s really a weird effect. Like, how enjoyable even is a world where you’re rich, but surrounded by poor, uneducated, sick people, and all you can do is stay inside because the outside is caustic and ravaged?
Is it too much mental gymnastics that it’s a lot more interesting to talk to happy, sophisticated, educated people? To enjoy maintained public parks? To learn from the past in museums that present all kinds of viewpoints? To have a strong workforce that is confidently going to the doctor?
I’ll never get what’s so hard about things affecting other things, even if it doesn’t immediately yield a profit.
These people understand this. However they are not willing to have waste in the system. They want to help exactly who needs help and not scammers. If this cannot be done, then help no one.
I’m all for having better checks and stopping fraud. But not at the expense of helping no one. I’d rather keep a system running even if there is waste as long as it mostly works.
The problem is that the people who aren't contributing forget who is actually contributing and start tearing down the system because they have no clue how the world works anymore.
Given how it’s mostly states that take more from the federal government than they give, that are trying to destroy the federal government, my view on keeping the federal government has begun to soften. If Mississippi actively wants to shoot themselves in the foot, at some point, you just have to give up trying to disrupt their plan. Of course not everyone in Mississippi wants that, and many people who don’t will be seriously negatively affected, and won’t have the means to move, so they are why my position hasn’t changed yet.
Yeah, let’s make road users spend a couple days a year pouring asphalt as well. It’s only fair
The difference of course is that almost everyone uses or benefits from the economy of roads. Relatively very few people use trails and they use them for personal enjoyment.
You really can’t think of any ancillary benefits to the presence of accessible nature?
I feel like this sort of comment (from someone with 14k+ “karma” points) is a kind of DoS attack on their self-perceived opponents.
But nonetheless, here’s three benefits for all, regardless of usage:
- reduction in healthcare costs, both physical and mental
- increased tourism
- increased appreciation for environment which in turn loops back into this list from the top
Just focusing on health alone has wide ranging benefits. And if all you care about are tax revenues and GDP, a healthy, happy workforce goes quite a way to improving both.
I’m not going to list anymore because I got other things to do and think about. And this isn’t going to change your mind anyways.
The number of people who use state and federal parks in a given year is roughly equal to the number of people who fly.
It’s definitely a few notches above “very few”.
I wonder if the parent to this comment is another "I don't use trails, so no one does!".
If you actually walk along a few trails on a regular cadence, it's clear that there are many different people - it's not just the same people every weekend.
The real difference is that people in cities pay huge amounts of tax to support the roads out to a relatively few houses in the country. Roads are the biggest outlay in every county I’ve lived in.
Then the rural people vote to get rid of state run infrastructure, and then get mad at the city slickers because they still have nice roads.
Nothing wrong with a society wanting to have a nice thing and choosing to paying for it. Trails and parks are politically quite popular.
Relatively people use your residential street. Why not let it turn to mud then? Wider economy won't miss it.
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We should also make sure that anyone who hasn't paid the trail toll or contributed physically are not allowed to use it, it's also only fair.
if we’re going to suggest silly stuff like that, let’s also suggest that cities stop subsidizing suburbs and their expansive infrastructure. sound good?
let’s take it a step further, let’s cut spending to anything that brings people joy! let’s all be crabs in a bucket together. convert public beaches to private beaches, public parks to private parks, make every school in the country a private school.
this will surely increase the well being of our society (sarcasm).
where does this crazy fallacy end? Taxes (and life) is not about min-maxing what benefits YOU personally. It’s about min-maxing your community and society. Kind of like how there is no “I” in team…
We do.
- Moped
GA-ME 2010
Volunteer maintainer Smarts Mountain Ranger Trail (AT side trail) 2021-present.
Landowner and volunteer maintainer on the Cross Rivendell Trail (CRT) 2023-present
My wife, who also thru-hiked the AT, before we met is on the CRT board.
We spent three days of our vacation in 2023 helping to re-roof Jeffers Brook Shelter on the AT.
We are also members of the ATC, GMC, MATC, and PCTA and have been for some combination of those between us since before we met.
ETA:
Oh yeah, also two weeks ago we helped hump a 200 pound bear box in to Velvet Rocks Shelter on the AT.
I kinda like the idea that people don’t have to pay for public land access.
The idea is there’s no public land. The ultra wealthy will own it all and you’ll be confined to your Manna-style death camps.
You will not be confined, you will have the freedom of choice whether to do that or be coerced into doing that
Yes. That's how it works. They're called taxes.
If you searched for "Arizona Trail southern terminus" you'll see what the terminus looks like today: a beautiful* monument shadowed by a half built useless wall that cost way more than the government spending to maintain some of the most beautiful trails in the world.
These cuts would not just put trail users (which aren't just hikers but also firefighters, hunters) in danger but also cause damage to national parks and national forests as trail users would have to find alternate routes that go off trail.
* It is, in my opinion, the most scenic terminus of all national scenic trails. The (half built) ugliness of the looming wall is an insult to the beauty of the American West.
The government has unions right? I'm surprised by now that no one called for a strike. Sure, it'd be rendered illegal, but if your job is being cut haphazardly, what have you got to lose?
The whole point is to get rid of government employees. Going on strike is just volunteering your members for the chopping block.
Yes, it's a prisoners dilemma. But solidarity is pretty important here no matter what. We forget that the best case scenario in such a dilemma is to all work together. They know already that they cannot literally fire every employee in order to keep operating.
It’s been illegal for Feds to strike for a long time, regardless of union membership. The federal employees unions have been pretty active in coordinating legal action though - IIRC both main lawsuits leading to reinstatement of the probationary employees who were fired were coordinated by unions
NPR: "Trump signs order ending union bargaining rights for wide swaths of federal employees"
-- https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/nx-s1-5343474/trump-collectiv...
>It notably excludes law enforcement. "Police and firefighters will continue to collectively bargain
I hate this timeline.
But yea, we are well overdue for a reminder on why we made unions to begin with. For their sakes they better hope all these lawsuits save them from much more disruptive actions.
Meanwhile the Interior Secretary, who oversees the National Parks Service, insists on freshly baked cookies:
> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum likes chocolate-chip cookies—preferably freshly baked and still warm.
> This peculiar fact became the talk of the Department of Interior in recent weeks after his chief of staff, JoDee Hanson, made an unusual request of the political appointees in his office: Learn to regularly bake cookies for Burgum and his guests, using the industrial ovens at the department headquarters.
* http://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archi...
On Burgman:
> How rich? Forbes estimates Burgum’s net worth to be at least $100 million—enough to place him among the most loaded 2024 hopefuls (only Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy are richer), but far from enough to qualify for our World’s Billionaires list.
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/15/just-how...
> Burgum sold the company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001. While working at Microsoft, he managed Microsoft Business Solutions. He has served as board chairman for Australian software company Atlassian and SuccessFactors. Burgum is the founder of Kilbourne Group, a Fargo-based real-estate development firm, and also is the co-founder of Arthur Ventures, a software venture capital group.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Burgum
Going to be four years of "finding out" what Federal Employees that were cut actually did
Automation is inevitable, but we must ensure displaced workers are retrained and supported in the transition. The government should incentivize companies to invest in upskilling employees. Short-term layoffs may be necessary, but the focus should be on adapting the workforce to new economic realities.
Yeah but why do all that when those at the top could just fight over our dwindling resources.
lol "new economic realities" "short-term layoffs"
by 2028 there will be millions (more) people living out of their cars and doing Amazon/Walmart deliveries during the day
the new difference is they will have 4-year college degrees while homeless