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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Government spending/revenue as percentage of GDP is the common proxy for government size. That said actual empirical evidence doesn’t lead to clear cut conclusions about the relationship between economic growth/outcomes and government spending. It’s very much dependent on the country, quality of government institutions and components of the expenditure.

    Intuitively, you can clearly see that if you had 2 identical countries where 50% of gov spending went to building schools, hospitals and roads in one and paying interest on national debt in the other then you would expect very different outcomes with the same government “size”.

    For the US, that metric has been close to 30% for the last several decades with spikes during crises like 2008 and 2020 (changes to money supply or “minting” is a component of government size but usually a temporary one). It’s been relatively stable outside of that since the 1970s. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending-to-gdp

    Relative to the rest of the world’s rich countries it’s on the lower end:

    In my view, it’s highly dependent on the quality of the government institutions and components of spending. People immediately think of inefficiency and bureaucracy when governments are brought up but there is empirical evidence to show that gov spending on things like education and infrastructure are usually “productive” in additional to contributing to factors that may not be properly captured by measures like GDP growth.

    In short, people reducing government spending/regulations as inherently bad/controlling are at least not being completely honest because it’s a very complicated discussion.





  • The official number was at 30k only 2 months in and that was only the names confirmed by a medical system already at the brink. Do you genuinely believe it only rose by 5-10k in subsequent 8 months of unrelenting assault? US doctors said that they have compelling reason to believe the death toll is 90k+ based on their time treating the wounded there. Another estimate is at 180k published in a medical journal as previously mentioned. Hamas were estimated to number around 30k before the conflict began (About 1k were killed inside Israel after Oct 7 and were not counted in the death toll) and they are still capable of fighting in most areas of Gaza according to recent reports.








  • Sami@lemmy.ziptoWorld News@lemmy.worldMedia Bias Fact Check - Automation
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    2 months ago

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/radio-free-asia/

    This what scores you high credibility: “a less direct propaganda approach” for state sponsored media that is not critical of its sponsor

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

    And this is what scores you mixed credibility: “exhibits significant bias against Israel” for state sponsored media that is not critical of its sponsor (updated in Oct 2023 naturally)

    Now every article published by Radio Free Asia is deemed more credible than those published by Al Jazeera despite the former literally being called a former propaganda arm of the state in their own assessment. Yes, good is not the enemy of perfect but this is clearly an ideological decision in both instances.

    CNN also scores as Mostly Factual based on “due to two failed fact checks in the last five years” one being a single reporter’s statement and the other being about Greenland’s ice sheets. That doesn’t seem like a fair assessment to me

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/

    So based on this I am supposed to conclude that Radio Free Asia is the most credible source out of the three at a glance.


  • Yeah, I’m not saying all their work is worthless and I know they’re good enough for the most extreme sources of misinformation but to paint entire publications as not reliable based on the assessment of couple laypeople with an inherently narrow worldview (at least a very American-centric one) is the opposite of avoiding bias in my opinion.