Summary
The Trump administration’s recent mass layoffs of national park and forest staff have sparked outrage as services deteriorate and safety concerns grow.
Around 1,000 National Park Service employees (5%) and 3,400 Forest Service workers (10%) were terminated on February 14, causing long entrance lines, trail closures, and reduced visitor services.
Former employees like wilderness ranger Kate White worry about visitor safety and ecological damage at popular destinations.
Conservation work for endangered species has halted, and wildfire response capabilities are threatened. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the cuts as deficit reduction, while critics call for policy reversal.
This is the welfare queen argument applied to all of governance and it was a lie then. None of the fraud is adding up and none of this will absolutely help the poor. It’s all gonna go to making billionaires a slightly higher billionaire.
What economic theory do you tend to gravitate towards that says the US should be running outlandish deficits every year, and that it benefits the citizens?
I’d be curious to read more into it.
The economic theory that “cutting” critical services (ie: privatizing or starving the beast) is more expensive than just paying for what’s needed. The only cheap form of government is no government at all, and I don’t think many people would like that in practice.
Well that’s silly, America is still running emergency Covid level deficits. Powell himself said its not sustainable.
The problem runs deeper than 5 years ago. For example, imagine if the de facto official retirement plan wasn’t siphoning public tax money to be locked into the private stock market. Uncle Sam doesn’t get to touch those tax deferred contributions for decades.
So instead of having that money to decrease the deficit or invest in programs that would reduce the financial burden of retirees (training nurses, preventative healthcare, etc…), they only get their cut at the end of the line. That money explicitly does no public good during those years, that would run counter to the profit motive of their private pool of shareholders.
There are dozens of examples like this, look at the banks and automakers we bail out with no public equity. We leverage our public good on the promise of private growth making up the difference later. Turns out, it doesn’t work so well…