Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham88
You can't shut down something else that you consider useless because the reason that the services exists is because it serves some purpose useful to our country. Additionally, if I recall correctly, the US government has been losing money on a year to year basis for basically its entire existence, so its been screwed up for ages.
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Certainly things that are considered useless can be shut down. Happens frequently when the issue is put to a vote. (Unfortunately these things are rarely put to a vote-so overall it doesn't happen frequently. But if you just look at the occasions when it *was* put to a vote you'll find that it does happen frequently then.) The key is that a majority of the people find it to be useless.
There are a few issues considered to be 'constitutional' where the courts can override the vote-but you know what, even in those cases it's more a matter of the size of the majority & approach that's the problem. If enough people judge something useless, and the courts knock it down as unconstitutional, then the people can amend the constitution-and the courts can't do *anything* about that. (Although a court can decide that a proposed constitutional amendment doesn't make sense, they can't decide that it's 'unconstitutional'. It's possible that the decision that it doesn't make sense might not be made until after it's been ratified and I'm not sure what would happen then. Usually (all the occasions I know of) that decision has been made before the amendment is voted on.) I'm talking about the US Constitution, of course-state constitutions *can* be overridden by that. (And, presumably, the same applies to the national constitutions of other countries but I don't know very much about those.)
There are many government programs which, arguably, were once useful to the country but are no longer so-but they continue because they're never put to a vote. The problem is letting bureaucrats & politicians make decisions for the people. It wouldn't be a big problem if they at least listened to the people (of course the 'silent majority' is hard to listen to, but if the job were easy then it wouldn't pay so well, right?) but they usually listen only to the 'loudest' minority. (Volume is judged in many ways, of course. One is 'put your money where your mouth is' so the group that contributes the most has the loudest 'voice'. Another is political support, yet another is publicity, and so on. As I said at the start, this is an administrative nightmare so I don't expect these things to happen-but it'd be nice if people realized what the problem really is. Maybe *somebody* can think of a solution even if I can't.)
As for the US government losing money, there have been quite a few years when it didn't. Most recently in the 90's. Not nearly as many years as when it has lost money, but it's not been a continuous thing.