Comment by throwaway2037
1 month ago
> Because we have governments anemic to running anything or regulating any business.
This comment is weird to me. The US has one of the most effective environmental regulators in the world (EPA). The FAA and FDA are also excellent. The securities markets in the US are the global gold standard of regulation (SEC, etc.).
Certainly. These are institutions that have mostly been created during the progressive era of the US. The EPA (I believe) is the latest of these organizations.
Since roughly Reagan, the US has been either fully dismantling, defunding, or privatizing these institutions.
We've seen the FAA start to rely too heavily on the likes of Boeing to set regulation standards. The FDA has relied heavily on fees from private institutions to function and it's weakening due to that improper mixing has resulted in the likes of the Vioxx scandal.
Medicare is a good example of this. Under Clinton, rather than expanding or reforming medicare he introduced a plan to allow private insurance companies to get government dollars (medicare part c).
Wiki tells me that the EPA was created by Richard Nixon in 1970. Also, it matters little when a regulatory body was created. It matters much more how it changes over time -- it is continously adapting to changes in our society and economy. For example, after the 2008 global financial crisis, securites markets regulators changes significantly to strengthen the financial system.
Clinton, Obama, and Biden were doing this? If so, please provide examples.
> Clinton, Obama, and Biden were doing this? If so, please provide examples.
Yup. Primarily on the 3rd prong but, especially under Clinton, there was also significant defunding that went one. "The era of big government is over".
Clinton did welfare reform, which added much stricter means testing and work requirements to welfare. The "reinventing government" program was literally a hack and slash on government agencies not unlike DOGE. The student loan reform reduced subsidies for students. He signed in the crime bill which enabled the building of private prisons and ramped up the US incarceration rates. And he created Medicare part C which created a route to send government funds to private insurers.
Obama's signature bill, the ACA, was a giant handout to insurance companies in pretty much every way. By trying to force people into buying insurance and also subsidizing insurance purchases, it was a major gift to health insurers. Even the Medicaid expansion mostly resulted in private insurers getting more wealthy as most states implement Medicaid via a private insurance contractor. After the first midterm Obama got very little done mainly due to the republican's continuing the Newt Gingrich "we oppose everything you support" strategy and the filibuster.
Biden was mostly business as usual, however both the infrastructure bill and the chips act can't be seen as anything other than just massive giveaways to private industry. The build back better act would have been the same had it passed.