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> Meaningfully reducing the size of government is a surprisingly rare occurrence throughout history. "meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. This is sayi
by computerthings 2y ago
> Meaningfully reducing the size of government is a surprisingly rare occurrence throughout history.
"meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. This is saying nothing.
And it's not as rare as oligarchs persecuting political enemies and slashing anything that doesn't benefit them, harming millions of people leading to anything but more bad things along the same rotten line; the rate there is 100%.
It's not bold, much less "sound" to cut peanuts (compared to what will be taken in the form of tax cuts and govt contracts) while talking nonsense to an audience that understands and cares even less than him, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996385
- nomilk 2y ago> "meaningfully" is doing all the lifting here. You got me (I actually felt guilt writing that weaselly sentence!). The reason I still wrote it is because I'm reasonably confident it's correct (for some definition of 'meaningfully'). For example, in my lifetime, I can't recall any OECD country cutting its government spending by, say, 20% or more (I haven't looked it up, but I'd guess Greece during austerity might be the best example in the past 20 years, even then I doubt it was as much as 20% [0]). [0] There's another annoyingly confounding factor, which is Keynesian economics suggests governments should not cut spending during a crisis (or at a time when private spending is likely to be too low), which creates a 'capture' all of its own! (a bit like 'too big to fail' did for banks).