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Comment by muhfuhkuh | Hacker News Reader

"(See the Department of Education, TARP, Medicare, war, etc.)"

TARP money has been paid back almost in full, depending on who you talk to. The DoE budget is like an eyedropper full in the wake of an ocean, compared to the DoD and elderly entitlements. And, if you want $FAVORITE_CANDIDATE to touch Medicare and Social Security, you go right ahead. I'm quite positive they will smile and move on, knowing where their constituent bread is buttered come election time. Believe me when I say that the elderly are the most important lobby in the US, and they don't even have to spend a dime to influence almost every branch of government.

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Targeting medicare and social security is silly anyway. They are funded via a separate tax (FICA/SECA) that only applies to the first 200K/250K of income.

And the only reason why SS/Medicare are running out of money is because the government frequently borrows against social security surpluses. You may remember, back in 2000, one of Al Gore's campaign promises was to put social security into a "lock box" with the hopes of stopping this (IMO it likely would not have buy-in from congress but it's still a good idea).

SS is funded by separate tax, but if there's a shortcoming, it is filled from the general budget, and if there's a surplus, it goes into general spending - so this distinction is an accounting fiction, both are incomes of the same government and as long as government fulfills its obligations nobody cares how the money got there. When SS starts running negative cash flow, the govt would have to refill that. Right now the promise of the govt is to refill that up to 2.7 trln - which is the size of SS Trust Fund - but nobody doubts for a second that the govt will in fact refill any sum necessary or will change SS rules (raise taxes and/or cut benefits, which are not legally guaranteed by anything) if necessary. So "lock box" here has very little meaning except taking part of the money out of circulation for no reason - it would definitely not stop the govt from borrowing money.

> as long as government fulfills its obligations nobody cares how the money got there

I care. If they increase our debt or just start printing extra money, they have fulfilled their obligation to SS while screwing the rest of our economy pretty hard.

> has very little meaning except taking part of the money out of circulation for no reason

Very little meaning except having the government follow rules of financial discipline that any financial advisor would advise individuals and businesses to follow. If you want to save after-tax money for retirement, separate it out from the rest of your disposable income. Keep separate accounts, separate records, etc. Otherwise, you'll blur the line between your different monetary purposes and it's doubtful you'll mean your savings goals.

It's about discipline and clarity to the American public. Sure, a dollar would be a dollar if the government were responsible enough to follow sound money management principles... but when have they ever done that?

For financial discipline it does not matter, government will borrow anyway because it can, and it will print money anyway because it can. Because borrowing and spending is politically easier than not spending. US government does not have any savings - taxpayers are its savings account. And as long as substantial amount of people think that raising taxes is a way to solve the problem of runaway government spending - this savings account will be used and abused endlessly. There's no reason for politically risky cuts if you could just borrow and tax. The sad fact is US government is addicted to deficit. And no addict was ever cured by giving them access to more of the source of their addiction.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_satiation_therapy

> If they just start printing money

too late. Inflation and QE already happened.

See here: http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/main/summary TARP spent: 414bn TARP returned: 346bn So "almost" here is a bit of a stretch. But if we look at bigger picture, of all bailouts, it's 602bn spent and 387bn returned so far. That's 214bn still out there.

It's easy to pay TARP back in full when you can borrow at the Fed at 0% and lend at 5%. Favor. Education performance has stagnated ever since the DoEducation was created. Who benefited? Not me or my kids!

And the fact that we have third-rail (untouchable) programs in this country is NOT a strong argument in favor of more "investments".

"Education performance has stagnated ever since the DoEducation was created. Who benefited? Not me or my kids!"

Education performance lagging in the US is not the fault of it being federated. The shining education systems by competency in Math, Science, and Reading comprehension (S. Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zeland, and Ireland) all have federated education systems. FWIW, though, I love the idea of the Finnish 7-16 compulsory school then switching to academic (university) track or vocational (tech school/apprenticeship) track. That is something we can and should do here in the states.

> Education performance lagging in the US is not the fault of it being federated

It's not the fault of being federated, but obviously federating it here the way we did was a catastrophic waste of money and effort.

Maybe we should completely scrap the current waste of money and gradually put something else in place that works? I certainly don't trust the current power structure to do anything but continue to waste our federal education dollars.

Countries with smaller population, smaller geographical area, or more homogenous culture are at some point more comparable to individual states in the US than the United States as a whole. "Federated" isn't very meaningful relative to other metrics when making international comparisons.

For the sake of presenting the alternative perspective advocating the abolishment of involuntary schooling, I would recommend reading the following piece by Cevin Soling: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/02/27/w...

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