"The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up like a row of dominoes - there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives another problem. We all pull back and the consumer economy stalls. The auto industry and credit firms feeds the media (40% of conventional advertising). Papers and TV and Radio networks, many subject to LBO's will have to fail as per the Tribune. Every sector will be laying people off. Sales of all things fall off a cliff - driving more business failures and layoffs. Cities and states that depend on sales tax and property tax and the credit markets can rely on none of these. So they too will have to lay off millions - thus making all the problems worse. National governments will be asked to save us all and of course cannot. As States and Cities get squeezed and cannot borrow, they will too lay off millions - teachers, firemen police. No one will be safe."
-Consultant Robert Paterson
(http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/)
Governments have a lot of leeway before they have to cut services: there is so much waste that should be cut first.
ReplyDeleteAs for newspapers, they are starting to go the way of the encyclopedia.
I'd like to believe that. I know conservatives love to believe that. I just don't.
ReplyDeletePeople are always singing "waste, fraud, and abuse".
ReplyDeleteExcept, of course, for THEIR industry or THEIR pet project. Those are vitally important expressions of national will.
But yours? The bridge that YOU drive on? That's wasteful.
The problem is that too often, those in government are out to help themselves first, and serve the public last. Blago comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteThen there is my local township, which cuts services, while they hire more and more bureaucrats who work a few hours a week, and get very lavish health-care benefits given to them at government expense as if they are full-time workers.
It has nothing to do with liberal or conservative.
"But yours? The bridge that YOU drive on? That's wasteful."
I'm not calling the bridge as such a waste (unless perhaps it is the Bridge to Nowhere). But the process of building it includes waste. Such as the "prevailing wage law" which mandates that the government not use the best bidder, and waste about 10% in overpay on every contract like this.
"People are always singing "waste, fraud, and abuse"."
Only as long as someone is doing it.
I also didn't mention the government employees with salaries ranging from $500,000 to $1,500,000 per year. If that is not waste of tax money, what is?
ReplyDeleteThere's an old joke in the space program. Supposedly an astronaut was asked what he was thinking about on the launch pad. He remarked that he thought about all of the millions of parts, controlling and regulating this tremendously large amount of rocket fuel, made by hundreds of different companies, all of which were the lowest bidder.
ReplyDeleteYou may be right, a government employee may not be worth $500,000. I don't know. I just know that whenever I hear about waste, fraud, and abuse, it usually becomes an argument against the existence of government. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot get away from the thought that there are more and more things that the free market cannot or will not deliver to us.
Either we have a government to help the weak among us, or we let old people die in the snow.
"Either we have a government to help the weak among us"
ReplyDeleteThat's the problem with the $500,000-a-year government employees. If you paid them $100,000 instead (an upper-crust wage), imagine what that $400,000 could do for the problem of the old people dying in the snow.
Should the government's purpose really be to directly give mad-money to millionaires?
Even Al Gore railed against the waste, and I don't think he was any sort of zero-government libertarian.
That is certainly true. I don't know who these $500,000 people are. It is certainly true that some people, Cabinet members for example, don't take government jobs for the money-they could make exponentially more in the private sector, so I think they need to be paid relatively well.
ReplyDeleteThis whole argument is kind of academic, though.
Did you ever see "Dave", the Kevin Kline movie? The Dave character is playacting at being president because the real president is in a coma. He gets an accountant friend of his to come in and figure out some budget cuts.
I'm sure if you and I sat down with the federal budget, we could do the same, and probably fairly quickly.
As we both know, it doesn't work that way.
Everything has to be negotiated, and everything is someone's pet project.
Really makes you fear for the future sometimes.
"Cabinet members for example, don't take government jobs for the money-they could make exponentially more in the private sector, so I think they need to be paid relatively well."
ReplyDeleteIf they aren't in it for the money, then there is no need to grossly overpay them.
"I'm sure if you and I sat down with the federal budget, we could do the same, and probably fairly quickly. As we both know, it doesn't work that way."
Yes. Because the system is so corrupt, and way too many of those in government are there not to serve the public, but to get as rich as possible to the detriment of the public good they are supposed to be serving.
To repeat, when I am referring to "Waste", I am not referring to government programs as waste. Some conservatives might say "welfare is a waste". While there are entire programs that one person or the other might call waste, depending on ideology (department of defense? farm subsidies?), I am referring to waste within these departments. Waste that you will be hard pressed to find anyone to defend, that harms the government's ability to carry out whatever program we might be discussing.
The government employees that are paid to be millionaires include public university presidents who sometimes rake in from $500,000 to $1,200,000 a year. We have some of those in Michigan. And the governor had the nerve to leave this mad-money-for-millionaires waste intact when she said that she had cut all the waste in government to the bone.
Some reactionaries protecting this waste might say "you must pay the highest to get the best people". Yet, when you look at corruption and incompetance scandals, so many of the department heads, mayors, officials, are already making out like millionaires with government wages, while so many others (making an ample $90,000 or so) do a great, and unsung, job.
I believe in paying these department heads, mayors, etc an ample wage. However, once you get into "paying them to be millionaires" territory, isn't it too much at some point? Do you really need to keep someone who has a vacation home and a yacht, but demands it is fair compensation that the government give him the money so he can get another yacht or two?
So true.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is getting increasingly unclear that the private sector has any idea what it's doing either. The argument that "we have to pay a comparable wage to Wall Street in order to get the best people" looks hollow when the best people, increasingly, appear clueless.