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So many people have been saying "we can never fix the deficit because Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are its primary drivers and can't be touched".
And yet, every time we look under the hood of a government program we see waste and fraud. Why should those programs be any different?
Another thing that I've thought of but which nobody has mentioned: the tendency of multiple of illegal immigrants to work under the same social security number. Are people who fraudulently lent out their identity now becoming the recipients of Social Security because of this?
If what Musk says is true, than it might be very easy to realize tens or hundreds of billions in savings simply by "fixing the glitch" and removing fraudulent payments.
I agree! And yes I know @2rafa has been beating that drum. I also think we should easily be able to save tens of billions by addressing the waste in these programs, or making things more efficient.
I've lately become attuned to a harmful pattern of thinking which I might call the "just so fallacy".
Anytime someone talks about ways in which things can be improved, there are others who chime in with the equivalent of "No, that's impossible. You see, all problems are intractable. We're doing the best we can. The exact way things are right now is the best they can possibly be, or at best, it will be extremely complicated and time-consuming to change them". And then they come up with elaborate rationalizations to explain why the current system is exactly the way it is.
And yet China can build an entire metro systems in less time than it takes New York City to add 1 station.
I think that the existence of Musk is proof that things can change a lot more than anyone anticipates. A huge percentage of what the government does is waste. What if we just stopped doing that?
As a society, we are not guaranteed to decline and fall. We can fix it.
AAQC for this, strongly agree. This fallacy is deep in the western mind at present and is quite a rot.
Ironically the most liberal people who talk about manifesting and such have it right - if you engender the right mindset, you can absolutely do far more than you think you could.
That sounds like you are just treating AAQC as a super upvote for statements you really agree with. Upvotes based on agreement are already being a blight; taking even AAQC there would just complete the descent into circlejerking. Maybe Zorba should consider introducing MotteGold™️ awards to capture some of that energy instead.
I think it's a quality contribution, though. I don't understand the issue.
I don't AAQC random one liners that I strongly agree with.
I don't particularly want to dunk on jeroboam (whose post is really perfectly okay), but I don't really see that post as adding any particularly new insight or explaining the old insight that is in it from an unusually persuasive or interesting angle. Would you like it if the forum were made up of posts like that, but for views you don't care for or strongly disagree with?
I think it's fine that my post doesn't win an award. It didn't take me too long to write and I didn't even do any research or sniff my own farts at any point while writing it.
But, yes, I would prefer that this board is mostly social commentary of short to medium length. I want to learn new things and hear interesting perspectives. I hope my posts provide that for others, even if they disagree with me. In fact, if they do disagree, I hope they can sharpen their mind by writing a good counterargument. Someone might even change their mind. I do occassionally.
I find the 5,000 word galaxy-brained posts to be insufferable.
Yeah, very much agreed. I basically skip them at this point.
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