[chii]

> I think there is nothing irrational about this.

it's not irrational. Unless you ignore the lower needs on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and spend your efforts on the higher needs.

The lower needs are basic - sustenance and safety etc. If someone is wealthy enough to meet these needs with time and resources to spare, then it makes a lot of sense to spend the extra resources on the higher needs.

But it is irrational to try to fulfil a higher need, when you don't already have the lower needs fulfilled first.

[hoseja]

And that is why US is spending so much effort making sure the basic needs stay unmet.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I had to think about it. Is it a conscious design effort or just a function otherwise unrelated issues?

[jjoonathan]

It's the net effect of asset holders working in their collective self interest and a society that allows them to.

They are on the other side of the bargaining table from the needy and much, much stronger. The moment the lower classes obtain a bit of spare cash and start to think about climbing Maslow's Hierarchy, rent goes up and the spare cash vanishes. Or wages inflate away and shareholders benefit. In any case, someone with an asset is standing by to hoover up the cash.

It's not exactly malice -- it's self interest with lopsided power dynamics and neglect for side effects -- but the dedication with which people weave excuses around this process can really feel like it's malicious some times.

[nebulous_two]

It's not a conscious design effort in the sense that the blueprints were designed and implemented this way. It's more that gradually with every political decision that is based on greed, we sink deeper in a world that is defined by it.

[hoseja]

I don't think any social engineers have been quite so mask-off but I'm not sure.

[TOMDM]

What money is the US spending in order to worsen it's own citizens basic needs?

Not needs it stubbornly refuses to subsidize, but actively making sure they remain unmet?

[d33]

I'd go with a TSA as an example of such spending. It's a net negative to the society - lots of money being spent to give an impression of security while it's proven that they clearly fail at their mission:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Admini...

[maxerickson]

If you are analyzing the impact of the TSA on basic needs in our current economy, it's very positive, providing jobs and causing minor distributed irritation that doesn't really count as a negative impact on basic needs.

(You can argue that it would be better to give the money away without requiring the jobs, but that ain't the world we have)

[DiggyJohnson]

Getting off topic, but I imagine TSA might inhibit travel enough that the real net impact to business would counterbalance any new TSA jobs.

And it is funny that we’re not talking about security. This is a good example lol

[maxerickson]

The fact that it is a show doesn't make it negative towards basic needs. Like people that can't afford to fly aren't going to go hungry because of the TSA.

I wouldn't be surprised if slightly discouraging business travel is anyway a net positive (it's going to take more than an irritating line to inhibit necessary travel and some amount of travel is almost certainly waste).

[TOMDM]

Good point, I'll concede that one.

I think there is some level of malicious intent implied on the grandparent that I don't think you can attribute to TSA policy makers though.

[falcolas]

> What money is the US spending in order to worsen it's own citizens basic needs?

Here's one that bugs me occasionally:

Gatekeeping who is allowed to benefit from societal help. Welfare, specifically. There's so much bureaucracy around identifying who gets welfare and who does not (not to mention the identification and enforcement of the "no" people who find ways to get the money regardless) that it takes a legion of employees to manage.

[bmhin]

Even more relevant to the question: it introduces complexity that harms citizen's basic needs by putting in place knowledge inequities. You can make the tax code as complicated as you want, and the hyper wealthy will still be able to pay for people to understand it and squeeze out every drop of value because the absolute amount of money in play makes it feasible. Spending $200k to "save" $1million is a good deal. That's maybe a couple full time employees. If you wanted to save $100 instead, throwing $20 at is isn't gonna get you anything.

So all those people who can't "subcontract" their way through the complexity with specialists are left to their own devices. And they don't have the time or expertise to navigate it themselves. So the tests and checks and processes and discoverability weeds out deserving people constantly just in the hopes of preventing some "undeservings" from having access.

It'd be like writing an algorithm and every branch of logic you put in you have to do a random roll and throw an exception some percentage of the time. Each new branch compounding to filter more and more while also costing more and more to facilitate. But that execution reality is ignored so that the pure logic can be focused on in a vacuum.

It's all like the opposite of Blackstone's ratio regarding crime that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer". Social programs are designed such that they would often rather let ten innocent people suffer than one guilty person benefit.

[TOMDM]

Very true.

I wonder how many people would be out of work if the US opted for universal programs (UBI, universal healthcare, guaranteed parental leave, subsidized childcare etc.) and in the process gutted much of the bureaucracy required to maintain the current systems.

My gut says thousands, but probably more right?

[falcolas]

Well, including the armed forces, state, and local employees, there's around 24 million federal employees. So, if even 1% were laid off, that'd be over 200,000.

So yeah, I'd definitely go with the "probably more".

[smordistan]

Universal health care for one.

Were you actually asking in good faith? This gets brought up fairly often.

[TOMDM]

Universal healthcare would be a fantastic move for the US.

I don't think the US spends money on making healthcare worse for people though. (Unless you want to argue that universal healthcare would be cheaper than the current standard and thus by way of opportunity cost the US is spending on worsening the healthcare of it's citizens)

[dv_dt]

The US is spending money adding more and more privatized middlemen to Medicare which is only increasing the inefficiency of the program. e.g.

https://www.levernews.com/seniors-medicare-benefits-are-bein...

[phone[phone]]

The US actively spends money propping up a broken healthcare subsidized marketplace and means-testing people as a way to gatekeep Medicaid, both of which prevent people from accessing affordable/single-payer healthcare.

[smordistan]

That is the primary logic behind universal health care.

[dv_dt]

The defense budget increase is $70B this year, Covid spending was $45B and ran out this year for things like securing next gen vaccines and stocks of drug treatments.

[hans1729]

That’s true of course, it comes down to the relative position in maslows model. Maybe I just assumed that the HN-audience is at the top of the pyramid almost by definition, but failed to do the adequate elaboration. Thanks!