Does Sesame Street Actually *Need* Government Funding

[Dewey_Finn]

Here’s a pie chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing where federal spending goes. Defense and internatioanl security assistance is 20%, Social Security another 20%, Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program is 21%, safety net programs (Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, child-care assistance, etc.) is 13% and interest on the national debt is 6%.

The remaining 19% or so includes benefits for retired federal employees and veterans (7%), transportation infrastructure (3%), education (2%), medical and scientific research (2%), non-security related international affairs (1%) and everything else at 4%.

My guess is that support for PBS, NPR and so forth is either included in everything else or perhaps education spending.

By the way, this year the military budgeted $388 million for the Marine Corps Band and other military music groups.

[MsWhatsit]

@adaher

You’re thinking of the poorly named Learning Channel. I didn’t mention that one on purpose.

Oh, I see, you meant the Pawn Stars channel, not the Alien Invasions channel. Easy mistake to make.

[adaher]

@Exapno_Mapcase

No, you don’t have a point; you’re merely trying to divert attention from the real point.

And that is that the small scale programs that government contributes to quality of life can easily be of great importance and their elimination would do greater harm to the country than would be justified by the minor cost savings. The specific program at discussion is not an issue. The principle is.

Commercials would destroy quality of life? Wouldn’t the money spent on PBS buy a lot of chemo treatments? At least several thousand.

[UltraVires]

@Exapno_Mapcase

No, you don’t have a point; you’re merely trying to divert attention from the real point.

And that is that the small scale programs that government contributes to quality of life can easily be of great importance and their elimination would do greater harm to the country than would be justified by the minor cost savings. The specific program at discussion is not an issue. The principle is.

Keeping it GQ, I think the overall point that is being made is that if we can’t agree to cut something that clearly can survive and flourish without government funding simply because of sentimentality reasons, then we can never hope to cut anything that might actually have an effect on people.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@jtgain

Keeping it GQ, I think the overall point that is being made is that if we can’t agree to cut something that clearly can survive and flourish without government funding simply because of sentimentality reasons, then we can never hope to cut anything that might actually have an effect on people.

I disagree. The trigger for this discussion was the elimination of funding to the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As a federal agency, the CPB provides funding for hundreds of low-level shows of educational value and local interest. A very few of them have become large and national and potentially self-sustaining. Trying to switch the argument to say that because a infinitesimal percentage of shows can flourish without public financing means that all of them can and should is misdirection in the con game sense. As soon as Sesame Street enters the argument you are being conned away from reality.

That argument is the equivalent of saying that if you don’t stop buying Christmas gifts for your kids you’ll never get up the will to cut out money for smoking and drinking. It’s an absurdity.

[UltraVires]

@Exapno_Mapcase

I disagree. The trigger for this discussion was the elimination of funding to the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As a federal agency, the CPB provides funding for hundreds of low-level shows of educational value and local interest. A very few of them have become large and national and potentially self-sustaining. Trying to switch the argument to say that because a infinitesimal percentage of shows can flourish without public financing means that all of them can and should is misdirection in the con game sense. As soon as Sesame Street enters the argument you are being conned away from reality.

That argument is the equivalent of saying that if you don’t stop buying Christmas gifts for your kids you’ll never get up the will to cut out money for smoking and drinking. It’s an absurdity.

Could you provide an example of these great local shows that would be eliminated? If they are so great, couldn’t advertising pay for a station to air them? If it wouldn’t, doesn’t that mean that nobody wants to watch them anyways?

I could see this argument in 1965 with 3 stations on the air, but in today’s world with over 300 channels, the need is met.

[johnpost]

@jtgain

I could see this argument in 1965 with 3 stations on the air, but in today’s world with over 300 channels, the need is met.

there are not 300 channels on the air as free tv. there are 300 channels if you pay for cable tv with additional pay packages. not everyone can get cable even if they wanted to.

[Leaffan]

@Hampshire

You could take a red pen to the US budget and knock yourself out cutting miscellaneous programs like PBS, NASA, arts, sciences, etc and the millions spent here and there. And you’ll hardly make a dent. Take a look at a pie chart of the US budget sometime. You have to address social security, defense, medicare, medicaid, and welfare/unemployment in some massive way. Cutting anything else won’t do squat.

So what? I take my lunch to work every day. I brew my coffee at home instead of stopping at Tim Hortons. I buy store brands and I go to multiple stores to save on things on sale that I need to buy anyway. Does this mean I am making a huge dent in my monthly bills of mortgage, various insurances, electricity, gasoline, federal taxes, provincial taxes, municipal property taxes, and overall food and living expenses? No. It’s rather inconsequential, but it allows me to live within my means.

The Canadian government is quietly trimming back on luxuries like free parking for federal employees, the compensation of retirement packages, certain arts and cultural programs, etc. It might be a drop in the bucket but I think it’s sending a message that the days of free-wheeling entitlement are over and it’s steering the ship in a new direction towards prudent management of ALL government-funded programs. Every program that is funded by the government should be reviewed, adjusted, or cancelled. Every single one, regardless of how inconsequential to the budget it appears. It’s time to start reigning in at all levels. I’m really tired of paying for things that have nothing to do with me and benefit a select interest group.

I’ve seen the pie chart; it’s overwhelming.

[md2000]

If you are starving and can barely afford rent and food, then you don;t go out, cut out paying for movies and cable and museum visits and the bar with friends. However, once you have things on a stable footing, how much of a quality of life is it to go through your entire life with no entertainment?

Same with government. If this were the massive great depression, or the Greek situation - owing more in interest than you can afoord, ludicrously generour payroll and pensions, propping up business models that suck up so much money the country is failing - then it would be time to cut back with a big knife.

However, the situation is NOT that dire. The problem has been pinpointed above - just a few significant expenditures account for the majority of spending, and until the government is prepared to deal with those, firing Big Bird, or cutting the PBS support, is just window dressing.

The first problem is that the federal and state governments have to get their act together and stop duplicating functions. If the Feds are going to do education, or health care, for example, then it should be done in coordination with the states. The second is that taxes have to go up. Whine all you want, but if people want the military with all their cool toys, if they want a pension in old age, or fall-back health care, or college educations, someone has to pay for it.

It’s no surprise that every other first-world country generally has given up on huge military and put their money into universal health care. It’s hard to afford both. They also generally ahve higher taxes that the USA, in most cases much higher.

It’s simple economics. You can’t have a big military, a good social safety net, and low taxes.

Romney has continuously said he will plug loopholes and cut unnecessary spending instead of raising taxes; however, this is a good example. Shutting down PBS, a significant icon of US entertainment life, saves you almost nothing.

[Measure_for_Measure]

We know the sorts of shows that PBS produces. Newshour, Sesame Street and NOVA. We know the sorts of shows the wholly ad-supported sector produces. Pawn Stars, War Footage and Shark Week.

I like Shark Week. But it’s not NOVA. And the Flintstones are not Sesame Street.

A mixed approach is the best one. Going for all one or all the other puts one in the province of ideologues.

@Leafann

Every program that is funded by the government should be reviewed, adjusted, or cancelled. Every single one, regardless of how inconsequential to the budget it appears.

Romney was talking about “Elimination”, not “Cutting 2%, 5% or even 20%”. Very different arguments. And I think that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting passes the cost-benefit test.

Economically though, we should be boosting public investment now, while interest rates are low. That would add the national wealth while jump-starting the economy. The time for budget cutting (and tax hikes) is during good times. And yes, I advocate such counter-cyclic policy in realtime. (Though Canada has suffered a milder recession than Europe and the US because of their superior financial regulation. So careful long term budget cutting up north may not be inappropriate.)

[Lamia]

The day after the debate, Sesame Workshop executive vice president Sherrie Westin appeared on CNN to explain that Sesame Street actually receives very little government funding:

“Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship. So quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we’re going to kill Big Bird – that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here.”

[standingwave]

@Dewey_Finn

Here’s a pie chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing where federal spending goes. Defense and internatioanl security assistance is 20%, Social Security another 20%, Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program is 21%, safety net programs (Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, child-care assistance, etc.) is 13% and interest on the national debt is 6%.

The remaining 19% or so includes benefits for retired federal employees and veterans (7%), transportation infrastructure (3%), education (2%), medical and scientific research (2%), non-security related international affairs (1%) and everything else at 4%.

My guess is that support for PBS, NPR and so forth is either included in everything else or perhaps education spending.

By the way, this year the military budgeted $388 million for the Marine Corps Band and other military music groups.

“Cutting PBS support (0.012% of the budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson via Twitter

How about we keep PBS and reduce DoD spending by half a percent?

[Zabali_Clawbane]

:eek: I’d rather see Sesame Street retired, never to be produced again than to watch Nickelodeon get their hands on it! :mad: Elmo was annoying enough, I’d hate to think how over the top they’d take it with Elmo, and what they’d do to Oscar the Grouch, much less Grover! Hopefully there will be inner city charity drives that will suceed in keeping Sesame Street on the local channels.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Exapno_Mapcase

There’s no evidence that Everett Dickson ever said the line, “A billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”

Everett Dirksen, on the other hand…

[dzeiger]

The problem with educational programs on commercial channels is that the sponsors can end up having undesirable effects on the content/direction of the shows. For example, Mythbusters had a segment about RFID security that was dropped after pressure from credit card companies that provide a lot of Discovery Channel ad revenue. There really does need to be at least one avenue without that kind of pressure (granted there wold be other pressure, but at least it’d be different pressure).

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Leaffan

I’m really tired of paying for things that have nothing to do with me and benefit a select interest group.

And thus ends civilization.

[MsWhatsit]

@Leaffan

So what? I take my lunch to work every day. I brew my coffee at home instead of stopping at Tim Hortons. I buy store brands and I go to multiple stores to save on things on sale that I need to buy anyway. Does this mean I am making a huge dent in my monthly bills of mortgage, various insurances, electricity, gasoline, federal taxes, provincial taxes, municipal property taxes, and overall food and living expenses? No. It’s rather inconsequential, but it allows me to live within my means.

If you were brewing your own coffee and buying store brands to save $10/month but you continued to pay for the most expensive cable package costing you $200/month, it would be reasonable to question whether you were approaching your budget in the most sensible way.

Similarly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to focus on cutting a handful of tiny programs here and there when we’re spending billions on defense and healthcare.

Edit: And yeah, pretty much every single thing the government pays for is useless to some percentage of the population. “I don’t care about X and therefore I don’t want to pay for it” is nonsensical in the context of government and taxes.

[Mangosteen]

@md2000

If you are starving and can barely afford rent and food, then you don;t go out, cut out paying for movies and cable and museum visits and the bar with friends. However, once you have things on a stable footing, how much of a quality of life is it to go through your entire life with no entertainment?

Same with government. If this were the massive great depression, or the Greek situation - owing more in interest than you can afoord, ludicrously generour payroll and pensions, propping up business models that suck up so much money the country is failing - then it would be time to cut back with a big knife.

However, the situation is NOT that dire. The problem has been pinpointed above - just a few significant expenditures account for the majority of spending, and until the government is prepared to deal with those, firing Big Bird, or cutting the PBS support, is just window dressing.

The first problem is that the federal and state governments have to get their act together and stop duplicating functions. If the Feds are going to do education, or health care, for example, then it should be done in coordination with the states. The second is that taxes have to go up. Whine all you want, but if people want the military with all their cool toys, if they want a pension in old age, or fall-back health care, or college educations, someone has to pay for it.

It’s no surprise that every other first-world country generally has given up on huge military and put their money into universal health care. It’s hard to afford both. They also generally ahve higher taxes that the USA, in most cases much higher.

It’s simple economics. You can’t have a big military, a good social safety net, and low taxes.

Romney has continuously said he will plug loopholes and cut unnecessary spending instead of raising taxes; however, this is a good example. Shutting down PBS, a significant icon of US entertainment life, saves you almost nothing.

“However, the situation is NOT that dire.” ???

The USA is spending OVER ONE TRILLION DOLLARS more than it is taking in in revenue EVERY year!

Tell me again that this is not a “dire” situation.

We need across the board 25% cuts in EVERY department from Defense and Education to Housing and Commerce. If everyone gets cut, no one can complain that they are being singled out, but neither party has the balls to do it. Cut ALL Federal salaries by 25% and you’ll still find plenty of well qualified people to fill the positions if the present employees don’t want to work for $75, 000 a year instead of their present $100,000 a year salary. Then cut the payroll by 25% and that will leave plenty of people to do the work.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Dewey_Finn

Here’s a pie chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing where federal spending goes. Defense and internatioanl security assistance is 20%, Social Security another 20%, Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program is 21%, safety net programs (Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, child-care assistance, etc.) is 13% and interest on the national debt is 6%.

The remaining 19% or so includes benefits for retired federal employees and veterans (7%), transportation infrastructure (3%), education (2%), medical and scientific research (2%), non-security related international affairs (1%) and everything else at 4%.

My guess is that support for PBS, NPR and so forth is either included in everything else or perhaps education spending.

By the way, this year the military budgeted $388 million for the Marine Corps Band and other military music groups.

@Mangosteen

We need across the board 25% cuts in EVERY department from Defense and Education to Housing and Commerce. If everyone gets cut, no one can complain that they are being singled out, but neither party has the balls to do it. Cut ALL Federal salaries by 25% and you’ll still find plenty of well qualified people to fill the positions if the present employees don’t want to work for $75, 000 a year instead of their present $100,000 a year salary. Then cut the payroll by 25% and that will leave plenty of people to do the work.

Read Dewey Finn’s post again. And again and again and again until it sinks in. Your proposal would cut no more than 1% out of the budget (and that’s using the ridiculous assumption that government salaries are 100% of government spending in the everything else category), and yet do tremendous amounts of harm to to huge numbers of everyday people, not just those who work for the government who would be thrown out of work, but for all the people on whose behalf they work. We know this is true because when Gingrich shut the government down under Clinton, it turned out that all those overpaid, unnecessary government employees mattered in real peoples’ lives. And that was a minimal disruption, not the permanent one you envision.

Government employees are simply not the problem. Neither is the deficit: a good economy will cut that just as it did under Clinton, and would have continued to do so under Bush except for the tax cuts and spending increases he made.

What’s dire is the general ignorance of what government actually spends money on, the undervaluation of government employees and government programs, and the selfishness of wanting money spent on themselves but not on “Them.”

[Leaffan]

Small cuts add up. Look at a brief sample from Canada.

OTTAWA — Federal public servants head into summer vacation with about 23,400 of them having been given notice that they could lose their jobs and Canadians still in the dark about what the Conservative government is cutting to reach its $5.2-billion reduction target.

While the government talks of expanding the Coast Guard’s capacity, it is spreading emergency services thin in Canada’s coastal communities, eliminating up to 763 positions and stretching Coast Guard regions from five to three, leaving fewer rescuers to cover more ground when responding to emergencies.

The most senior political aides in the Conservative government are losing their free parking as Treasury Board President Tony Clement says he’s still on the hunt for perks that can be trimmed.

But Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney said the IFHP reforms are necessary to save $100 million – and make sense when the program offers refugees better health benefits than Canadians, such as dental coverage, prescriptions and eye care.

This fall, two anti-union proposals are making waves on Parliament Hill at a time when the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada would rather be talking about Ottawa’s deep cuts to the federal workforce. (In the past few months, more than 26,000 government workers have received “affected notices” telling them their jobs could be on the chopping block. The federal government said this spring that it would slash some 19,000 positions by 2015).

The Conservatives’ cuts will see 200 people thrown out of work and the number of trains across the country drastically reduced. From coast to coast, VIA Rail’s important role as a national passenger rail service provider will be undermined.

Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: 42 positions; $15.2 million savings; October 19, 2011
Bank of Canada: 33 workers; June 6, 2011
Canadian Museum of Civilization: 8 positions; August 16, 2011
Environment Canada: 776 positions in air; 300 eliminated; affects main scientists, engineers, and meteorologists; August 4, 2011
Fisheries and Oceans: 275 positions; $56.8 million savings by 2014; October 13, 2011
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada: 600 positions; EI processing centers affected
Industry Canada: 26 positions; June 26, 2011
National Defense: 2,100 civilian positions over 3 years
National Gallery of Canada: 5 curators; June 2, 2011
National Research Council: 52 positions; June 23, 2011
Public Works and Government Services Canada: 700 staff over 3 years; mainly labor force; August 4, 2011
Treasury Board: 84 jobs over 3 years; $11.5 million savings
Veterans Affairs: 400-500 positions; $226 million savings; October 21, 2011

This is exactly the kind of ongoing attention that needs to be paid to all departments. Start now; start cutting and keep cutting. Someone needs to be paying attention to this shit!

Get to it!