jshore:
You haven’t substantiated that Skilly is an idiot or doesn’t know what he’s talking about re: global warming. You’ve just said so.
Prove that he’s made up a figure or a statistic before, and then we’ll consider the possibility here.
Scylla,
Note that the claim is not that he made up the figure or statistic. It may or may not be true that “it has been reported that…”. That still doesn’t explain what the figure means or whether the figure was at all reputable. It has also been reported that Martians have landed…numerous times, in fact.
So, what we would want to establish is not necessarily the Skelly makes up figures or statistics but that he quotes ones from other sources but that are misleading or incorrect…ie., more that he doesn’t know what he is talking about (or is purposely quoting things he knows to be misleading…it is hard to tell the difference) than that he is simply making stuff up.
Anyway, you are taking me on a wild goose chase because you are unable to establish any verification…hell, even any interpretation…of your statistic. Nonetheless, I’ll try to get to respond to your request when I get a chance!
Scylla: Prove that he’s [Skilly] made up a figure or a statistic before, and then we’ll consider the possibility here.
Just to clarify things a bit, Scylla: are you now retracting your earlier claim that the Congressional Budget Office and/or the Cato Institute support the assertion that “government bureaucracy wastes $0.33 for every dollar it collects”?
If not, could you kindly provide a cite for that claim? Because the only relevant reference you’ve provided so far—the above-quoted single sentence from the Jeffrey Skilly article—makes no mention of either Cato or the CBO as a source for that figure.
If so (or if you’re still convinced that you did read somewhere sometime a reliable statement to the effect that Cato and/or the CBO validated the 33% figure but you’ve given up on finding documentation to prove it), could you kindly say so? Then we can move on to the question of whether we should accept the estimate of 33% federal budget waste on the grounds that one Jeffrey Skilly wrote an online editorial claiming that some unnamed source “reported” it.
(“Skilly”…“Scylla”…hmmmmm. ;))
Scylla: Prove that he’s [Skilly] made up a figure or a statistic before, and then we’ll consider the possibility here.
Just to clarify things a bit, Scylla: are you now retracting your earlier claim that the Congressional Budget Office and/or the Cato Institute support the assertion that “government bureaucracy wastes $0.33 for every dollar it collects”?
If not, could you kindly provide a cite for that claim? Because the only relevant reference you’ve provided so far—the above-quoted single sentence from the Jeffrey Skelly article—makes no mention of either Cato or the CBO as a source for that figure.
If so (or if you’re still convinced that you did read somewhere sometime a reliable statement to the effect that Cato and/or the CBO validated the 33% figure but you’ve given up on finding documentation to prove it), could you kindly say so? Then we can move on to the question of whether we should accept the estimate of 33% federal budget waste on the grounds that one Jeffrey Skelly wrote an online editorial claiming that some unnamed source “reported” it.
(“Skelly”…“Scylla”…hmmmmm. ;))
**
No. What we have is you impugning Mr. Skelly’s repertorial skills and credentials based on the fact that you disagree with him on a certain topic.
I simply do not accept your claim to authority on the subject of global warming. In fact, I will use the same argument against you as you have used on him
There. That’s your argument against Skelly. It applies equally well against you. Either both of our arguments are valid, or the argument is fallacious…
Which do you want to choose, Huckleberry?
**
Well, actually I trust that anybody reading this thread will conclude that while I am clearly correct in my broad strokes, my gift for hyperbole and poor research has come to roost, and left an opening for two people who have no idea what they are talking about to make points in a debate.
Very well. I will not expect your cite to live up to your lofty Olympian standards. I will simply require that you produce a figure (Any figure!,) from a cite (any Cite!) that exceeds the one I have produced in terms of supportability.
That is certainly a reasonable request that I have made. Is it not?
Very cute, Scylla. You have taken a throw-away line that I made about why I don’t have any reason to believe Skelly and have elevated it into being my entire argument. I in fact agree with you that my claim that Skelly’s views on the state of the science of global warming are out-to-lunch does not necessarily imply he is wrong on this other point (whether or not you know enough about my own knowledge to have an opinion on whether I am right in characterizing his views on global warming). And, by the way, I don’t claim to be an authority on the subject of global warming in the sense of it being a field of expertise of mine…I just claim to be up on what the current state of the peer-reviewed science is, e.g., on the basis of the reports presented by the IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences.
As kimstu and I are pointing out, you are trying to drive home this point to hide the facts that you are not addressing:
(1) Why we are to accept on face value a statistic given with no attribution by a source with a very clear bias [i.e., Skelly’s piece…all his pieces from what I can tell…is an opinion piece, and a strongly opinionated one at that, not a reporting piece].
(2) How we are to interpret the phrase “it has been reported that…”
(3) How we are to interpret the phrase “the government bureaucracy wastes…” How did those who produced this figure define waste? I mean we are not even so much disputing the figure as saying that it needs to be explained. You already showed earlier in this thread that one can define waste in a way that can get you even higher numbers than 33%…just call any program you don’t like “waste”.
(4) Whether or not you are still claiming this statistic is attributable to the CBO (and giving some evidence of this if you are not retracting this claim).
Don’t fool yourself. You are in trouble because you are trying to elevate to the point of gospel a statistic that you not only can’t find any credible source for but can’t even explain the interpretation of. The fact that you have gotten even this far doing that is actually somewhat of a testament to your debating and rhetorical skills.
Well, I am not interested in throwing out figures that don’t live up to reasonable standards. That’s not what fighting ignorance is about. At this point I will freely admit that I don’t know of any good estimate of the percentage of government waste. That doesn’t mean we have to accept any figure that is said to have been reported for heaven’s sake!
Jshore:
It seems we are at an impasse. I’m not willing to address any of your issues, questions or requests because you refuse to answer mine.
It’s not really hard to find the information I’m requesting. There are quite a few organizations that keep track of pork barrel appropriations.
Citizens against Government waste is one:
Yahoo has a whole directory on the subject:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Politics/Political_Issues/Government_Fraud_and_Waste/
Or you could look at the Federal Subcommittee’s report on Government waste in fiscal year 1999 in relation to the size of the Federal budget (which I beleive was about 1.2 trillion, but don’t quote me (It’s about 1/4 to 1/3, but just what they’ve identified. It doesn’t account for quite a bit, as it says. It also completely ignores bureaucratic waste, and pork barrel spending)
You might look at the Federal Government’s General Accounting Office:
The 1993 National performance review states that 1/3 of Government jobs are pure bureacracy related:
http://www.govexec.com/reinvent/downsize/1093s1.htm
(this by the way was what I saw the Cato institute referring to, but now can’t find.)
I could go on and on, but the point is that there is plenty of information out there for you to find.
The NPR cite supports the 1/3 bureaucratic waste cited by Skelly, and that’s the Government’s own report!
So, how about you just find one that says it’s less than 1/3?
Well, Scylla, it took us less than a page of thread space to finally get you to actually provide some possibly reputable, relevant cites on government waste (although it is not yet clear to me whether these come up with some total number). This is what we have been asking you to do for heaven’s sake!
I won’t have a chance to look at them while I am at work but will try to look when I get the chance.
See our point here is not, as you seem to think, to find a cite saying the number is less than 1/3. Our point is actually to try to discover something about the truth of the matter and to understand how this waste is estimated.
jshore:
Yes, it was getting too old trying to get you to actually answer a straight question.
You wish to throw out a cite by a credentialled reporter with no other grounds than you dislike his stance on global warming.
It gets very annoying when someone asks you for a cite, you provide one, and it is dismissed but the person doing the dismissing refuses to substantiate his reasons for doing so.
So, I’m done doing research for you until you return the favor and either accept the 1/3 bureacratic waste figure as mentioned by Skelly, and supported by both the NPR cite, and the Federal subcommittees report, or else you produce some sound substantiated reasons for not doing so.
Then, after your little nitpicky hijack is complete perhaps you can address the original point of the whole issue which is the Government really has no claim on the assets of deceased persons that supersedes the wishes of the deceased.
You state that those that inherit have done nothing to earn the money, yet that is not necessarily true. You have no idea what they have or haven’t done.
On the other hand, the Governments claim is far weaker as its own internal documents characterize it’s own waste as both substantial and outlandish.
Until the government is using those dollars effectively, one cannot logically suggest that they are given more.
I guess you mean this paragraph in the article on the 1993 National Performance Review:
Now, I’m neither an economist nor a financial manager, just a run of the mill business professional, so maybe that explains my confusion here, but I don’t believe your interpretation of the paragraph is correct. “Overhead” is not equivalent to “waste”. Bureaucracy can be reduced, but never eliminated (unless some genius can figure out how to get rid of all managers, financial controllers and auditing departments, while maintaining direction and accountability).
The article also seems to lend support to the argument that trimming bureaucratic functionaries would be only slightly significant in trimming costs:
Also, according to the only government-wide information I’ve so far been able to find on the GAO website, this 1998 report on Fraud, Waste and Abuse indicates something less than 10% lost due to “f, w & a” in the cases it cites, which one presumes from the cover letter must be the most egregious.
And of course, whether the figure is 33% or < 10%, I’m still a bit fuzzy on how that’s directly pertinent to the question of the estate tax…
Scylla: *It gets very annoying when someone asks you for a cite, you provide one, and it is dismissed but the person doing the dismissing refuses to substantiate his reasons for doing so. *
Um, to be fair, Scylla, that doesn’t quite describe what’s been going on here. You said above, in the post of 6/22 10:11:
That’s what I was trying to get you to give a cite for, since the Skelly article you cited didn’t refer to either of those sources. And in fact, you still haven’t shown any evidence that either of those sources supports Skelly’s assertion that “government bureaucracy wastes $0.33 for every dollar it collects”.
Now you have, well, weaseled away from this question by changing the subject to other attempted measures of government waste, which seem to be equally dubious. Let’s take a look at them:
*The 1993 National performance review states that 1/3 of Government jobs are pure bureacracy related:
http://www.govexec.com/reinvent/downsize/1093s1.htm
(this by the way was what I saw the Cato institute referring to, but now can’t find.) […]
The NPR cite supports the 1/3 bureaucratic waste cited by Skelly, and that’s the Government’s own report! *
Oh. In other words, you were wrong in asserting that the Cato Institute supported the claim that a third of the entire federal budget is wasted by bureaucracy: rather, what you think you remember them supporting is the claim that a third of federal jobs are “pure bureaucracy-related”. Let’s take a closer look at what the National Performance Review as quoted in your cite actually says:
In other words, the NPR found that one-third of the employees of the federal workforce “manage, control, check up on or audit others.” That may well be too high a percentage in managerial positions, but it hardly implies that all of that one-third represents waste. Is any managerial or auditing job merely a “waste”? You yourself, Scylla, are a self-described “manager” for “a Fortune 500 company”; is your position simply a “waste” of your company’s money?
“One-third of government jobs are managerial or supervisory” != “one-third of the federal budget is wasted”.
*Or you could look at the Federal Subcommittee’s report on Government waste in fiscal year 1999 in relation to the size of the Federal budget (which I beleive was about 1.2 trillion, but don’t quote me (It’s about 1/4 to 1/3, but just what they’ve identified. It doesn’t account for quite a bit, as it says. It also completely ignores bureaucratic waste, and pork barrel spending)
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S...raud_and_Waste/ *
Um, this is simply the same URL you provided above for the remark “Yahoo has a whole directory on the subject”; it doesn’t address any federal subcommittee report on federal budget waste in 1999. Could we get the actual cite for this, please?
I think what you may be referring to is the November 1999 report by the House Committee on Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology, chaired by Rep. Steve Horn of California. Rep. Horn’s press release names sixteen major examples of government “waste, fraud, and abuse” which total to somewhat less than $80 billion (unless you want to count about $200 billion in “uncollectable” delinquent taxes as “waste, fraud, and abuse” on the part of the government rather than fraud on the part of the taxpayers). That’s a whole bunch of money, but it’s still less than 5% of the total 1999 federal budget of about $1.8 trillion. Even if you count the $200 billion in delinquent taxes—which I think is a pretty absurd stretch of the term “government waste”—it comes out to only about 15%. A pretty far cry from the 33% figure that you’re trying to defend.
*So, I’m done doing research for you until you return the favor and either accept the 1/3 bureacratic waste figure as mentioned by Skelly, and supported by both the NPR cite, and the Federal subcommittees report, or else you produce some sound substantiated reasons for not doing so. *
Well, as I noted above, the NPR cite doesn’t say that 1/3 of the federal budget goes to “bureaucratic waste”: it actually says that about 1/3 of federal jobs are managerial/supervisory/auditing in nature, which is hardly the same thing.
And the Subcommittee’s report doesn’t support the 1/3 figure either: in fact, it suggests that government waste, fraud, and abuse accounts for less than 5% of the total federal budget. Even if you count delinquent taxes as “government waste, fraud, and abuse”, that only brings it up to about 15%.
In other words, Skelly’s 33% figure for bureaucratic waste does in fact seem to be unsubstantiated bullshit, just as jshore argued. At least, you have not yet succeeded in providing any credible evidence to substantiate it.
Okay, how many fallacies can we find here:
(1) Skelly is a very opinionated columnist, not a reporter, at least in this context…i.e, this is not a news story. If you can’t tell the difference between a news story and an opinion piece, well that’s not our problem.
(2) We didn’t dismiss it in the sense of claiming it was incorrect, we simply asked for substantiation about what it means.
(3) We gave our reasons for refusing to consider the issue resolved. We told you that the phrase “it has been reported that…” is ambiguous and that there is no attempt to explain how one characterized bureaucratic waste.
Scylla, I’d say that sometimes discussing things with you feels like talking to a brick wall except that a brick wall doesn’t try to obfuscate and misrepresent what I say.
No, you are doing the research for you that you should have done in the first place! And you still seem to be at the level of just throwing up a few links and having us search through to find what is relevant.
By the way, if you’ve quoted the conclusions of the NPR report correctly, it does not imply 1/3 of the budget is waste. It implies that 1/3 of the payroll part of the budget goes to pay people in bureaucratic positions. Can we comprehend the difference?
We’ve already discussed this ad nauseum.
We’ve explained the sense in which we claim that inheritted money is generally unearned.
Well, as I have already pointed out, there is always a certain amount of waste in any enterprise. It is one thing to say there is waste and the other to come up with concrete proposals for eliminating it.
Also, this doesn’t answer the question of the best way to distribute any tax breaks…i.e., whether tax breaks should go to the wealthy or those who need them more.
You have to add them up. You look at the GAO reports, the NPR report, the subcommittee report, you add in the pork, you add in the unnacountables like the DOD’s missing 25% of their budget. You take the interest expense, and then you start trying to pick a percentage from SS, income insurance, medicare and medicaid where payments are being made to the financially able. Then you take the whole thing and multiply it by between 1.2 and 1.6, and compare the figure to the national budget
And Kimstu, do you have a cite that the budget was 1.8 trillion in '99?
Scylla: …perhaps you can address the original point of the whole issue which is the Government really has no claim on the assets of deceased persons that supersedes the wishes of the deceased.
Well, the original point of the whole issue in this thread was not this assertion, but rather Spavined Gelding’s question about whether the gift and estate tax is “a good thing.”
The people who are trying to argue that it isn’t seem to be making one or more of the following assumptions:
- There is no point in putting significantly redistributive taxes like the estate tax on large sums of wealth, because the existing distribution of wealth in this society is fair;
OR
- Even if the existing distribution of wealth isn’t fair, there is no significant benefit to society in redistributing some large chunks of it via the estate tax;
OR
- Even if wealth distribution isn’t fair and society benefits from redistribution via the estate tax, it doesn’t matter because the inviolability of private property rights disallow societies from levying large taxes (as Scylla seems to be arguing here).
Most people who support the gift & estate tax don’t agree with any of those three assumptions, and there’s no a priori reason why we should. I’m happy to debate the facts and philosophy underlying any or all of those assumptions, but nobody should expect to convince me that they’re true just by asserting them.
You have to add them up. You look at the GAO reports, the NPR report, the subcommittee report, you add in the pork, you add in the unnacountables like the DOD’s missing 25% of their budget. You take the interest expense, and then you start trying to pick a percentage from SS, income insurance, medicare and medicaid where payments are being made to the financially able. Then you take the whole thing and multiply it by between 1.2 and 1.6, and compare the figure to the national budget
Good Lord, Scylla, is that how you handle your budget estimates in the loudly-lauded private sector? Just name a whole bunch of multiply incommensurate measures of various quantities, do some hand-waving, and assert that the end result will support your original contention?
Forget it, big guy: I did the math on the numbers in the Horn report, and anybody can check it against the data clearly listed in the link that I posted. Let’s see you do the math that you assert supports your figure of 1/3 federal budget waste, so we know just what data you’re using and what assumptions you’re making.
And Kimstu, do you have a cite that the budget was 1.8 trillion in '99?
Yup, see Table 2.1 (Revenues by Source—Summary) in “Where the Money Comes From—and Where It Goes” from the Office of Management and Budget. ($1.827 trillion in 1999, to be more precise.)
"Until the government is using those dollars effectively, one cannot logically suggest that they are given more. "
Actually, I think the logic at play here is a lot more complicated.
Let’s consider some underlying assumptions.
First, it’s a fairly widely held belief that some kind of government is absolutely essential to a) stable democracy and b) productive economy. This is true even for those who, like most libertarians, hold that government’s role should be reduced to the bare minimum of protecting individuals’ rights and property, enforcing the law, defending the realm. Those roles are actually complicated enough in themselves and require plenty of money!
So unless you are an anarchist you are a de facto believer in the foundational importance of government. And chances are you also believe that the best way to fund government is through taxation (vs. say voluntary donations from individuals, or a lottery that would hold some individuals and not others responsible for funding government).
(What is open to question, of course, is a) what government should take responsibility for, and b) how much and/or what kind of government is required to fulfill that responsibility effectively. I take these to be the subject or subjects of other threads.)
Second, there is little dispute that there is some waste in government, just as there is some waste in private enterprise. What is open to question is how much waste? what can be done to eradicate the waste? Are some activites less wasteful when performed by government than by private enterprise and vice versa. I take these to be the subject of another thread.
Now this thread seems to have become bogged down in a question that belongs under #2–the nature and extent of government waste.
What is more important, though, than the mere digression or hijack is the faulty assumptions that have therefore been introduced. To put it simply one can’t simply argue that the existence of some inefficiency within government is itself grounds for reducing the tax base. The reason is that there is no guarantee that reducing the tax base will cure inefficiency: it may simply result in ineffective government without any increase in inefficiency. If, for example, military expenditures are found to be the most wasteful part of government, and if, for political reasons, congress responds to tax cuts by cutting the budget for education, or for doing tax audits, then in this scenario, inefficiency will not have been improved while other aspects of government may have become ineffective.
I see Kimstu has just weighed in so perhaps this will overlap with her thoughts but I’ll post anyway…
So once again we have the grounds of an entirely different debate: To what extent do tax cuts result in improved government efficiency? To what extent do they result in ineffective governance? Sounds like a good thread actually.
The subject of this thread, though, is the equitablility of a particular tax: the gift and estate tax. That’s a complicated enough debate as it is.
It only muddies the waters if, in debating the merits of the gift and estate tax, one introduces all kinds of unproved and extraneous assumptions: that, for example, the existing tax base is already larger than what’s required to govern effectively (which we don’t know and aren’t debating); or that tax cuts will make government more efficient (which we don’t know and aren’t debating).
Whooops. The ref. to Kimstu’s post was supposed to go at the end, no the middle, of my own musings. Apologies for the confusion.
I’m missing something Scylla.
If the government is so wasteful that it doesn’t have a right to my money - why pick on estate tax? Seems to me that under the “they just waste it anyway” arguement, all taxes are equally wasted and we shouldn’t need to pay any of them.
They all go into the same general kitty to get wasted at the same rate (unless you believe in the Social Security Trust Fund).
The whole point of my bringing up Government waste is only in rebuttal to Jshore’s assertion that heirs are not entitled to the cash because they didn’t earn it.
My response is that he doesn’t have any idea what role the inheritor played (if any) in the accumulation of the wealth, so that therefore that statement is not true.
and
The government hasn’t done anything to earn it either
and
The high level of government waste in the use of those assets, as well as the simple non merit based redistribution (as in the case of SS and some Medicare and Medicaid payments to the financially able,) do not serve to present a strong need based claim on the assets either.
That’s it.
Unfortunately I’ve allowed myself to go off on a tangent concerning the level of waste and bureaucracy. Unfortunately I’ve posted after a party without being careful of my cites.
The exact level of waste is besides the point, and what that number is is infinitely debatable.
What I don’t think is debatable is that it is unacceptably large.
As I’ve stated before, the 1/3 number stands as far as I’m concerned unless and until somebody can replace it with a better one.
I’m not going to continue to make the mistake of defending Skelly’s number.
It’s up to you guys to either question his press credentials or accuracy by showing innacuracies in the past (and you’ll have to do better than Jshore’s anecdotal “global warming” thing) which would lead us to hold the number suspect, or two produce a better contradictory number from another source.
Until then, the 1/3 number stays by default as the best cited estimate.
It’s the only girl at the dance.
Scylla: *The whole point of my bringing up Government waste is only in rebuttal to Jshore’s assertion that heirs are not entitled to the cash because they didn’t earn it.
My response is that he doesn’t have any idea what role the inheritor played (if any) in the accumulation of the wealth, so that therefore that statement is not true. *
I don’t quite understand how you’re intending to use the word “earn” here. It can’t be in the usual legal sense of earning compensation, because if the heirs had in fact “earned” this money in that sense, it would legally be their money and they wouldn’t be inheriting it.
If you just mean that the heirs might be considered to have some moral right to the inheritance because they did something to facilitate the decedent’s getting hold of the money in the first place, well, you’re getting into a rather fuzzy area for a question of tax policy. As far as tax law goes, AFAIK, inheritance is always considered to be “unearned” by the heirs.
*The government hasn’t done anything to earn it either *
According to the muzzy-fuzzy way you seem to be using the term “earn”, though, maybe the government has. Maybe Uncle Sam provided a low-interest loan or a tax incentive or a good education that helped the wealthy person amass the big bucks. If you consider that the possibility of some unspecified amount of some unspecified kind of assistance is an adequate justification for the heirs’ having a right to the money, why couldn’t Uncle Sam use the same possibility as the justification for taking a big chunk of tax out of it?
*The exact level of waste is besides the point, and what that number is is infinitely debatable.
What I don’t think is debatable is that it is unacceptably large. *
Really? How large is “unacceptably large”? Where’s the acceptability cutoff?
*As I’ve stated before, the 1/3 number stands as far as I’m concerned unless and until somebody can replace it with a better one. *
Well, xeno provided the 1998 report from the General Accounting Office that indicated that the amount of “fraud, waste, and abuse” came to something less than 10% of the total budget.
And I looked over the numbers in the 1999 House subcommittee report that you yourself mentioned, and the amount of “fraud, waste and abuse” tallied up from them came out to less than 5% of the total budget.
Those numbers may not be entirely accurate, but either of them can definitely be considered “better” than the 1/3 figure you’re desperately clinging to, if only because there are cited quantitative data from reliable sources to substantiate them.
I’m not going to continue to make the mistake of defending Skelly’s number.
This is confusing, because it looks to me as though you immediately go on to defend it:
*It’s up to you guys to either question his press credentials or accuracy by showing innacuracies in the past (and you’ll have to do better than Jshore’s anecdotal “global warming” thing) which would lead us to hold the number suspect, or two produce a better contradictory number from another source. *
Well, I’d be interested to see if jshore comes up with a specific rebuttal of any of Skelly’s statements (on global warming or anything else) too. But in any case, both the 5% and 10% estimates that I mentioned above are certainly better documented than Skelly’s mysterious anonymously “reported” 33% figure with no supporting evidence at all.
*Until then, the 1/3 number stays by default as the best cited estimate.
It’s the only girl at the dance.*
Hey, if you want to go on believing in the validity of a number that you haven’t been able to provide substantiation for, it won’t bother us any. Go on believing that the government wastes even as much as your original “estimate” of 80%, if you like. Just don’t expect that you can convince anybody else that it’s valid unless you can come up with some actual evidence for it.
Kimstu:
Unless I’m mistaken (and I well might be) I don’t think either the subcommitee report, or the GAO report cited claim to have uncovered or even estimate the total of government fraud, waste, and pork in the budget. They just show specific items but make no claim as to their relation to the whole.
And, I don’t see why we wouldn’t include uncollected taxes in the total.