I was a section head with a team of six engineers during the heyday of the first lunar landing. After we had been to the moon and had our bucket of rocks I turned in a budget about $300K less than the prior year. My branch chief called me in to inform me that I must maintain a budget of a million dollars or more per year to justify my grade and the number of engineers in my section.
Budgets are formulated under broad and general guidelines and those approving and passing them upward can't micro-manage them. Near the end of a fiscal year we were requested to have procurement requests prepared in case there was "end of year" money which budgeted by others but not spent for whatever reason. That became "wish list" time when procurements received little scrutiny.
Now open your phone book to the yellow pages and see how many entries are there for government, Then consider how many of those are trying to grow or at least maintain their status-quo and/or justify their existence. Think of the myriad of offices so small they fall beneath the radar such as the Helium Reserve established during WWII to ensure a helium supply for dirigibles (only about a million dollar budget so who cares). Or the myriad of government grants to study salt, light bulbs and who knows what. And remember that for the services provided by government it must take its cut off the top to support that 80/20 efficiency ratio of mis-management.
The budget problem is so colossal that the public has little or no idea of how hard it will be to resolve. Any attempt to cut will be met with whining and much political rhetoric. The public not realizing where spending 1.667 times revenue is taking us still wants that handout. Google "how to catch wild pigs", we are inside the fence and the gate is closing.
There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.
He asked, ‘ Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’ The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how To forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time.
One should always remember ‘There is no such thing as a free Lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
I just don’t know how some people don’t get this..
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I haven't been able to find similar data on the federal level, but in North Carolina there are 10 public sector jobs to every 6 manufacturing jobs. On the national level the federal workforce some years ago was 25 million out of 154 million, but that doesn't take into account state and local government and those contracted to the government.
as for "free corn" the exact same thing can be said for the fascism/religious rule on the right, so much agenda is being pushed on you that you think you are far better off then you were, you are just working for some big corporation with no individual rights or real freedoms and can't leave the box the religion has made for you.
plus you disregard things, there is a reason society was formed with groups of people under a common law/ruling. The community together could produce much more then anyone could individually, and it shows, look at our progress over the past 200 years.... we couldn't get from such primitive living for the masses to here without having protections and laws in which to follow, as with anything moderation is the key, the question should not be is government regulation bad, but when does government regulation become too much, those are two very different things
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hillman
Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
Practically every western European country has better healthcare overall and they pay significantly less per citizen for it (as in the range of 30%+)................
your argument also works the same for any business as well, I could grow my own food much cheaper then a company can.....
plus the efficiency of having something centrally managed and the safety in entails, there is a reason we moved away from for-profit fire departments we used to have, yes inefficiency will remain, absolutely, but there is inneficiency in anything of large scale
your argument also works the same for any business as well, I could grow my own food much cheaper then a company can.....
I doubt that you could produce food (or other products) cheaper than a company can. Bulk is almost always cheaper. Bulk production justifies the purchase of whatever equipment makes it the most efficient. Producing for just yourself, the cost for such equipment (or whatever) can hardly be justified. For example, could you produce 1 gallon of pasturized milk for less than you can buy it in the store? Could you build a car for less than you can buy one? Could you produce a bag of fruit for less than you buy it for?
The government on the other hand, is not the same as a business. If it were, we would likely be in better shape. The reason, is that a business is investing its own capital while the government is spending others' money. Therefore their interests are much different. Efficiency doesn't generally matter to the government (in practice anyway)....
I doubt that you could produce food (or other products) cheaper than a company can. Bulk is almost always cheaper. Bulk production justifies the purchase of whatever equipment makes it the most efficient. Producing for just yourself, the cost for such equipment (or whatever) can hardly be justified. For example, could you produce 1 gallon of pasturized milk for less than you can buy it in the store? Could you build a car for less than you can buy one? Could you produce a bag of fruit for less than you buy it for?
The government on the other hand, is not the same as a business. If it were, we would likely be in better shape. The reason, is that a business is investing its own capital while the government is spending others' money. Therefore their interests are much different. Efficiency doesn't generally matter to the government (in practice anyway)....
so I can provide my own fire protection and police protection just as cheaply? have my own roads as cheaply, at some point you have to agree there is some advantage to the scale that government can provide
as for "free corn" the exact same thing can be said for the fascism/religious rule on the right, so much agenda is being pushed on you that you think you are far better off then you were, you are just working for some big corporation with no individual rights or real freedoms and can't leave the box the religion has made for you.
I thought "Religion" hate speech takes place on a different thread and this thread was for misrepresenting conservatives.
Jeeez, the religious boogie man is everywhere.
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I thought "Religion" hate speech takes place on a different thread and this thread was for misrepresenting conservatives.
Jeeez, the religious boogie man is everywhere.
there was no hate speech, so don't start the anything against religion is equal to hate speech argument
have you not read the story of Iran, a country that was becoming the model for freedom in the middle east and what happened when a religious government came into power? the same could happen here, much of the language the right is using is just the same as what the people pushing for a religious government in Iran had used.
Here is the summary from the report:
"Taken together, the five independent studies discussed above examine the cost and performance of
private fire protection services over a number of years (1973–1989) and in two different countries.
In all five studies, private fire protection services were found to provide similar, if not better-quality
service, at a lower cost than publicly provided service. In most instances, the cost differential
between privately and publicly provided service was significant.
The factors commonly cited to explain the private sector's comparative cost and performance
advantage in providing fire services were a private company's ability to (1) achieve an efficient scale
of operation, (2) employ personnel efficiently, and (3) use innovative equipment and procedures. In
each case examined, the source of these cost-reducing factors was competition."
It was due to the way it was (un)organized, it created a gang like competition..
privatization is not the always the same thing. This report still has public money paying for private companies to do the work, nothing against that and it is kind of similar to the way health care could work under a "socialized" single payer system in america...but that is another topic.
In the past it was that you only got protection if you specifically paid for protection, if you did not then the company either stood by and watched it burn, or charged an incredibly high fee on the spot to put it out then. the two "private" systems are quite different.
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