Item — HN Reader

But they're still wastes of money, and based on the one-line description provided by the OP, they are rather absurd.

A few others I can think of:

  Government insurance/funding for homes destroyed by natural disasters - why am I bailing out Florida homeowners when their home is destroyed by a hurricane? At best you get the first one free and then you're on your own after that.

  Billions for highway construction that is not needed, which then costs more to maintain and results in more spending on cars, more deaths, higher costs for insurance, &c.

  Various improper payments, billions in subsidies handed out, COVID-19 bailouts and forgiveness

The broad point wasn't wrong. The government does waste money and frankly is pretty damn well-funded.

3 comments

I think it would be more wasteful overall to not give that bailout to florida home owners. A walking migrant crisis and maintaining the refugee camps for impovrished floridians after a hurricane sounds extremely expensive for a long time.

Sounds like an excuse for anyone to justify their spending, ergo American debt-to-GDP ratio continues to increase

The broad point above by @bilsbie is wrong. Fake made up items completely undermine the point’s credibility, and science spending in the U.S. provides a return on investment, it’s not losing money. That is pure political propaganda and not truth. Your new items have a touch more validity than top comment, but you’re making vast assumptions and stating opinions not shared by all, and not accounting for the economic costs of the alternatives you’re suggesting.

Sorry, I don't agree with you at all and continuing to argue about it just makes me more convinced the OP was right to point out those specific items. I'm not interested in complaints about the GDP to debt ratio being too high if when someone points out wasteful expense, regardless of how minor, they and others are met with derision and arguments. At that point yea spend whatever who cares about the debt?

The point is that you could cut all those "wasteful" projects (and we probably should, just on priciple) but if the savings is millions or even a few billion you aren't even making a dent. The real money is entitlements and defense (and interest on the debt). That's where you have to look to make a difference, but one of those things is mandatory and the other two are basically untouchable.

> someone points out wasteful expense

This is the very thing under question in this thread! You have drawn a conclusion and are using your conclusion as an argument in a circular manner rather than engaging with what other people are arguing.

"Other people disagree with me, therefore I am right" is the dumbest thing ever.

I don’t want my tax dollars wasted. We do agree on that, right? The government does waste some money. We agree on that too, right?

I’m open to hearing why you think @bilsbie’s list is valid. I’m skeptical, and I’ll offer some reasons why, but please convince me, I will listen. Is there a credible source for the claim that money is being spent studying the effects of yoga on goats? I’ve looked a bunch already, and the consensus seems clear that the claim is simply not true.

The empty buildings claim seems mis-stated. The actual wording from the Office of Management and Budget is “empty or underutilized” (emphasis mine). The US government’s real estate portfolio is well over a trillion dollars in holdings, and half a trillion in yearly spending, so this “underutilized” concern amounts to in the neighborhood of less than one half of one percent of spending. If that’s true, I’m absolutely amazed it’s that efficient! Corporate real estate isn’t that efficient. The government manages almost a million military and civilian buildings. Hundreds of buildings come and go every single day. Is it possible this “empty or underutilized” claim is temporary and sometimes unavoidable due to move in/out times, shuffling, and planning? Does it count if the figure includes buildings that are listed for sale and not selling? What about buildings that are held as investment and sell for more than they would have if they’d sold the moment they went empty? There are literally hundreds of thousands of people managing the country’s real estate portfolio. Do you know what they need to do to get from the presumably 99.6% utilization to guaranteed 100% utilization at all times?

The smoking claim is real but dramatized for political effect - it’s simply an anti-smoking campaign & survey. Do you know the healthcare costs of smoking in the US? A quick google says direct economic costs in 2018 were ~$240 billion, with Medicare and Medicaid covering more than half of that. That’s taxpayer money, money you’re paying to cover the predictable effects of other people’s poor life choices, and that cost is literally fifty thousand times larger than the anti-smoking campaign @bilsbie complained about - five hundred of your dollars of medical care for every single penny of hipster music whatever.

If the ‘hipster’ anti-smoking campaign was covered purely by taxes on the sale of cigarettes, would that make it okay for you?

The $281 billion “managed to misplace” claim is a mis-characterization. This is the amount of money that didn’t have all proper paperwork, it was not all lost or misplaced. It is “payments that did not meet statutory or administrative criteria”.

The music and cows claim appears to be false. Google mentions the University of Leicester (not in the US) had a “Moosic Study” in 2001 (BTW, come on, that’s funny), and the University of Wisconsin Madison did some trials in 1930 that did not cost $1M.

The fish alcohol claim also appears to be false, an exaggerated carry over of a report from 1975 by Senator William Proxmire, who was the creator of the “Golden Fleece Awards”. Have you read the history of the Golden Goose Awards? It’s seriously worth the 2 minutes. https://www.goldengooseaward.org/history

> I don’t want my tax dollars wasted. We do agree on that, right? The government does waste some money. We agree on that too, right?

Yes, so why are you arguing with me? The specific claims aren't what matter (goat yoga) because you and I both know that there are small line items like these that are truly wasteful. I'm not defending the specific list, I'm arguing that we do waste small money on grants and such like what the OP wrote about and regardless of how small the dollar amount is, waste is waste.

You did defend the specific items, you said so explicitly, you used the word “specific” in your previous comment, your first sentence said you are now “more convinced the OP was right to point out those specific items”. These specific items completely undermine your point, don’t you see that? Lies and exaggeration do not help make your case, they do damage to your cause, they suggest the problem isn’t real because you can’t come up with true examples. If there’s a real problem that matters, surely you can come up with something that’s true, and not a Gish Gallop of bad faith slop.

Please - if there are valid, good faith examples “like” the list @bilsbie wrote, why don’t you list them and provide sources?

Now, given that I agree with you that the government wastes money, your question why am I arguing with you is a good question, and it’s a question that you should think harder about; why do I agree with the existence of waste but disagree with your examples? You do realize that nodoby wants the government to waste money, right? Well maybe nobody but some of the contractors getting no-bid contracts. The fact that most people agree with you and I on the basic premise means you don’t need to prove that point, and what we need to do is: 1- decide what our goals are, 2- gather true, factual, and accurate information about what waste is occurring, and 3- elect officials that will do the right thing and enact policy that increases our efficiency.

Now again, science funding in the US runs a pretty decent return on investment, economists seem to agree. If you disagree with that, then please provide some sources or analysis. And that includes ALL science funding, whether it sounds silly, whether it fails to produce results, and whether it’s inefficient or even wasteful. The country is getting back more money than it spends on science R&D, therefore it’s difficult to make the case that any one grant is “waste” when it’s part of a portfolio that is performing well and giving returns.

Science funding runs on the very same investment concepts that venture capital does, and sure enough venture capitalists ‘waste’ money on bad investments literally all the time. That is the nature of investment, it comes with risk and it involves failure.

Did you read about the Golden Goose Awards yet?

> You did defend the specific items, you said so explicitly, you used the word “specific” in your previous comment, your first sentence said you are now “more convinced the OP was right to point out those specific items”.

I said the OP was right to point those specific items out, I didn't say they were accurate. I haven't personally looked at each one, but it's certainly believable that the government might fund such things if for no other reason than we just fund a lot of things and some of them are unbelievably stupid.

The continued arguing about it is why I think they were right to point those specific items out. The more people protest "that didn't happen!1!!" the more I believe they probably did happen because if they didn't happen why are you spending so much time trying to convince me they didn't happen?

My point of view is this: yes the government sometimes wastes money on egregious things. While those things are typically relative small-dollar items, it still matters that such waste is stopped. If you disagree with that, I simply will never see eye to eye with you or anyone else. It's not about the specific items, they are either true or close to true in form, it's about the general point.

> Now again, science funding in the US runs a pretty decent return on investment, economists seem to agree. If you disagree with that, then please provide some sources or analysis.

I don't disagree with that. But that doesn't mean all "science" funding is created equal. I support science funding, generally speaking, but it's worth pointing out that supporting funding for science isn't necessarily the same thing as funding other academic pursuits.

You’re digging in your heels only because people here are trying to point out facts that you assume are challenging your broader point, and not because you believe the items are true? Why not actually find out if they’re true or not?

I have personally looked at each one of the items in @bilsbie’s list, as you can plainly see above. I totally recommend that you take some time to do the same, instead of just thinking it’s believable. You’ll either have real ammo for the thread, or more understanding of why people here are protesting. Either way you win, you get more real factual information.

By aligning yourself with these “specific items”, and by assuming that protest of them somehow makes them more believable, you’ve made it quite a bit harder to get your own general point across in this thread, speaking of waste.

> I support science funding

Yes! Me too. See, we agree on a lot of things. I just wanted to make sure it’s clear that doing science necessarily involves some failure, and it’s not possible to invest in science without expecting some of the grants to not work out. There’s no such thing as 100% efficiency when it comes to investment. Some waste will happen. The grants I would call waste are the ones that involve grift or scientific dishonesty, and not the grants that go to silly sounding things.

Science funding in the US is under fairly intense budget pressure, BTW. Many many (probably most) academics complain about the lack of funding. The people who tend to make lists like @bilsbie’s often seem to be somewhat ignorant of the process of applying for funding and how much scrutiny goes into every grant.

> it’s worth pointing out that supporting funding for science isn’t necessarily the same thing as funding other academic pursuits.

Great, let’s start there. Take all the science grants out of @bilsbie’s list, and let’s discuss the non-science academic funding that’s wasteful. Three of the seven items were complaining about science funding, and the other four items were non-academic. So what would that be? What “other” academic pursuits would you put on the list of waste?

Name a huge organization that doesn’t waste money. I’ll give you as much time as you need.

"All organizations waste money, therefore organizations should keep wasting money and it's actually fine" doesn't sound very compelling to me.

the talk of waste is in service of thw question "is the government well funded enough?"

and so far it does not appear that reducing waste would properly fund the government? a couple patriot missiles worth is not the debt, and would not allow for much more efficient single payer health care - the single biggest opportunity the US government has to reduce waste in american society

Again you can do both - you can cut these wasteful programs, you can have a well-funded government that's already well-funded with trillions of dollars, and then also reform healthcare all without raising taxes. Use your imagination.

My imagination is indeed very capable of magical thinking.

However, if this was something that worked in the real world, we wouldn't be having this conversation because e.g. DOGE would have been successful.

That sounds nice in a perfectly spherical world but we live in reality.

Getting bogged down in line item spending is a trick politicians use to divide us. Net discretionary spending is only 27% of the budget, social security, Medicare, and military spending make up the other 73%. If you eliminated all discretionary spending, we’d still be running a budget deficit.

> Getting bogged down in line item spending is a trick politicians use to divide us.

Politicians? You're sitting here arguing about the line item spending instead of just admitting we should cut obviously bad spending. That's the division that's taking place and it's happening right here in this thread and it's your doing! lol