nate33 wrote:Pine, Zonker,
Just reading those posts got me angry. I can't figure out why you guys won't join me in my hatred of big government. Clearly, any system that is that dysfunctional is a ginormous waste of taxpayer dollars and an inexcusable drain on our economy. Government should be able to do things they do with half the manpower if it could just be run efficiently.
In my idealized world, I would apply the following principles:
1. If it could be done in the private sector, do it privately. That would include regulation of many products. Use the Underwriters Laboratory model: have two or three independent laboratories test and vouch for the effectiveness of a consumer good, a food product or a drug. There is no need for an FDA, or the mess of agencies involved in verifying the safety of automobiles. Likewise, most education could be handled privately. There might need to be a backstop of public schools to handle deprived regions and the mentally handicapped, but 75% of kids in America should be privately educated with voucher and or tax/credit assistance.
2. If it must be handled by government, handle it locally or at the state level. This is basically what the Constitution says. This would include all roads and bridges, all entitlements and programs for the poor, and most regulation for things like workplace safety. Obviously, law enforcement and firefighting would be handled here.
3. If there's no possible way to handle it privately or at the local level, then it is done at the Federal level. This would include national defense, border security, coining money, and interstate regulation for things like environmental pollution and airline travel, etc.
The idea is to first minimize the amount of centralized government we have. Then we can focus on the ways to streamline our government so that they can provide services more efficiently.
I guess I don't join you in the hatred of big government just because of that. The Conservative total hatred of government. I take great personal umbrage whenever there's some Drudge Report talking point about government employees. I'm one. I work my azz off. My colleagues - lateral level managers - work their azzes off. And I'd say that 95% of the folks who have worked for me have been hard-working professionals who only cared about public service. In fact, to reiterate, my biggest problem has been appointees who subsequently burrow and now screw up the entire operation via
their subject-matter ignorance coupled with a blinding, egotistical lack of perspective.
Moreover, I think that it's silly to compare government with business. They're two different functions with two different goals, means, and limitations.
-- There's no profit motive for space exploration. Yet I support it as a taxpayer.
-- There's no profit motive for regulatory activities and no demonstration (in my view) that self-regulation works. Regulation is not meant to create business efficiencies. In fact, they're often (mostly) in conflict.
That's okay. Ease of a business profit isn't my first concern as a look at my life, at what I perceive to be the roles of institutions and businesses. I don't care that corporations don't squeeze out that extra penny per dollar (and I admit, 1% is huge) of revenue for their profit line. Look around, there is no profit squeeze in corporate America. Corporate cash hoarding among the "job creators" is at record highs.
I am old. Like dirt. I remember rivers *CATCHING ON FIRE* for lack of environmental action. LA smog used to be a joke. The lack of effective regulation of Wall Street led to this mess of an economy.
Moreover, and parallel, I do not believe in any philosophy that requires one to *believe* in other individual's motivations. Conservatives cut taxes because the *believe* that it incentivizes businesses to create jobs. But really, businesses are hoarding cash. If you want businesses to hire people, only give out incentives for businesses who have already hired people.
Ditto the trickle down theory. As barely notes, a big issue our society now is wealth disparity. Simply put, the concentration of wealth in too few hands kills our economy, not strengthens it. It's the bicycle theory.
BIKE THEORY: You own a bike shop on two parallel universes. In universe 1, we an imbalanced wealth distribution. It's caused by literally decades of trickle down theory that giving all of the breaks to the uber-rich will mean that they'll be "job creators". No data exists that backs this up, but people still cling to the belief like dogma. The top 400 people have as much wealth as half of our population. Or, expressed in a math formula: 400=150,000,000. How many bike are you gonna sell? 400? In universe 2, wealth isn't concentrated to the wealthiest of us via a nonsensical tax code. There are millions more middle class people. How many bikes are you gonna sell? A lot more? Enough to hire more people for your store (at a better-than-McDonalds wage). The bike factory is gonna hire more assembly workers, buy more steel and rubber, etc.
This is a consumer-based economy and 400 uber-rich individuals can't stimulate the economy as well as 150,000,000 middle class folks.
Anyway, this was too rambling. But there it is. Sorry if it doesn't make too much sense, it's a one-draft, then I got work (off-the-clock, but still doing it, a good-for-nothing-goverment-employee) that'll keep me up past midnight.
Pine
