I have no idea how much attention people actually pay to the final sum. It's never the same any two years in a row even if you made exactly the same salary. You just pay whatever number shows up on the bottom line (or deposit whatever check arrives).
Doctors. The internet. We don’t need an entire apparatus to explain basic facts that can be a document sent via text message to new mothers in the hospital. The amount of useless busywork is absurd
After birth, when new parents are sleep deprived, is a uniquely stressful time when parents are bombarded with information. Advice on the Internet is prolific and often wrong, raising anxiety without providing needed context-sensitive guidance. It looks like this program was providing trustworthy materials and outreach to reduce infant death.
I'm not sure how many new mothers are taking the time to go through every unsolicited text they get. The majority of people consider printed media more trustworthy then online media [1] (I probably wouldn't click on a text message link with a headline about my newborn vs. a pamphlet provided by the hospital). There seems to be strong evidence that the "entire apparatus" did in fact work and was not superseded by text messages. I agree that there is a lot of useless busy work, but I don't think these cancellations are the way to address it
* hyperbolic
> Safe to Sleep created the public health messaging for this information and distributed it on social media, as well as in pamphlets targeted to specific groups, such as grandparents, and translated it into different languages. It also provided the materials to hospitals and doctor's offices to be handed out to patients.
Your proposed solution doesnt cover what this did. How would you classify this as busywork, if the end result can prevent infant deaths? This is a net loss to society if it gets shuttered entirely.
There are often complex social issues that don't have easy technological solutions, and you might not understand what these issues are if you don't have that background.
I see a lot of arrogance from the tech industry - there are a lot of people who think they know all the answers, but they've made faulty assumptions about what the problems are, and they don't really have the curiosity or the experience to know better.
This is an example of a program that should be defunded.
Buzzword bingo:
* environmental justice * local jobs * compost * emissions * connecting people to food and soil * community garden
One magical program does it all!
It says they're preventing 15,000 tons of emissions, but there are all kinds of ways to prevent or offset greenhouse gas emissions for under $10/ton. So at a glance this project appears to be allowing almost 2 million tons in preventible emissions in order to... pay people to bike around and collect food scraps?
https://carboncredits.com/carbon-prices-today/
TBF, this may still enable a legitimate project that is viable at $80-90 that is not at $70-80. So if you want to support a particular tree planting effort go for it.
To be clear though, this grant is for over $1,200 per ton.
nickff•9mo ago
DangitBobby•9mo ago
MOARDONGZPLZ•9mo ago
nickff•9mo ago
MOARDONGZPLZ•9mo ago
nickff•9mo ago
apical_dendrite•9mo ago
For example, my city is trying to build a bridge. There's a particular federal program for this (which will probably get killed by Trump), so the city applied for funding and now it's their job to build the bridge.
nickff•9mo ago
rat87•9mo ago
Pork is good. Pork helps grease the wheels of government, it helps things pass and helps facilitate compromise.
ars•9mo ago
If it's not worth funding locally, it's not worth funding federally.
apical_dendrite•9mo ago
In fact, that's how the interstates work too - the state transportation agencies apply for highway funding from the federal government and then manage the projects.
ars•9mo ago
Although I'm not really sold on even the approach you describe - it seems like it's just a way to funnel taxes from local people -> federal -> back to local.
Skip the middleman?
dummydummy1234•9mo ago
California tax payers support West Virginia infrastructure.
Inevitably some states are wealthier than others, the federal government acts as a balancer of this. This can improve outcomes in poorer states (education, building up new industries, local economies etc).
Ideally, it also provides a counter balance for changing economies, where there are inevitably winners and losers. Many industries are geographic centered, and having the ability to adjust for acute downsides in one area benefits the whole country overall in the long-term.
That being said, the specifics of individual programs are up to debate in Congress (it's their job).
sillystu04•9mo ago
nickff•9mo ago
robocat•9mo ago
Total costs (e.g. externalities, political) and benefits (e.g. security, influence) are harder to guess at.
The US political system puts a huge amount of pressure on allies to buy US armaments. The US military industrial capitalism is complex, and has massive political backing. Christmas lights sell missiles. I also wonder how much of the F-35 profitability comes from a Gillette/SaaS/HP financial model? Wars destroy capital goods, which is great if you're selling them.
btown•9mo ago
Wickard v. Filburn, for instance, upheld in 1942 that the federal government could use the Commerce Clause to regulate even a single farmer's output, on the basis that its impact on pricing, viewed in the aggregate, could affect interstate commerce: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111
And in this Rhode Island situation, Congress did indeed authorize this exact type of highly-localized program: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7438
If the federal government wants to use its resources to reduce food waste, in service of a nationwide fiscal policy to allow household funds that would otherwise go towards food waste to re-enter the economy, that's arguably largely within its purview. Because there's no national infrastructure or standards, action has to begin locally, if this is indeed the goal.
This interstate commercial framing, in fact, was at the center of the first Trump administration's food waste initiatives, which laid the groundwork for this program: https://www.wastedive.com/news/trump-administration-unveils-...
> “In one sense, this is a problem derived from America’s incredible achievements in agriculture and technology,” said [Trump's] EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler at an April 9 [2019] event, going on to recount a story about former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s surprise when he saw the bounty of a Texas grocery store in 1989. “Together, we can promote American prosperity and turn wasted food into solutions that can feed America’s communities, fuel our economy and maximize our resources.”
Whether or not specific pilot programs like the one mentioned in OP are the optimal way to implement that goal, of course, is a different question entirely. But at least they were trying to start somewhere.
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
nickff•9mo ago