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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Government spending/revenue as percentage of GDP is the common proxy for government size. That said actual empirical evidence doesn’t lead to clear cut conclusions about the relationship between economic growth/outcomes and government spending. It’s very much dependent on the country, quality of government institutions and components of the expenditure.

    Intuitively, you can clearly see that if you had 2 identical countries where 50% of gov spending went to building schools, hospitals and roads in one and paying interest on national debt in the other then you would expect very different outcomes with the same government “size”.

    For the US, that metric has been close to 30% for the last several decades with spikes during crises like 2008 and 2020 (changes to money supply or “minting” is a component of government size but usually a temporary one). It’s been relatively stable outside of that since the 1970s. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending-to-gdp

    Relative to the rest of the world’s rich countries it’s on the lower end:

    In my view, it’s highly dependent on the quality of the government institutions and components of spending. People immediately think of inefficiency and bureaucracy when governments are brought up but there is empirical evidence to show that gov spending on things like education and infrastructure are usually “productive” in additional to contributing to factors that may not be properly captured by measures like GDP growth.

    In short, people reducing government spending/regulations as inherently bad/controlling are at least not being completely honest because it’s a very complicated discussion.





  • The official number was at 30k only 2 months in and that was only the names confirmed by a medical system already at the brink. Do you genuinely believe it only rose by 5-10k in subsequent 8 months of unrelenting assault? US doctors said that they have compelling reason to believe the death toll is 90k+ based on their time treating the wounded there. Another estimate is at 180k published in a medical journal as previously mentioned. Hamas were estimated to number around 30k before the conflict began (About 1k were killed inside Israel after Oct 7 and were not counted in the death toll) and they are still capable of fighting in most areas of Gaza according to recent reports.


  • No one is proposing rent control in a vaccum. Arguing against that idea is disingenuous and is how you end up with the status quo of “rent control is actually bad for renters” that gets parroted in economics circles. State intervention is necessary for markets to exist in the first place and they have overwhelming power in shaping them.

    Building large scale affordable public housing, incentive structures that promote the building of affordable high density private housing, banning corporate ownership of single family homes and short term rentals like AirBnB, limiting corporate ownership within apartment complexes, reworking zoning laws to better suit current needs, more robust mechanisms for tenant disputes and transparency for historical rental prices to prevent abuse.

    All of that is possible if the political will was there.







  • I’ve always found it absurd how you can get compensated with amounts of money you would not see in a lifetime of work if you win the right type of legal case in the US so much so that purposely getting hurt to sue has become a running joke. Nothing against this particular case or individual but it always seemed like a perverse form of justice instead of, for example, making the party in the wrong change their policy to avoid similar incidents happening in the future while also covering legal fees.



  • Sami@lemmy.ziptoTechnology@lemmy.worldComing to you soon...
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    1 year ago

    They can just phrase it a little differently and argue semantics in front of a bunch of 70 year olds who don’t know what a browser is in a hearing or two. Maybe a couple campaign contributions through completely legal channels and that’s that. Anti trust enforcement has been falling in the US for decades.


  • Sami@lemmy.ziptoTechnology@lemmy.worldGoogle search is over
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    1 year ago

    I get the same as the main post. Either way the point still stands. I had someone correct me with a misconception about something because he googled it and thats what it said in the answer box. It’s getting increasingly difficult to rely on search results especially when google synthesizes them into questions and answers with little context