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@interfluidity for 50 years a great beast has been hovering over our nation engorging itself, growing ever larger and shitting more and more all over the people. Trump and Musk are disembowling that beast, but those who love wallowing in the beasts excreta and live to feed it, are mourning the process.

@Phil do you know how much, say, Federal government employment has grown as a share of the population?

@interfluidity Doesnt matter, federal spending as a percentage of GDP has grown steadily since 1948. And this number UNDERSTATES the problem since federal spending is included in GDP, if you look at federal spending in relation to non government GDP, its grown to be enourmous. and its intrusive, wasteful and corrupt.

Regarding the number of people, regardless of percentages, (which is a bogus measure since many positions have nothing to do with the size of the population) its way to many

@Phil the share of the workforce Federally employed has dramatically shrunk, because people making errors like yours have been around since the 1970s. that has increased the cost of the Federal government, as contractors charge much more and over time perform much worse (as they don’t preserve institutional knowledge). 1/

@Phil the fiscal footprint of the Federal government is down to health care, social security, and military. USAID, for example, is a rounding error. Trump has promised to preserve and protect SS and Medicare. Should we go after VA? Medicaid for the poor? Dramatically shrink the military? 2/

@interfluidity
superficial. As an example, nearly 90% of all money spent on welfare is consumed by the beast, crumbs actually go to the poor.

USAID is only one small venue through which money is spent on corruption/waste.
Federal workers are over paid, underworked, and overly self important.

Yes we should go after everything, I'd be happy to see the entire thing collapse.

What percentage of my life should I have to work for other people to reap the benefit? At present it's about half.

@Phil Federal workers outside the military is less than 2% of the workforce. Almost every new development in pharma and medicine begins with NIH/NSF funded research. Even very neoliberal economists like Benjamin Jones who study this stuff acknowledge that basic research funding is very high return, mistargeting is an issue but the unexhausted benefits of basic research overwhelm that drag, the main constraint is quantitative. 1/

@Phil You should be careful what you wish for. You do have allies in government now. You may get the collapse you think you want. You won’t like it. Failed states are shithole countries. Sure, you’ll pay a smaller share of your income to the state, to “welfare”, whatever. But it’ll be a smaller share of a smaller income, and you’ll face a lot of new and miserable costs, financial and in quality-of-life terms. /fin

@interfluidity It can not be worse.

@interfluidity

You obviously have no faith in state or local governments.

@Phil I am fine with state and local governments. But if my native Maryland were an independent country, it's be a small, weak, powerless country and I'd sure hope it was in some kind of union that could protect and pursue its interests. (If my current Florida were becoming an independent country, I'd be a refugee somewhere else before trusting its current government.)

@Phil I do wish local governments had the same kind of power against state governments that US state governments have against the Federal government.

@Phil I am glad that you at least admit you are destroying what exists on the basis of what ultimately is an optimistic faith about what would happen if we just shook the etch-a-sketch.

It would however be a catastrophe if people for whom hope and such faith were their only plan took control of government.

Oh, wait. Fuck.