Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: angry

POLITICS: States that give, states that get

Of the states that get more money than they give, 84% are Republican.
Of the states that give more money than they get, 78% are Democratic.
NOW who's redistributing wealth unfairly?
Details here.
Tags: economics, politics
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  • 102 comments
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beckyzoole

beckyzoole

October 31 2008, 16:49:39 UTC 12 years ago

I guess it wouldn't surprise you if I said I believed it was the community's duty to take care of its members... not the government's.

I think of "the government" as the community's representative and agent. It simply depends on the size of "the community" in question. If a community is going to take care of its members in any sort of organized fashion, it's going to need some sort of governing agency to do that organizing. (Sometimes that "government" is going to be private, like a church's governing board of directors. Sometimes it will be public, like a local school board.)

So at what point does a government become too big, too remote from the community that elected it, to be the community's agent anymore?
ysabetwordsmith

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

October 31 2008, 20:48:59 UTC 12 years ago

Maybe the government could be or should be the community's agent, but it mostly isn't like that. I think whenever the decisions start being made outside the area affected, that's a problem; like corporate decisions affecting all the local stores. Another problem is when the people making the decisions have too little in common with the people affected by the decisions. Our political system tends to take fairly ordinary people and turn them into politicians, because the system is designed so that politicking is almost the only way to accomplish anything. And politicians have so little in common with ordinary people, they make a lot of bad decisions. To change that, we'd have to gut the system, take out the parts that make that transformation -- and we'd have to somehow hold down the juggernaut while we did that. Not an easy task, no.

The sneaky cool thing about democracy, though, is that it's very susceptible to grassroots changes. It's possible to create a groundswell of people doing the same things locally, that add up to big national changes. *sigh* It's how the neocons very methodically and effectively took over the Republican Party in 20-30 years.

*ponder* I want my country back. But, you know? I want it to be a country that haikujaguar and stryck can live with too. Because they're smart folks, and I care about them, and if they're miserable or terrified then something somewhere is probably wrong. It may be in a place I don't see, but just because I don't agree with them on everything doesn't mean they're always wrong. We need liberals for speed and spark and thinking outside the box. We need conservatives for stamina and memory and ... well, because it sucks to carry 2000 marbles without a box!

I want OUR America back. The one in "This land is your land, this land is my land."
corivax

corivax

October 31 2008, 21:00:56 UTC 12 years ago

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

I think we still live in the America that song was written of.
beckyzoole

Re: Hmm...

beckyzoole

October 31 2008, 21:34:13 UTC 12 years ago

In any size community, the people who would be good at running the show are often too busy to take on another low-paying, thankless job. The people who want to lead are often in it just for the power, and so are not very responsive to the needs of the community. (I can think of a pagan land sanctuary that had that problem a couple of years ago....)

I want people in office who are interested in being public servants, yes, but not necessarily like "ordinary people". I want to be served by people who are smarter, better informed, more visionary and more diplomatic than I am. People who are better at this than me, otherwise I'd just want to do it myself.

The good thing about democracy is that you can change things. The bad thing, though, is that you are always going to want change. You are bound to eventually vote for the losing candidate. The majority may want something you don't particularly like, but you have to live with it anyway.
haikujaguar

Re: Hmm...

haikujaguar

November 1 2008, 00:53:09 UTC 12 years ago

I think one of the first things we could do was make it harder to become a "career" politician, by further restricting how long people can stay in not just one office, but in all government offices.

When it becomes your career to be a politician, you stop making decisions based on what your community needs and start making decisions you think will keep the money coming in.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

November 1 2008, 01:01:36 UTC 12 years ago

I think I'm leaning in that direction. There's always a spectrum there -- on one end, you get to keep talented people, but you get stuck with a lot of career jerks. On the other end, you don't get to keep talented people, but you avoid the problem of career politicians.
beckyzoole

Re: Hmm...

beckyzoole

November 1 2008, 14:46:07 UTC 12 years ago

I agree with you about the problems with career politicians. But I am not so much in favor of term limits, myself.

This is because I have worked for several years now as a contract IT person. I never spend more than a year in one job. And I can see how inefficient that is. It takes a year to learn a corporate culture, to learn an industry, to get a real feel for the longterm consequences of the little decisions you make. I almost always leave a position wishing I could redo everything.

Also, I've seen the effect on a company of not having long-time employees. The last corporation I worked at is moving to outsourcing most of its IT operation, pressuring employees to take early retirement, bringing in temps and contract employees, etc. Nobody knows what's going on, nobody knows how we solved similar problems in the past, nobody remembers the nuances and little problems that turn around and bite you later....

Now, you might think that it's not right to compare the government to a large corporation, but I think it's a completely valid comparison. Most of the behind-the-scenes functions are exactly the same. Any governing body larger than a dozen people is going to need an IT department (even if it's just one guy). They're going to need HR, and PR, and financial planning, etc.

Worse, government needs longterm planning. If someone knows they're leaving office in a year or two and don't have a chance of being re-elected, they're not so likely to take an interest in what's going to happen five years from now.

So, while I do recognize the problems of career politicians, I think the drawbacks are even greater.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

November 2 2008, 00:58:56 UTC 12 years ago

>>This is because I have worked for several years now as a contract IT person. I never spend more than a year in one job. And I can see how inefficient that is.<<

Yeah, one year is probably too short. For some offices, two years is the term and for others it's four. I don't think a limit of two terms per office is unreasonable.

>>Now, you might think that it's not right to compare the government to a large corporation, but I think it's a completely valid comparison.<<

I think the comparison is all too valid.

>>Worse, government needs longterm planning. If someone knows they're leaving office in a year or two and don't have a chance of being re-elected, they're not so likely to take an interest in what's going to happen five years from now.<<

I hate to say it, but most people today don't seem capable of long-term planning and politicians are downright allergic to it. Even the Supreme Court judges don't do it, and they are posted for life. It would take a lot more than limitless service to fix that one.

*ponder* We might consider making most of the political jobs part-time again. They all started out that way; people kept their dayjob to make a living, and politics was just an extra. It was more like volunteer work with a stipend. I think we got better people in it then.


corivax

Re: Hmm...

corivax

November 2 2008, 03:27:51 UTC 12 years ago

I don't know how much good making political positions would do; government already pays much worse than the private sector, though. My partner and I have similar jobs and skillsets, but one of us works for the state and teaches students, and the other works for a private company. The private sector job pays three times the government one. This is an extreme example, to be sure, but certainly emblematic of a general trend.

We're not politicians, but I don't think the situation is much different for those who are. For most politicians, the alternative is lucrative private law practice.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

November 3 2008, 06:47:06 UTC 12 years ago

*sigh* Well, that's a point.

Any ideas on how to improve over the current not-great situation, then?
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

November 1 2008, 07:01:46 UTC 12 years ago

>> In any size community, the people who would be good at running the show are often too busy to take on another low-paying, thankless job. The people who want to lead are often in it just for the power, and so are not very responsive to the needs of the community. <<

Too true.

(I can think of a pagan land sanctuary that had that problem a couple of years ago....)

...mmmmyeah.

>> I want to be served by people who are smarter, better informed, more visionary and more diplomatic than I am. <<

I meant "ordinary" in the sense of "not career politickers," instead of "average dumbass." I'd love to have smart people in office. the problem with that is people hate them. And the diplomatic people are usually so invested in making people like them that they aren't very good decision-makers. Finding both high intelligence and high sociability in one person is, alas, not common.

And almost all of them have found safer, saner, more gratifying things to do with their lives than go into politics.

You make a good summary of democracy. Sadly, all known governmental systems exhibit gaping flaws as soon as humans are inserted.