Thanks Bee, but you completely missed how it lightens our wallets and purses with that extra cash we didn’t need anyhow, although the current inflation acts against that. Well at least we don’t need wheelbarrows to go shopping! Yet.
Ten Problems That Have Been Solved by Government Spending
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Well, it has solved the problem of not enough funny internet memes about government spending … Better spend more on internet censorship quick!
Inane.
Inane Art is a term I would apply to a 31 trillion dollar debt which has no chance of ever being repaid.
Inane Art is a term I would apply to a 31 trillion dollar debt which has no chance of ever being repaid.
“Government” is not doing that. Civil servants are not doing that. Serving military are not doing that. Our lousy elected officials are doing that. Since state legislators routinely balance their books and since federal legislators did so routinely prior to 1961, it’s not even something inherent in the behavior of legislators.
“Our lousy elected officials are doing that.”
It isn’t as simple as that. The Deep State has made a concerted effort recently to determine who our elected officials are. The People when queried about government spending are only willing to cut foreign aid, and the more off beat domestic programs that amount to less than a billion dollars. This is a catastrophe with a lot of hands in the making.
It isn’t as simple as that. The Deep State has made a concerted effort recently to determine who our elected officials are. The People when queried about government spending are only willing to cut foreign aid, and the more off beat domestic programs that amount to less than a billion dollars. This is a catastrophe with a lot of hands in the making.
I don’t think the manipulators in the FBI and the CIA can be held responsible for electoral scamming prior to 2016.
The overwhelming majority of the public, including people quite opinionated about this and that, haven’t a clue about the dimensions of any public sector program, much less the implications of reducing expenditures. Asking them what they want is a perfectly idle activity. The public also does not react to much of anything in a predictable way anymore.
I cannot help but notice that the U.S. Congress managed in 1945-47 to balance the federal budget in less than three years. I don’t see a reason to believe that public dispositions toward elected officials explain the near complete failure of our elected officials for 60 years to do that.
We’re sidetracked here, of course. What does it mean to ‘solve’ a problem in your mundane life? You only solve discrete problems. Over time, discrete problems commonly reassert themselves. I take my car to the repair shop, and they solve the problem. That serves me well until the next time there’s a problem.
You employ public agencies for several reasons. One is to provide the regulatory architecture of the common life. Your governments may do that well or ill, but only governments do that. Another is to provide ‘public goods’ as an economist would define the term. What a ‘public good’ is is a service that does not emerge naturally on the open market. The third thing is to allocate rights of usufruct over common property resources. The fourth is to allocate costs when you have externalities. The fifth is to address questions of common provision (which are the subject of contentious normative disputes); that can be done by private inititiative, but only in a haphazard way.
A co-worker of mine tells me, “I like problems much better than I like issues. Problems have discrete solutions. Issues go on and on”. The signature work of public agencies (and government corporations on occasion) is to address issues, not problems, which is to say conditions that are managed, not problems which are solved.
So, you have the question in regard to any extant activity of the government as to whether the government should be active in this realm at all or active in these circumstances. The next question is how effectively the agency in question is performing those tasks with which it is properly charged. The third is to ask what is the balance between poor policy and poor operational performance in determining what is dissatisfying about the execution of tasks.
In starboard discourse, asking these questions is atypical. Instead, we get some mess like “I don’t like government and want less of it” (a verbatim quote from a street-level Republican I’ve encountered in a discussion forum like this). Or, we get some tale of a public agency making a mess of things (something human organizations do routinely), but never a suggestion of what we might do to see to it that the public agency does a task satisfactorily.
Face it, “big government” has purchased personal responsibility and individual freedom with their version of 30 pieces of silver.
Face it, “big government” has purchased personal responsibility and individual freedom with their version of 30 pieces of silver.
Huh?
To put this into perspective.
New spending of 1.3 trillion would make 1.3 million people -millionaires.
To pay off the 31 trillion debt every man, woman and child in the US (332 million) needs to come up with 93 thousand dollars, or every household (128 million) needs to come up with 242 thousand dollars.
Aren’t the big ticket items in the Federal Budget things like Health Care, Social Security and the Military? Our system is so screwed up that people rely on those health care and social security budget items, and cutting the military budget with threats from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran seems very risky. Yes, there are a lot of small ticket items (education, energy, transportation, etc.) that taken together constitute a big ticket item. But exactly what should we cut, and what happens to those who are now dependent on this socialism? Don’t get me wrong: I think it all should be cut except for the military. But the impact that’ll have would cause great discontent and unrest. We have become too accustomed to government supplying too much.
I would like to see some actionable realistic ideas because sooner or later this house of cards is going to collapse.
I’d say that the big ticket items are health care, Social Security, military, and service on the debt. That last one is new to the list, and it’s historically a really bad sign for a country when that one makes it onto the list.
If I’m not mistaken, the ratio of Medicaid spending to domestic product has ballooned in the last dozen years. I don’t think Social Security spending is at levels which would count as abnormal as assessed over the period since 1977; not quite sure about Medicare. The ratio of military spending to domestic product is as low as it has been since 1940.
Don’t get me wrong: I think it all should be cut except for the military.
Cutting Social Security old age benefits is a foolish notion. Social Security Disability has problems. One is an increasingly lax definition of ‘disability’. Last I checked, a quarter of the beneficiaries had been awarded checks consequent to a finding of ‘anxiety disorders’ or ‘mood disorders’; that’s just asking for trouble. There are some procedural deficits as well. In re the old age benefits, the thing to do is have cohort specific retirement ages. The retirement age assigned your cohort might fluctuate during the bulk of your worklife, then freeze at age 55. The object would be to work it so the ratio of beneficiaries to working adults bounces around a set point. The Social Security Administration employs an actuarial staff who can crunch the numbers. We should have done this back in 1977 or back in 1983, but demagogy on Social Security was part of the Democratic Party business model at that point.
“You employ public agencies for several reasons. One is to provide the regulatory architecture of the common life. Your governments may do that well or ill, but only governments do that. Another is to provide ‘public goods’ as an economist would define the term. What a ‘public good’ is is a service that does not emerge naturally on the open market.”
I think this provides the problem, not the solution.
Per the Constitution, We, the People, are to determine the common good and enact laws as needed to fulfill common needs. We were not intended to create a plethora of alphabet soup agencies to dictate problems and solutions.
“Common good” DOES appear on the market when the general population understand how money (economics) actually work and live according to the morals they’ve learned from their religious institutions. When the religious institutions declare themselves “non-political” and the populace embrace a secular or atheistic view, factions begin to have government impose “common good” accordingly. Problems begin to proliferate. George Weigel discussed this phenomenon at length with The Cube and the Cathedral.
“The Social Security Administration employs an actuarial staff who can crunch the numbers.”
Insurance companies do the same thing, Art.
Social Security had the best of intentions; it has never had the best of results. If anything, …Social Security has had the negative consequence that far too many people…don’t understand what retirement will require, so they don’t prepare financially. …Last I’d heard, the federal debt had exceeded $19 trillion, with expected future debts topping $200 trillion. Even confiscating all the monies from the top 5 richest people in the world won’t pay that. Suffering Social Security intended alleviating may be far worse when the nation lacks the financial resources to provide.
I think this provides the problem, not the solution.
I cannot make sense of your stream of consciousness and I don’t think you can either.
Insurance companies do the same thing, Art.
Thank you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without your sage instruction.
Social Security had the best of intentions; it has never had the best of results. If anything, …Social Security has had the negative consequence that far too many people…don’t understand what retirement will require, so they don’t prepare financially. …
I’m afraid that was a problem prior to 1935 as well.
Last I’d heard, the federal debt had exceeded $19 trillion,
Since 1972, Social Security spending has varied between 3.1% and 5.2% of gross domestic product and Medicare spending between 0.7% and 3.9% of gross domestic product. Since the last time the federal budget was balanced, the variation has been from 3.9% and 5.2% of domestic product for Social Security and 2.1% and 3.8% for Medicare, so these programs are contributors, though that really does not explain why deficits have been runnig at 10% of GDP per year of late. It’s not difficult to repair Social Security, they Just.Do.Not.Feel.Like.It. Medicare is more challenging. A stopgap might be to add a deductible every year.
“I cannot make sense of your stream of consciousness and I don’t think you can either.”
All right, I’ll lay it out more plainly: Our Founders intended that We, the People, folks like you and me and all of the citizenry around us, would determine the common good. We WERE intended to be responsible for ourselves as individual people and families, for our own well-being. We WERE intended to learn moral values from our churches and synagogues. We WERE intended to have all those political and social arguments about the common good amongst ourselves. When our churches decided to be “non-partisan” or “non-political”, We, the People, cut Ourselves away from those needed debates about allocating resources. Instead, We enabled unelected officials in alphabet soup agencies–EPA , SSA (Social Security Administration), DoT, DOE (Dept of Energy), and the like instead. Thus, We “need” to do this or that because “a great nation will do this”. ..Never mind that no nation ever became great or remained great by doing it.
Social Security has always been VERY difficult to change precisely for this reason. Any proposals to cut back encounters stiff opposition. Any who have not prepared for retirement–and those already in government-dependent retirement–scream bloody murder about the negative impact on their lives it’ll cause.
No amount of adjusting taxing rates or SSA or medical benefits will help for long terms: Someone can always declare why this or that “worthy” concern needs funded by Federal or State government.
I don’t believe there’s any means to resolve the problem by adjusting these programs. I think we’ll ultimately need to scrap them…preferably before lending institutions finally refuse to loan any more money.
..I suppose before someone raises the concern, I ought note that churches’ neglect of political concerns did not cause the rise of the alphabet soup agencies. Not directly. I will contend though that when church’s also failed to correct their own purported faithful, they DID open the door wide for many other influences.
Social Security has always been VERY difficult to change precisely for this reason. Any proposals to cut back encounters stiff opposition. Any who have not prepared for retirement–and those already in government-dependent retirement–scream bloody murder about the negative impact on their lives it’ll cause.
It’s not difficult to change. They don’t feel like fixing it because it will cause some headaches in explaining it to constituents and provide an opening for demagogues. The modification that would repair the problem would be an adjustable retirement age, which does not affect those already retired. The most salient effect would be on young people who have time to adjust (and who commonly believe the program will not survive).
We enabled unelected officials in alphabet soup agencies–EPA , SSA (Social Security Administration), DoT, DOE (Dept of Energy), and the like instead.
EPA performs a mix of regulatory and public works tasks. It’s a problem agency in all kinds of ways, but there is an actual social defect it attempts to address, which is the economist’s ‘externality’ – i.e. the misalignment of benefits and costs to an industrial activity. There’s also asymmetric information in re the content and risks of the industrial chemicals and industrial effluvia in question. Some of the functions of EPA might be discontinued (e.g. the grants to state and local government, some might be assigned to the Interior department (the environmental works projects) or to state government, and some of the regulatory authority might properly be reserved to the states. You might also replace some command-and-control regulations with tradable permits and pigou levies. You’re still going to have a federal agency because internal chemicals and internal combustion machines are sold across state lines and you have water courses and air currents that do also.
The SSA is the Social Security Administration. It supervises an income transfer program which has some reparable defects.
The Department of Transportation has a number of functions. Most of its budget goes to sloshing patronage on state and local government. You could eliminate most of that, but keep in mind you still have long-haul Interstates whose maintenance you finance through some means. Another component is a menu of safety inspectorates. Again, airline service, rail service, Interstate highways operate across state lines, and motor vehicles are manufactured and shipped everywhere. Now, economists who study this question (e.g. Kip Viscusi) will examine and critique ways of approaching the problem of improving safety and supplying the defect of available information to the consumer and they have some skepticism of command-and-control regulation. The safety inspectorates are still attempting to address a real problem. The Department also operates the Merchant Marine Academy and the air traffic control system. This last is its most salient activity. There’s a data collection agency too.
The Department of Energy is an assemblage of agencies dreamed up by Jimmy Carter. You could argue it should have been broken up years ago. There’s one agency which regulates inter-state trade in energy that might be disposed of if it’s not focused on natural monopolies. There’s another agency which collects data. There’s another agency which builds nuclear weapons you could transfer to the Armed Services. The largest share of the budget is a series of research laboratories (Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, &c). They distribute some grants, but most of their activity is in house or contracted. I don’t know how utile is what they do (a Catholic blogger / engineer who once worked at Oak Ridge said masses of scientific and technical research is fraudulent and he’d seen it with his own eyes). Federal agencies which conduct scientific and technical research have been around since the 1840s.
Now, I don’t know why you selected these particular agencies and departments. It seems like you picked them at random.
No amount of adjusting taxing rates or SSA or medical benefits will help for long terms:
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Sadly, Art, your own comment well confirms my critiques. You’ve provided precisely the laundry list of “worthy” reasons why we need one agency or another. ..Throughout, there’s a constant assumption that we NEED a federal agency to oversee something, that we can’t have States making arrangements amongst themselves. ..In short, you present precisely the mentality that the Antifederalist Papers authors worried about most: That We, the People, would allow general government to dictate too much.
I almost included DoD in that list, precisely because the rest of us have too little concern for the nation’s defense.
I almost forgot to mention that I’m very well acquainted with troubles with cutting back on social spending. My home State endured a (successful) petition drive just a few years ago; voters compelled the legislature to spend more on Medicaid.