Government expenses increase dramatically, but it isn’t buying a greater quality of life for the average American. It spends in arenas that support the finance, insurance, corporate, and real estate sectors, and it sells the public on the need for austerity measures because of the massive public debts. Austerity is about cutting public services, creating resentment for the now inept services, and then using this resentment to justify the privatization of them. Pervasive resentment toward entitlement programs is a good example of how many people accept social services to be burdensome while accepting the a priori existence of larger war budget, which serves only to export inflation and repatriate resources and foreign labor for the American elite.
We succumb to a loss of public services in many ways.
Underfunding of public schools and the resulting shift to the need to privately educate our children.
Massive increases in university costs to the student, and the resulting loan servitude that didn’t use to exist
Reduction in health care available to the poor, and the non-existence of healthcare outside of the private sector for most of us
Diminishing availability of trial-by-jury to 98% of people who are convicted of felonies who must settle for our-of-court deals with the judicial system
Growing loss of public support for utility companies
Loss of support for public lands and common areas
Decline in funding for family services, women’s services, psychiatric services, homeless services across the board
The distinction you're making between "expenses" and "funding" is an interesting one. It's capturing something important, but I feel like most people are going to find it confusing.
Expenditure on schooling is skyrocketing, but it mostly goes to admin, so you could say education funding is not increasing rapidly. Is that the distinction? I feel like there needs to be a clearer way to express it.
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