“The government should do more, not less”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Less. Government is the one outfit that fails at a job and then asks for a bigger budget to keep failing. Start with the bill. The Congressional Budget Office projects the federal debt, measured against the whole economy, will pass its all-time record within about a decade. Your generation gets that invoice. Then there's the knowledge problem. Friedrich Hayek showed in nineteen forty-five that no central planner can know what millions of people know about their own lives. Washington doesn't know your street. And the Tenth Amendment says powers not handed to the federal government stay with the states and the people. You'll say the poor fall through the cracks. A church knows your name. A bureaucracy knows your case number. Let me ask you this. Who knows your neighborhood better, Washington or your neighbors? More government isn't more help. It's more middlemen.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

Washington can't pay for what it does now. Doing more means borrowing more against young people's future.
The Congressional Budget Office's 2024 ten-year outlook projects federal debt held by the public, as a share of the economy, rising past its previous record high, set just after World War Two, within the decade.
Central planners can't gather the local, personal knowledge that families, churches, businesses and towns use every day.
Friedrich Hayek's 1945 article in the American Economic Review argued that the knowledge needed to run an economy is scattered among millions of people and can't be gathered by one planner.
The Constitution set up a federal government of limited, listed powers and left the rest closer to home.
The Tenth Amendment reserves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or to the people.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Without government programs, the poor, the sick and the elderly fall through the cracks, because markets and charity alone won't catch everyone.

Nate: Caring for the vulnerable is a moral duty. The question is who does it best. Families, churches, charities and towns know a person's name. A distant agency knows a case number. A safety net is good. A hammock that traps people is not.

The lines

“More government isn't more help. It's more middlemen.”
“A government that does everything ends up doing nothing well.”

Sources

Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034 (2024)
Friedrich A. Hayek, American Economic Review, The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945)
United States Constitution, Tenth Amendment, Bill of Rights (1791)