Some years ago, in a thread about the deficit, I offered that, if I ran things, the US would have all the warmth and charm of the Soviet Union, but it would be solvent.
In Detroit, is the building that was the second home of Ford Motor, after the original wood frame factory building on Mack, and before the Highland Park complex that cranked out Model Ts. That brick building on Piquette has been turned into a museum about Ford’s early days.
The museum organizers are now bouncing off the walls, because the Federal government has revoked a half million dollar grant to the museum. While I might enjoy a day in that museum (have never been, even though it’s only about 30 miles from my home), the question needs to be asked, “why is a government that is running massive deficits subsidizing a small museum?”
There are flox of things that would be “nice to have”, but why is the government subsidizing them?
There was a story in the local paper about a local non-profit that was providing opioid addiction and mental health services to about 850 clients (low-income & homeless). DOGE team apparently canceled a $3.5 MM grant that was keeping the doors open. They’ve now laid off a large number of staff and are in danger of closing, releasing unmedicated folks to the street.
History helps us understand where we came from and why things are the way the are. It is hard to put a dollar value on that, but there is a value.
These types of grants aren’t responsible for the government deficits. The government basically spends money on SS, Medicare/Medicaid and the military. The rest of it is chump change. The economy expanded for March 1991 to March 2001, then a record 120 months straight. If we were to go back to those tax rates the deficit would be completely under control.
The number of federal employees has been declining since the Eisenhower administration, even as the size of the country has grown. Which shows you how phony these DOGE cuts are. Federal payroll isn’t all that big. But they don’t have the balls to make cuts that actually matter, so they do some window dressing and pat themselves on the back. It is all for show. It hurts a lot of innocent people, which tells you everything you need to know about their character.
As a wise man once said “a journey of 1000 miles, begins with a single step”. As I have offered before: why is the Federal government providing grants and subsidies to cities and states, for police officers, for road maintenance, for education, and a bazillion other things? All worthy endeavors, but, if the people of a state will not tax themselves to cover those costs, why does it become the Federal government’s problem, and lay the cost on it’s, presumably, infinite credit card?
As for the programs that are much larger, like SS and Medicare, that we old phatz paid for, how do we know those agencies are not grossly overmanned?
Then there is defense. I’ll all for a strong defense, but the nonsense that goes on at DoD is incredible.
The lead ship of the Navy’s Constellation class frigates, is being built by a yard in Wisconsin, owned by Fincantieri, of Italy. The keel was laid in mid 2022. Two and a half years later, how much is built? 10%. Fincantieri builds a similar design, in Italy, in half the time the Connie is taking. Then there is the 50% cost overrun, so far. This is insane.
This is not a good reason, but as it turns out it’s a very good reason. It’s because if left to the states, some of those things will not be done. If the Feds had not mandated the Interstate Highway System, you can be sure that some states would not have bothered to build them because: money. (See: Mississippi & Alabama re: education). Without an interstate system the entire country is poorer, as the transportation infrastructure only works when it reaches everywhere.
(The same is true for lots of infrastructure; many parts of America had no electricity until FDR got the Rural Electrification bill passed. Likewise telephone service was spotty until the Federal government handed the franchise to AT&T in return for a promise to provide “universal service.”)
The country is vastly different now than at its creation, when a “state” was more like a European Country, with disparate laws and customs, and little reliance on each other. The idea that states are “mini-labs” for experimentation is great, but at some point you have to say “the experiment is over, and [Interstate Highways] have won.” Substitute “Interstate Highways” with “integration” or “food safety” or “effective policing” or “airline regulation” or “OSHA workplace requirements” or “Medicaid” or whatever.
Some things are required to have a functioning modern society. Some states are so retrograde - and so tax phobic or billionaire-centric (you of all people should recognize this) that it’s necessary for some things to be mandated - and paid for to insure they get done. We leave some things up to the states, we don’t when it’s important to the greater society.
Personally I’m happy that we support some small museums (I am watching the New Right rewrite vast portions of history [
] and I am likewise happy to modestly support a TV channel which isn’t beholden to McDonald’s and Coca Cola to provide programming. That costs me about a dollar a year. I suspect the museum piece is even less than that.
My point is, if the people of a state choose to live in ignorance and squalor, why does that become the Fed’s problem? I have commented before on Lansing’s tendency to give “JCs” another tax cut, rather than invest in road maintenance. “We The People” of the township I live in, voted a property tax on themselves, for road maintenance, within the township, because neither the state or the county were getting it done. Why can’t people in other citys/counties/states shoulder some “personal responsibility”?
Same reason, if less obvious, why not mandating a measles vaccine in rural Texas has now become a problem in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kansas.
If you don’t have an interstate highway system in Texas, you don’t get the benefit of an interstate highway system. I am better off for having the IHS in Texas, even if I don’t see it on a daily basis. And if you think having a Balkanized system of governance is good for you, you’d love how it works in India, which is to say, it doesn’t.
Disparate regulation, different enforcement, lax food safety, and all the rest: out the window. Everyone for himself.
You want to eat Texas chickens with bird flu? Help yourself. I prefer a more orderly order.
If there were no interstates in Texas, then the Texas economy would suffer due to the inability to move stuff around. The folks in Austin may, eventually, catch on, that it is in their best interest to get with the program.
Seems you are conflating public safety regs with subsidies for purposes that the citizens of a state do not value.
Michigan used to have the most stringent content requirement in the country for hot dogs: 100% skeletonal meat, only. No snouts, spleens or ears. But, as things go in Michigan, in the 70s the meat packers whined about the “burden” of making hot dogs that contained nothing but meat, so the reg went away.
Not surprisingly, I have particular affection for this bit.
This is a nice theory. Meanwhile the folks running Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee (among others) do not seem to have received the message when it comes to education spending. They spend the least, and their citizens are the worst educated - although their Universities seem to have good football teams, I admit. Good for football, maybe, bad for having an educated populace.
I also posit that the country is worse for it overall. We would also be worse for having a crappy highway system in Texas,
Government spends $7T, systems are outdated, redundant, disconnected and highly manual. They are still using cobol with hundreds of billions in annual contracts and riddled with fraud.
More to the point, why is the government funneling $250 MILLION to Columbia University - or any PRIVATE University for that matter? One of the top 3 universities in the country, globally recognized, with an endowment north of $1.2 BILLION? I fear I can suspect the Why and that answer is really troubling.
Those were research grants. If you want cures for cancer or treatments for Alzheimer’s you need highly educated people working on the problem.
As an undergrad, I worked on one of these grants (not at Columbia, I went to a land grant college) making boron analogues of amino acids (substituting a boron atom for the carbon atom in an amino acid). The purpose was to use these analogs for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) as a cancer treatment, particularly for brain cancer. Boron analogues of amino acids also have a number of other intriguing anti-cancer properties, but have never been fully studied.
In a twist, my dad was killed by glioblastoma a few years later. BNCT existed as a clinical treatment back then and was discussed as a treatment by the specialists, but was not yet ready for prime time and was only available in Japan.
BNCT still isn’t ready for prime time. It has incredible promise, but implementation is incredibly difficult. It isn’t the type of treatment that generates interest from the private sector, so all progress is made through research funded by government grants, of the type that were just canceled.
Most science research leads to a dead end. But that’s why we need the government to fund it. The private sector can’t take risks like this, but the public can. BNCT might never pan out, but there’s a chance it will. If it does, it would be incredible for glioblastoma patients and their families. Maybe, just for that reason it is worth taking the risk.
In the meantime, there are kids just like I was all across the country working in labs learning how to do research. Developing that skillset has value for the country too.
Sure, cancelling these grants saves a couple of bucks here and there. I highly, highly, highly doubt it actually winds up saving any money though.
Similar story to my final year in Mathematics of Applied Physics (mathematics of engineering in normal speak) at Harvard. The Funding was federal, and I wrote a program for a PDP-8 program that predicted close to exact dehydration and dangerously over hydrated fluid loads in extremely severely burned victims based solely on burn geometries. I tested it at two Boston hospitals (Shriners and Boston General) with significant success, but was beaten by a team at Florida State.
I went to the marriage of a little boy grown to a man who via stories his Mom told him knew I had played a role in saving him, and found me. I cried throughout the entire wedding service. He wore the 2nd and 3rd degree burn scars covering most of his body as icons of power and grace.
Federal money makes a huge difference when administered well.
Not fer nothing, but Google came from federal research grants to colleges.
Both Brin and Page were working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). The SDLP's goal was "to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library" and **it was funded through the National Science Foundation, among other federal agencies** .
Also from university grants:
GPS,
supercomputing,
LED lighting,
nuclear power,
speech recognition,
artificial intelligence,
the internet,
packet switching,
the first browser (MOSAIC),
data networking,
the touch screen,
hydraulic fracking,
seismic imaging,
MRI technology,
advanced prosthetics,
DNA sequencing,
and there’s more - there’s LOTs more, including in the fields of mathematics
(reverse auctions),
health (HIV treatments and kidney matching), and so much more.
There is a lot which private industry will do, but only if they see an immediate payoff. Much of our economic culture won’t wait that long, and it takes funding to do basic research which can lead to long term discoveries, which are then commercialized by the private sector.
