The New Deal & Great Society

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

Let's lay out our terms here quite simply. How do you feel about these programs?
Do you support Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid being eliminated?
What about the EPA, FDA, OSHA and numerous other federal regulatory agencies?

[Blackthorne]

I feel that these are all great programs - which are horribly broken and in need of repair.  The regulatory agencies as well.  The problem is, I don't know how to fix them.   I certainly do not think they should eliminated.

Bt

[wilco64256]

My problem with Social Security is that it functions basically like a pyramid scheme.  You pay into it your whole life not to support yourself but to support other people, and you just hope that by the time you're able to collect on it there are more people paying into it to support you.

The problem is that there are more people collecting than there are paying in and by current projections the program will be totally and completely bankrupt almost 2 full decades before I'm even allowed to start collecting.  It was a great concept when there was a good balance but now I'm being forced to pay into a program that won't have anything for me in return.  Kinda sucks.

[glottal]

Well, if we're talking about New Deal programs, I think the greatest New Deal programs are the FDIC (which I think is one the institutions which did the most to prevent the great recession from rivalling the great depression), the SEC (which is now totally corrupt as big financial firms can pay to "consult" the SEC about potential investigations into criminal fraud, but once upon a time did a good job), Fannie Mae (another institution which totally morphed into something very different from what it was originally supposed to be, but when it served its original purpose it was great) and Glass-Steagall.  Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the financial crisis - it didn't prevent 1987 - but it would have *contained* the crisis, making it much smaller.  Black Monday (1987) didn't cause a deep recession because of Glass-Steagall; the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999, and the recent financial crisis, obviously, was not contained.

I pick these programs because somebody thought about how to *prevent* the worst aspects of the Great Depression in an efficient way, created these programs/laws, and they worked.  Without the FDIC, we would be way worse off, and had the SEC not been corrupted, and had Glass-Steagall remained in force, we would be in way, way, WAY better shape (and indeed, they probably did prevent a number of depressions when they still had teeth).

As far as Medicare/Medicaid ... the health system in the USA is broken.  Period.  While cutting Medicare/Medicaid will make the situation worse, giving more money to Medicare/Medicaid also won't make the situation much better *unless* you fix the system (and no, Obamacare DID NOT FIX THE SYSTEM).

Think of it this way.  Health care is water; the health care system is the plumbing.  A lot of people in a certain town have a plumbing system where 95% of the water leaks before it can reach a faucet.  These people have huge water bills - so huge, they can barely afford water even with a subsidy from the local government.  The local government is in a fiscal crisis, and is considering stopping water subsidies.  However, since many people have broken plumbing systems and can barely afford water even with the current subsidy, they are forming an organization to pursue greater water subsidies so that people don't have to choose betwen water and food, or water and any other essential.  Neither cutting or increasing the water subsidy will address the root cause of the problem - the fact that the plumbing in broken.

Since this is getting long, I'll postpone writing what opinion I have of some of those other programs.