Does government work well?
Hank has defended government since 2012, calling the federal government effective and efficient and saying its broken parts need fixing, while criticizing shutdowns and performative governance. John faults Congress for doing too little, from the 2011 near-default to 2026, yet credits government programs such as PEPFAR with saving tens of millions of lives.
Axis: effective and efficient ... wasteful / broken
Positions by date: 42 records in 41 videos. The position was refined (2013, 2018), never reversed, in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-04-30 | first on record | John holds that government debt is not inherently bad for rich nations, that deficits are not mainly caused by wasteful spending, and that the debt problem is not any one ideology's fault. | The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes 00:00:33 |
| 2010-11-15 | restate | John says politically popular programmes can't be cut because old people vote, and cutting Medicare would just shift the cost; the deficit can't be balanced by painless fixes. | Hey! You! Fix the Budget! 00:01:28 |
| 2011-08-10 | restate | John mocks Congress's near-default game of chicken and its talent for doing nothing, and says every show of political inability chips away at the world's faith in the US. | Understanding America's Debt Problem 00:03:50 |
| 2012-10-23 | restate | John argues deficits are not inherently evil, governments sometimes need them (as in recessions), and the large current debt is cheap and repayable, so deficit reduction matters but is not a crisis. | Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit 00:03:13 |
| 2013-01-01 | refine | John says Congress was designed to be bad at getting things done but must cooperate enough to provide basics like roads, schools and telecom, which make everything else possible. | Why Does Congress Suck? 00:03:13 |
| 2013-03-12 | restate | John calls the sequester inefficient, bureaucratic and everything people dislike about government: Congress answered a long-term fiscal problem with a short-term crisis it failed to solve. | Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) 00:05:27 |
| 2015-07-07 | restate | John says running a deficit is not always bad for a government: deficits invested to grow the economy and tax base raise revenue. | Understanding the Financial Crisis in Greece 00:02:18 |
| 2015-10-20 | restate | John says Illinois is operating without a budget and neither its Republican governor nor Democratic legislative leaders are serious about ending decades of fiscal mismanagement. | Nerdfighteria's Resident Comptroller? 00:02:24 |
| 2017-04-04 | restate | John says too many politicians fit our caricatures, but our system of government depends on Daniel and many like him, passionate, honest public servants willing to attend meetings; we desperately need them. | Why I Won't Run for Office 00:02:59 |
| 2020-07-14 | restate | John finds it frustrating and heartbreaking to see so much unnecessary suffering and death caused by the failure of US political and public health systems; he feels overwhelmed and powerless. | The ice we skate is getting pretty thin. 00:01:27 |
| 2025-01-28 | restate | John says a central reason child mortality fell since 1995 is government-funded interventions, including US-funded PEPFAR and the Global Fund. | This Is Not Normal 00:02:55 |
| 2025-02-11 | restate | John says individuals and philanthropy cannot step in at this scale: responding to a crisis this size needs at-scale logistics that only governments can provide. | What's at Stake 00:03:53 |
| 2025-04-08 | restate | John says the cuts are made to look and sound like cutting, not serious DOGE austerity to lower debt or deficit, but a political choice to enact a political worldview one may agree or disagree with. | DOGE Is Not Cutting Government Spending 00:02:55 |
| 2025-06-10 | restate | John says PEPFAR, a US-led program against HIV globally, has been hugely effective, saving tens of millions of lives, and has long had bipartisan support. | 90,000,000 Lives for $20 00:00:29 |
| 2026-03-10 | restate | John says Congress, supposed to decide on going to war and on government spending, is doing not nearly enough of either job. | Is Hank Green Running for Congress? 00:04:33 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-08-08 (said on 2011-08-09, implied) | first on record | Hank says legislation against hackers will never be effective, because the professional arguers in Congress will always be far behind the hackers. | Hackers, Cyber crime, and a New Kind of War. 00:03:09 |
| 2011-11-18 | restate | Hank argues Congress will never catch real copyright infringers but will crush casual users who cover songs and make mashups, GIFs, videos, let's plays and commentaries. | Top 5 Reasons ████ ██ ██████ video description |
| 2012-09-21 | restate | Hank: however inefficient and infuriating, American democracy is a pretty good system that has done well by us. | You. Must. Vote. 00:02:52 |
| 2013-10-01 | restate | Hank calls the shutdown embarrassing, stupid and a dangerous game that makes the world laugh at America's inability to complete mundane tasks. | The Lowdown on the Shutdown 00:03:15 |
| 2015-03-06 | restate | Hank says 'we won', a win against lobbyists and corporate interests where the government had no reason to do the right thing except that it was right. | WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism 00:02:21 |
| 2016-03-04 | restate | Against the common idea of a massive, inefficient bureaucracy that spends a lot and gets nothing done, Hank takes the 'radical position' that the federal government is effective, efficient and surprisingly small. | Startling Facts About the Government that Made Me Feel Good 00:00:35 |
| 2016-10-21 | restate | Hank says no one talks about the things that work, so everybody thinks everything is broken, but it is not; things need maintenance, not despair. | Coming Out, Goats, Government, and Attack Ads with Denise Juneau 00:07:52 |
| 2018-03-23 | refine | Hank also worries about lost faith in the legal system, the military and law enforcement: they need fixing and so criticism, but past a point criticism becomes calls to overthrow or abolish systems that have made society prosperous and stable for many, though not all. | Trump, Guns, and Net Neutrality...With Governor Steve Bullock?! video description |
| 2018-03-23 | restate | Hank says if government stops working it hurts everybody, but especially the people who need help the most. | Trump, Guns, and Net Neutrality...With Governor Steve Bullock?! 00:10:51 |
| 2018-10-05 | restate | The strength of the system is that 50 states can try 50 systems: what works is adopted by other states, and what fails is not tried elsewhere. | We've Got Some Weird Voting Laws… 00:00:44 |
| 2020-04-10 | restate | Hank says bad government responses come not from government being bad but from years of attacks calling it unnecessary and a war on expertise that pushed experts out of public service. | Things I'm Finding Encouraging 00:01:38 |
| 2020-06-05 | restate | Hank says government has broken parts, but the response cannot be to abandon, hobble or ignore it: it has to be fixing it. | So Much to Do 00:05:31 |
| 2022-08-12 | restate | Hank says no perfect legislation exists; with 330 million of us, the fact that anything gets done at all is a little impressive. | The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What does it DO!? 00:19:26 |
| 2022-08-19 | restate | It has long been hard not to be cynical about government, but conflict, the bill and Engen's life have put Hank's brain in a different space, at least for now. | What if a lot of the Cynicism is Unjustified??? 00:02:36 |
| 2023-04-21 | restate | Hank says the state ban, like much these days, seems performative: aimed at getting people talking rather than achieving a goal, performing governance rather than governing. | On TikTok Bans 00:01:33 |
| 2023-09-28 | restate | Hank says the UN is weird and complicated but has vital goals, does much work, and has so far achieved its main goal of not repeating World War II, a big win. | What the Heck is the UN? 00:06:44 |
| 2024-05-10 | restate | Hank says the unglamorous work with no Twitter threads, like enforcing Amtrak's priority, is the work government, especially local government, is doing. | Three Whole Onions with Secretary Pete Buttigieg 00:25:12 |
| 2024-07-05 | restate | Hank says what looks like corruption sometimes is corruption, but sometimes it is knowledge of complex systems and careful legislating so that 50 senators feel comfortable voting yes. | Should I Run for President?? 00:02:30 |
| 2024-09-13 | restate | Hank says people want to run government even though they hate it, fixing imagined problems rather than real ones, which creates dysfunction. | My Governor is Weirder than Yours 00:27:35 |
| 2024-10-18 | restate | Hank says the fair ballot rotation exists not because things are magically perfect but because someone saw the old system as unfair, did science to confirm it, then did policy to fix it. | My Ballot Made Me Angry 00:04:52 |
| 2024-11-22 | restate | Hank says today's bureaucracies are better than in the 1930s but imperfect, with real problems like easy unhealthy food and hard-to-get medical care and childcare. | Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment 00:15:41 |
| 2025-02-07 | restate | Hank says USAID does lots of amazing work and is a very cheap way to keep the world more stable, with more diseases controlled and fewer people suffering. | What Trump's Doing 00:00:00 |
| 2025-02-28 | restate | Hank's script says USAID helps America by increasing its influence, making other countries more stable and making it less likely disease outbreaks reach the US. | We Will Eradicate Measles 00:07:56 |
| 2025-03-07 | restate | Hank says we should be honest that more fraud prevention costs everyone annoying bureaucracy, making lives a little worse to recover the less than 1% of Social Security benefits thought lost to overpayment and fraud. | How Social Security Fraud Actually Works 00:06:51 |
| 2025-08-01 | restate | Hank says modern donation would not exist without the NIH, which decades ago helped work out how marrow functions, the white blood cell lineages and how colony stimulating factors regulate the immune system. | We Stole a Man's Blood 00:00:58 |
| 2025-11-10 | restate | Hank says this is why it is so important for governments to fund this kind of research. | My Cancer Treatment was Not Cutting Edge 00:03:53 |
| 2025-11-14 | restate | Hank says Congress may look powerful but only has the power to stop things, which makes it extremely weak because things still need to get done. | The End of The Penny (and of Congress??) 00:03:51 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-09-13 | background | Hank jokes that if Congress were on fire it could not pass the 'Pour Water on Congress Act'. (playful) | Syria in Five Minutes 00:03:47 |
| 2024-09-27 | background | John says the act must now pass the House, and Congress struggles to pass a law these days. (playful) | Is It 2010? IT'S A PARTS VIDEO 00:01:02 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).