I don't think appealing to the gilded age can be taken seriously.

See for instance: https://www.investopedia.com/gilded-age-7692919

For better or for worse, that GDP boom was enabled by the massive spending and outcome of the Civil War, much like WW2. To point to these moments and ignore the immediate massive historical events that preceded it seems like a serious oversight in the analysis.

You chastise the comparison but then admit they're much alike, did you think that a complete accident. Obviously two different times are two different times but it's hilarious the hypocrisy you often see of regulatory proponents talking up post WW2 gains as the regulatory apparatus spun up -- but when you point out other post war periods with lower federal burdens suddenly the narrative changes to 'not like that!'

So you're telling me that government spending was continually going up, and while this happened our quality of life massively and suddenly improved? I feel like reversing this process is very bad.

Unless nirvana is at 100% it has to stop somewhere. What im saying is it didn't continually go up during periods of like growth, and it's not clear such high federal spending is necessary or helpful in improving the human condition.

The US government has very low spending (it just appears high due to the military budget) and correspondingly many people in the US have very poor human condition. It's abundantly clear that government spending is a necessity to combat inequality. When the functions of government are privatised, the poor will lose access to these amenities, and the rich will begin to profit from them. The result is a system more unequal in both wealth and allocation. Likewise the destruction of regulations serves mainly to increase the ability for corporations to exploit individuals. These are all clear negative effects, and I have yet to see a positive case for this action. What benefits might there be to decimating the government? The only suggestion I've heard is that the private sector will magically do the government's job better than it can, which is absurd because they could already attempt this and have decided it isn't possible.

Dude, maybe just admit that your edgelord libertarian fantasy of everything being a corporation is a bad idea. It's fine, you're allowed to change your mind.

There may be a serious discussion to be had about government spending. But it seems that you believe Musk and the rest of the GOP are interested in it. If they were, the House GOP wouldn’t have released a budget that asks for 4 trillion debt limit increase while proposing 4.5 trillion tax cuts. Or SpaceX wouldn't be awarded another $40m contract. While it’s a drop in the bucket, serious people would at least raise questions about the massive conflict of interest.

Musk and his ilk are interested in looting the treasury. It has nothing to do with government efficiency.

Reverting to the world of 110 years ago in what way resembles today? This sound like you are deeply misplacing your confidence in your personal understanding of the world.

Not only he is overconfident about his "history knowledge" but is extremely wrong. Comparing that GDP from 110 years ago with today is liking comparing the economics of indigenous tribes with their colonization people.

It's not like comparing apples with oranges, it's literally comparing a bacteria with country.

But that growth period also came after the largest Marxist redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor that's ever happened in America.

The mythos often presented is mass wealth inequality is incompatible with raising of living standards of the poor.

The poor can gain something at least temporarily by taking it from the rich. Another less violent option is mutually beneficial voluntary interactions.

I'm talking about Emancipation. So no, this isn't temporarily taking something from the rich, or something that could have been solved through "mutually beneficial voluntary action".

The government told a bunch of rich people that the incredibly valuable people they owned were no longer their property, and gave money and land to the people who previously had nothing because they hadn't been considered people. That's what kicked off your Gilded Age

You're literally talking about moving violence enforced slavery to something closer to voluntary trade of labor. That's far from exclusively Marxian, even most brands of ancapism advocate such philosophy.

Yes, it's also a wealth transfer, and slaveholders (other than in DC) were not compensated.

If you're ignoring that huge economic event in your analysis of the economics of the latter half of the 19th century, trying to replicate it today is going to be very rough.

Given your other replies in this thread, you're not interested in arguing honestly and I'm not going to continue engaging.

The involuntary wealth transfer of slavery was from slaves to the rich, not the other way around. Framing it as the slaves taking from the rich when they stopped being slaves by no longer providing free labor is monumentally disingenuous, and I don't think you really believe that.

> I'm talking about Emancipation

Emancipation isn't Marxist, historically or conceptually.

> That's what kicked off your Gilded Age

Absolutely not. "Railroads were the major growth industry," with industrialisation and immigration being the era's economic drivers [1]. "The South remained economically devastated after the American Civil War" and remained a drag on the American economy throughout most of the Gilded Age.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age

You’re out of your mind and blathering out of ignorance.

Nothing about that era resembles Marxism, and I’d guess you’d struggle to tell the difference between Karl Marx and the Marx Brothers.

Reconstruction was shut down. Slaves went from assets to contract services. Jim Crow ensured that there was no movement upward. For the aristocracy, they were hurt by the depredation of war but recovered stronger than before under the new system.

The gilded age was about railroads. The south with their feudalist system was a backwater producing mostly raw material. They moved out of irrelevance because social control allowed them to control the Senate for decades.

Only in the South, and shortlived. The elite quickly regained control of both the land and means of production.

It also had nothing to do with Marxism. There was no redistribution of land as in social revolutions in other countries (France, Russia, China).

…youre saying that life was good from 1870-1910? Reconstruction and the gilded age??

I mean, there was technological and medical improvements, sure, and continued urbanization.

But that’s… those are some of our nations most shameful, inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal government as it exists now was just getting started after we realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local democratic systems were completely broken. More relevantly, we didn’t have cancer researchers, epidemiologists, the NSF, or, most relevantly, nuclear weapons.

Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face, unless they’re young and don’t know anyone older than them, and/or advocates isolationism.

Regardless, this exact story makes it clear that the goal isn’t cutting the size of the government at all — it’s politicizing the civil service, and bringing it under the exclusive control of a supreme executive. They’re not exactly ashamed of it!

>social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face

Who says I don't advocate cutting those too, if you're asking? And I am grey haired, not sure about the ageism.

Well, all I'll say is this then: you are a tiny minority.

Yet the public voted for someone openly stating they'd carry out DOGE.

Majority is just a collection of tiny minorities, in this case my minority opinion partially aligns. As it turns out minority isn't aways what you think.

This RMG survey reports 19% of all voters knowing what DOGE was in December of 2024.

https://napolitannews.org/posts/19-percent-of-voters-know-wh...

(PDF) https://napolitannews.org/assets/pdfs/67633dc0cced7-gcm24-12...

Less than 19% knew what the nuclear safety team was, so be careful with the point you're making. There was probably more informed consent for DOGE than many eliminated positions.

> so be careful with the point you're making

I was attempting to find evidence for your claim, and I found that survey. If you can find other surveys, please share, as I am seeing this being repeated a lot.

You were finding evidence for a different goal post you shifted to, that when applied applies even more harshly to the nuclear team.

Shut up, Jesus Christ...

The dude is insufferable.

You're moving the goalposts. People did not, in fact, vote for DOGE.

I said 'the public voted for someone openly stating they'd carry out DOGE.'

They moved the goalposts to what fraction of voters were questionably polled to know about DOGE, because my claim is pretty much irrefutable. Then when I use their own criteria suddenly we cry foul that I used their own goal posts that they shifted to.

You are single handedly making this discussion unbearable. Congrats I guess?

I don't follow. Is there a constituency in favor of eliminating governmental nuclear safety?

I don't follow. Are we moving the goal posts yet again from the above of what % knew what something was? Because the constituency generally did not know of the nuclear safety team. I don't even know their was a constituency calling for their creation, although there is an argument as to why reps might make them exist anyway.

Are you suggesting their creation was improper? Or suggesting constituency advocation would make it proper?

Either way you might draw uncomfortable conclusions.

I think defense _spending_ could be cut dramatically without changing our defense _posture nor preparedness_, simply by modernizing inefficient systems, reducing waste, renegotiating contracts, etc. Our defense spending is relatively insane. We should look at Medicare and Medicaid in the same way. I wouldn’t want to see benefits reduced, but we certainly should be optimizing costs. I really hope the idea of reducing government waste hasn’t become a partisan thing just because the folks doing it right now are doing it very badly.

> Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face

I think plenty of people would like to cut Medicare and Medicaid spending, not by reducing service, but by cleaning up the unbelievably broken medical system in the US.

The issue is not with Medicaid: it's with the Big Pharma, their lobbies, and the corruption they generate. For-profit companies can't be in control as something as critical and universal like human health.

Many are very much in favor of cutting these services.

As President Musk said, “that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity”

I am so confident that that is untrue, I don't even feel the need to link studies; questioning whether the American voting public supports SS and Medicare is like questioning if they oppose slavery or endorse family values & apple pie. An extraordinary claim in need of extraordinary evidence, for sure.

And, sadly, I won't take "Trump won the election and then put Elon in charge of cutting stuff, so clearly Americans support that decision" as evidence instead of direct, scientific surveys. For one thing, much less than half of the voting public voted affirmatively for Trump; for another, I hope we can all agree that people on all sides very often vote for reasons very loosely related to the candidate's actual positions on policy.

Apologies if I'm rude, really grateful that such convos are happening on HN in the first place! Separate from "would we be better off with or without the New Deal welfare state and/or the entire federal government", I think this is an appropriate place to agree on empirical facts about the current situation. And "that idea is extremely unpopular" is such a fact, IMHO.

Many, many people figure “fuck it, im not getting social security, so why should the others.” It’s enough to tip elections for particularly odious candidates.

See: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v81n4/v81n4p1.html

They’ve been fed a lie that the system is failed and believe it.

This isn’t my opinion. I’m a widow and survivors benefits for my children has significantly eased the burden of taking care of them. I’m strongly in favor of expanding these programs and soaking the rich to pay for them. Instead they’re getting their money, and someday find themselves on the wall.

Maybe best not to invoke the period with the worst economic inequality in US history as some sort of example?

You're also forgetting the tremendous amount of social unrest during that time because of that inequality (and as a result, the workers rights we enjoy today which largely arose from that period, and the Great Depression, though there have been great efforts to erode them).