Do you think the root cause of social/civic failures has been an inadequate policy repository and lack of a map between policy representations? If so, I have a bridge in Alaska for you to encode into your representation scheme.

> Higher taxes go to the government, and therefore the interests that have captured the government.

There is at least a chance for it to be redistributed, unlike private wealth.

Let's have a quick look at the federal budget. The big ticket items are social security, medicare, net interest and military/VA. Together those are more than half the budget.

Social security is the biggest of them. Older people have more wealth than younger people on net and social security is structured to make higher payments to people who made more money when they were younger, which is significantly correlated with having more wealth right now. So it's a massive transfer payment system that transfers money from the poor to the rich. Meanwhile it uses its own special tax which is significantly more regressive than the ordinary income tax and doesn't tax corporate income at all. Notice in particular that we could instead be solving "grandma doesn't starve" with a UBI that makes uniform payments to everyone and not disproportionate payments to the rich, and comes from a tax which is also paid by corporations.

Net interest is a naked transfer to people with enough capital to invest in government bonds.

Most of the military and VA budgets go to government contractors who work hard to sustain an uncompetitive bidding process with thick margins.

Medicare uses the same bad tax as social security and those dollars go to the healthcare industry which has thoroughly captured the government. The AMA lobbies to limit the number of medical residency slots and sustain a doctor shortage and healthcare corporations have established a thicket of laws to limit competition, impair price transparency and promote over-consumption.

That's where the majority of the government budget goes, and the remaining minority of the money is also going in significant part to government contractors and regulatory capture industries. The government takes tax money from the middle class and gives it to the rich and huge corporations.

We don't need any more "redistribution" like that. If you think you can get the government to stop doing that and instead give the money the poor and middle class then first prove you can do it with the existing money before even thinking about collecting more. You have a nutrient deficiency because you're infested with tapeworms, not because you don't have enough food.

Age + years of service >= 70.

61 + 51 in your example.

I'm dumb—somehow I got it in my head it was your age when you started.

> I think it is important to distinguish talk intended to appease the public, that currently is very anti-US, from real policies.

It's pretty clear that governments engage in such two-sided talk at their peril going forward. This is exactly how you get populism - usually of the far-right variety, with its specific blend of parochialism, jingoism and nihilism.

Everything is written in the voice of a terminally online Twitter troll. Every single communication from the U.S. federal government should be assumed to be a lie until proven otherwise.

I wonder how long it takes (it took?) before Americans think this is how it all should be, and that this is how it is in every country.

From the article:

> You're part of a team, you're contributing, you're also (measurably) pulling less hard than you would if the rope were yours alone

There’s a perfectly rational reason for this. Success is collective, but failure is individual.

Rewards for the success accrue to the person who represents it to the right people (usually those with the shortest path to the organization root).

For all intents and purposes, the person who gives the presentation did the work.

As someone who once spent two months reworking a system because a 4GB Oracle instance was okay, but 8GB was verboten, I agree.

This is the most insightful comment in the thread.

> That doesn't make sense for America to care about this much, given that Iran has no way to deliver nuclear weapons to it.

A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could also threaten U.S. bases and warships in the area. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.

> Are we really back in "trust me they have WMDs" territory?

Irrespective of everything else going on, it’s well established that Iran has a nuclear program in the advanced stages of development. There was a whole UN program around inspecting it.

> A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.

Personally, I don't care about the profit margins of oil and gas companies, and I will vote against any politician that partakes in sending my fellow citizens to die for the profit margins of oil and gas companies.

I also don't particularly care about the plight of regional allies, particularly ones that have a bizarre tendency to constantly poke the bears around them.

> If anyone does it'll be China giving them missiles to hit a US boat.

> That would make the US turn tail. Not start a war with China.

The right kind of missiles hitting the right kind of boat could lead to a very grave escalation.

Short of hitting the US mainland.

I doubt there is anything Iran can do that make the US put boots on the ground.

There is no appetite for boots on the ground in the US. And no coalition behind the US.