# Starving the Beast: Can it work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 18, 2003, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755 "2003-12-18T14:29:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/41 "2003-12-19T17:37:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jonathan Chance \* > \*\*So are we agreed that ‘starving the beast’ isn’t a feasible plan? > > That government will grow, owing to the nature of the American political system, until external forces (disaster, effectively) force the issue? \*\* It depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to **kill** the New Deal and Great Society programs, it’s probably not effective. If you goal is to restratin their growth, it’s a viable option. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/42 "2003-12-19T17:41:56Z")
Do you really think it can do even that? With a republican president, senate and house we just expanded the medicare benefits. Shouldn’t that NOT have happened if restraint were possible? ---
**Author:** ![HayekHeyst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/45deac/32.png) [@HayekHeyst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HayekHeyst)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/43 "2003-12-19T19:40:48Z")
**Sam Stone** writes: > [@](#): > > No, I’m very pessimistic that those steps will ever be taken. My guess is that we’ll just muddle through the next 20 years with increasing debt and rising taxes, until the boomers die off and some demographic balance is restored. The boomers dying off (which won’t happen till about 2040) won’t restore demographic balance. As the baby boomers (born 1945-1965) start to enter retirement in 2010, the percentage of the population 65+ grows faster than it did before. By 2030, all the BB are 65+. The percentage of the pop. aged 65+ keeps on growing, albeit at a slower rate. **Jonathan Chance** writes > [@](#): > > Well, it’s always struck me that increasing immigration will be one way of ensuring an adequate worker-base for the boomer retirement years. This is semi-plausible. But you have to keep on increasing the absolute amount immigration, so that it’s a constant relative to the ever-growing number of retirees. Plausible in theory, perhaps not as a political reality. If I recall correctly, you’d have to boost immigration from the approximate 1.5 million (illegal and legal combined) immigrants to something like 2.5 or 3 million, then let it keep growing. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/44 "2003-12-19T19:49:48Z")
And if it’s that (expanding the work force with immigrants) or raising taxes enormously on the existing workforce I think I know what **I’m** all about. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/45 "2003-12-19T19:51:50Z")
> [@](#): > > The boomers dying off (which won’t happen till about 2040) won’t restore demographic balance. As the baby boomers (born 1945-1965) start to enter retirement in 2010, the percentage of the population 65+ grows faster than it did before. By 2030, all the BB are 65+. The percentage of the pop. aged 65+ keeps on growing, albeit at a slower rate. I said ‘start’ dying off. The youngest of the boomers are about 40 now, but the big ‘bubble’ boomers are mostly in their 50’s now, and the oldest are already nearing retirement age. So yes, they’ll start dying off in about 20 years, and by 40 years from now, 90% of them will be gone. But you’re right, the trend is for society to continue to age. Eventually, we will have a very small working class being taxed to provide benefits for a very large retirement class. I believe this is unstable, not just economically, but it’s going to put a big stress on the social fabric. The gap between rich and poor is going to morph into the gap between the young and old, with the same social tensions. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/46 "2003-12-19T20:06:34Z")
We can raise the retirment age to 70, but corporations are increasingly dumping employees between 50 and 65 because of health benefit concerns. So we’re gonna have a large class of angry, voting, unemployed, crabby old people hwo can’t hold a job, get health insurance, etc. Some of them will surely die. The rest will definitely vote. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/47 "2003-12-19T20:14:00Z")
Do you have a cite for that? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/48 "2003-12-19T20:58:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jonathan Chance \* > \*\*Do you really think it can do even that? > > With a republican president, senate and house we just expanded the medicare benefits. Shouldn’t that NOT have happened if restraint were possible? \*\* Maybe I was unclear. I think it **can** work, not that it **must** work. As noted, it isn’t currently working. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/49 "2003-12-19T23:48:48Z")
To try to return to the topic itself, the most fundamental misconception that the small-is-good, smaller-is-better ideologues have is that government is a quasi-alien, counterproductive, soul-thieving entity that must be controlled - the “beast”. But it’s just a mechanism we use to act collectively, to do things that are in our broader interests that no narrower interest can be expected to do. Government isn’t a beast. It’s _us_. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/50 "2003-12-20T00:47:06Z")
Well, yes, in a sense. But it is us using guns. Its not like the PTA or bridge club. The point is that the “us” that we engage in for the purpose of force should be limited. That is we should use force only in very limited circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/51 "2003-12-20T01:07:56Z")
> [@](#): > > To try to return to the topic itself, the most fundamental misconception that the small-is-good, smaller-is-better ideologues have is that government is a quasi-alien, counterproductive, soul-thieving entity that must be controlled - the “beast”. But it’s just a mechanism we use to act collectively, to do things that are in our broader interests that no narrower interest can be expected to do. > > Government isn’t a beast. It’s us. Nice straw man. Here’s a better description: Government is a flawed institution. By its nature, it isolated decision makers from the costs of their decisions. Collecting money through taxes leads those who control the tax revenue to make wasteful decisions. In addition, the sheer volume of necessary information in a modern economy makes it very difficult for centralized institutions to make optimal choices. Coupled with the government’s unique ability to use force or the threat of force to enact its decisions, and you have a very dangerous organization. A necessary one, but one that must be restrained and kept to a manageable size, with strong checks and balances to prevent it from running amok. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/52 "2003-12-20T01:30:34Z")
Agreed. God knows. But where is the point of balance? That’s the tricky part. My OP centered on the soi-disant strategy of ‘starving the beast’. That is, reducing the money available to government and thereby forcing a scale-back of government. My thesis was that this was inherently flawed given the forces that drive political decisions in the United States. That is, voter demands for ever greater services coupled with vote-dependent officials makes the eventual scale-back impossible to acheive _barring disaster_ - a revolution or losing war or somesuch. Without that sort of outside stimulus I see the continuing deficit spending of almost all recent budget years as, in the long term, extremely problematic. What happens when the level of indebtedness of the United States government becomes such that lenders are no longer willing to lend? Again, I see two paths out: devaluation of the currency or the repudiation of the federal debt. Both of which would destroy the existing value of Treasury bills and destroy the currency (and many peoples life savings and retirement funds). Does anyone else see any other options? You could cut back services but the voters won’t go for that. You could raise taxes enormously but the voters won’t go for **that**. At which point what? Revolution? The overthrowing of the republic? What? ---
**Author:** ![HayekHeyst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/45deac/32.png) [@HayekHeyst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HayekHeyst)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/53 "2003-12-20T03:44:57Z")
And government is just whatever majority happens to be assembled at the moment. Don’t quite know how 50.01% of the population that bothers to turn out to vote can be equated to ‘us’. Oh, wait, I forgot. We’re just the neurons (if that–some of us are mere rectal epithelial cells), the hindbrain. Government is the emergent consciousness. We are but single cells, whose only purpose is to reproduce, strive, and die for the greater glory of our whole. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/54 "2003-12-20T04:03:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > \*\*Do you have a cite for that? \*\* [I have a cite that supports much of it](http://research.aarp.org/health/9903_insurance_1.html) You may dispute the notion that older Americans will be crabby about this, if you like. You may also dispute the notion that corporation are “dumping” older employees specifically BECAUSE of health insurance concerns. That would be a hard one to prove with cites, given that any corporation enegaging in such practices would tend not to trumpet them to the world. Of course, given that corporations in general have been dumping EVERYONE lately, it’s hard to see hwo they WOULDN’T dump older workers who drive up salary and health insurance costs. In short, I think I’m on strong ground with this one. Oh, yeah. Starve the beast? That would be cruel. Get it to work for its supper, though. And by ‘work’ I don’t mean throwing more money at rich people. BTW, has anyone noticed how the conservatives around here and elsewhere have pretty much shut up about “class warfare” lately? It’s like they got tired of hearing about those tax breaks for the rich whenever they started that cant up. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/55 "2003-12-20T06:09:24Z")
Your cite supports _none_ of it. Your assertion is that people between 55 and 65 are being laid off early because of rising health costs. Your cite does not mention layoffs at all. It says that the trend is for companies to reduce health care coverage for employees. That’s a totally different thing. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/56 "2003-12-20T15:05:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > \*\*Your cite supports _none_ of it. Your assertion is that people between 55 and 65 are being laid off early because of rising health costs. Your cite does not mention layoffs at all. It says that the trend is for companies to reduce health care coverage for employees. That’s a totally different thing. \*\* As I said in my previous post Sam, direct proof that employers are doing something that could readily be described as age discrimination is going to be hard to come by. So we must look at the numbers and make inferences. Frex: > [@](#): > > The percentage of older adults with no source of health insurance increased from 12 to 14 percent between 1992 and 1994. This contrasts with the trend for the non-elderly population over this period; among all non-elderly Americans, the percentage without health insurance in 1992 and 1994 did not change, but rather held steady, according to the Current Population Survey. Are you getting this, Sam? The percentage of older adults without health insurance increased, while the percentage of all others decreased. As you’ll not from reading the story, the major source of health insurance for all Americans is employment. I realize that it requires an inference you’d be loathe to make here, but the fact is that it’s logical to assume that it’s because older adults are losing jobs. Now you also may not want to make the inference that corporations like dumping employees who are larger salary expenses ahd health insurance expenses, but I can’t imagine what you’d have in the way of logic to argue this proposition. Nah, Sam, the reason you don’t see it is you don’t WANT to see it. But it’s there. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2003, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/57 "2003-12-20T16:03:43Z")
**Sam** , I assume, then, you have a better alternative than government? If not, then yes, you do have to accept that it’s us, and restrict your claims of strawmen to situations where they just might have some validity. You speak of decisionmakers being “isolated” from their consequences, and having effectively unrestrained power along with the temptation to use it - well, not in a society where the citizenry takes its responsibilities seriously. We always have the ultimate power even if we don’t always use it. The danger to us is in becoming apathetic, or even hostile as you clearly are, to our own institutions and thereby to each other. **Jonathan** , one other way out is to ignore the problem and hope not to have to face it in one’s own lifetime. That’s the most common strategy, for many. Another is to try some actual leadership - lay out the problem clearly, show the consequences of various courses of action, and appeal to our senses of community responsibility. Our politicians too often underrate us, and we too often internalize that learned helplessness, but I refuse to believe it’s innate. History shows otherwise. **Hayek** , can I have a hit of that? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2003, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/58 "2003-12-21T08:55:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > Government is a flawed institution. By its nature, it isolated decision makers from the costs of their decisions. The modern corporation is a flawed institution. By its nature it isolates its decision makers, who do not own the firm, from the costs of their decisions. — Collecting money through taxes leads those who control the tax revenue to make wasteful decisions. Collecting money by agents who do not own the firm leads them to make wasteful decisions. ---- In addition, the sheer volume of necessary information in a modern economy makes it very difficult for centralized institutions to make optimal choices. Therefore, governments should avoid involvement in the production sector of the economy, except of course at the “highest levels”. ---- Coupled with the government’s unique ability to use force or the threat of force to enact its decisions, and you have a very dangerous organization. A necessary one, but one that must be restrained and kept to a manageable size, with strong checks and balances to prevent it from running amok. …Otherwise you could have the disaster that has befallen countries like Sweden, which has a higher life expectancy than the US. Then again, so does Costa Rica. * * * Actually, Sam and I agree on a fair amount. His post was a fair reply to that which preceded it. My main problem is with its tendencies towards sweeping generalizations and low empirical content. (But hey, it’s a post, not an encyclopedia.) Also, I would say that government pork results from an imbalance between concentrated benefits (enjoyed by the pork recipients) and dissipated costs (paid by taxpayers). ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2003, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/59 "2003-12-21T09:11:21Z")
Speaking of government pork, Congressional Republicans sure know how to feed at the trough. I’d say that one difference between bad government and good government is that the latter has proper procedures. Total spending on pet projects set new records this year, clocking in a $23 billion. Best of all, these projects - called “earmarks” by Tom DeLay - have not been subjected to any sort of competitive bidding or even government hearings. Instead, they are requested by a single member of Congress, to serve a single national interest. Let’s list some of these national interests. Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, scored $1 million for the Ankorage museum and $1 million for the Tongass Coast Aquarium. Yay! Jim Gibbons, Republican of Nevada secured $6 million for a bus terminal, $2 million for a truck climbing lane and $1.6 million for drinking water improvements. Fair enough, that’s infrastructure. I sure hope that the funds were allocated according to systematic criteria though. Mr. Gibbons also arranged a $225, 000 contribution to fix a swimming pool in Sparks, Nevada. Next time I’m in Sparks, I’ll think about paying a visit. The $50 million indoor rainforest in Iowa is also very exciting. Anyway, Tom DeLay doesn’t put much trust in systematic procedures: apparently they smack of Clintonism. He thinks it better for Congress to make these decisions directly giving them, “the right to direct spending to our districts, rather than wait on some bureaucrat to decide whether it was a useful project or not.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/20/politics/20PORK.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/20/politics/20PORK.html) ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2003, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755/60 "2003-12-21T09:14:09Z")
I didn’t mean “competitive bidding”; I meant “competitively awarded via a systematic grant-making process”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starving-the-beast-can-it-work/219755.md?page=4)