The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
Albert Einstein
Clap for the O Man: He's Going To Take Your Economy High
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent. The downturn in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected downturns in private inventory investment, in federal government spending, in exports, and in state and local government spending...Real GDP is inflation-adjusted. A few quick points here: first, these are preliminary numbers: it's possible they could be adjusted upward. Second, economists were caught by surprise, and their models included allowances for the known factors listed in the last sentence. Third, liberals, as I have often predicted, are seizing on "government austerity". Although I also see this delusional progressive economic spin: "Best-Looking Contraction in U.S. GDP You'll Ever See."
Let us be clear: a lot of federal spending does not come from current taxpayers. We have spent nearly 6 trillion dollars under the Obama Administration future taxpayers are on the hook for--money that won't be available to sustain future growth. Government is very labor-intensive; if we lay off surplus government workers and/or ask government employees to share in necessary sacrifice to attain a more sustainable economy, remember about 5 in 6 workers are in the private sector, which not only has paid the preponderant price in layoffs but basically pays the cost of government which spends one in 4 dollars. Here's an interesting factoid in from the Gray Lady 3 years ago:
For the first time in American history, the majority of the nation’s union members are government workers, rather than private-sector workers, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released today. This is despite the fact that there are five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.There is something intrinsically wrong here--government workers get benefits (including much higher job security) wildly out of step with the private sector: there are waiting lists to get into government sector: 4 members of my own birth family of 9 have spent most of their work history in the public or quasi public (e.g., USPS) sector and in the cases I know, all of them had to wait months or years to get on the payroll. Tell me, if government people are so "underpaid", why are so many people waiting to be "exploited" and so few existing professionals willing to jump at all these better, higher-paying jobs in the private sector? Oh, but you see, public sector workers are more noble and self-sacrificing than private sector. PLEASE. I've worked extensively in the private sector and as a public sector contractor (at the city, county, state, and federal levels). In my experience the real work was done by contractors, we are often abused and exploited by government personnel (I've given several examples from personal experience in past posts), and there are few government workers or managers I would ever hire in the private sector.
Just in case the reader thinks I'm spouting sour grapes, let me give a new example to explain my point. In the late 1990's, the City of Oakland had a homegrown set of applications. It was notoriously ill-maintained, and only a couple of city people knew the in's and out's of, say, the HR/payroll applications. Oracle and Peoplesoft (at the time an independent vendor, much later eventually acquired by Oracle) were rival vendors for a replacement state-of-the-art ERP system desired by city management. The HR people preferred Peoplesoft, but the city management decides on Oracle's "one-stop-shop" ERP functionality, including its own HR/payroll function. I worked to deploy the technical infrastructure of Oracle Applications (e-Business Suite). I worked with a number of functional consultants, whom effectively worked with with city personnel on doing application setups for transitioning a migration to our system. I recall a very lovely, sweet Oracle Consulting HR consultant (I had a bit of a crush on her, but she had a boyfriend). Over a number of weeks, she was trying to debrief those two internal personnel, but they were engaging in passive aggressive fashion (you also encounter people who see their knowledge of the status quo as a form of job security) and avoided meeting her. My colleague's deliverables were falling behind schedule. The city had auditors reviewing the project, my colleague was fingered in the process for falling behind, and Oracle responded by rolling her off the project (being rolled off a project is not good for one's career: in many cases, especially if there isn't another assignment immediately available, the employee is fired at will). After she left, I actually inherited her vacated corporate apartment in Emeryville; one day I overheard some city personnel badmouthing my departed colleague--a total lack of class on their part, talking behind the back of a sweetheart whom had to pay the price because of 2 rogue city employees whom put their personal objections to the Oracle software award above city policy. This was a city management problem, not a vendor issue. I sorely wanted to defend the lady's honor, not unlike the knights of old.
I'm sure there are literally thousands of stories. One of my favorite "war stories" was when I was administering the National Archives eMilRecs application. The government geniuses signed off on the server installation, not noticing one of the redundant power supplies wasn't functional (in essence, one of the electric plugs was in a wrong socket)--and it had literally gone for years unnoticed. I wanted to do it but management insisted on doing it by an electrician, the electricians were gone for the day (and the manager wasn't about to call one in to accommodate our maintenance window starting at 7PM; it was okay, however, for me to work extra hours not on the government's dime), and so the earliest it could be scheduled was around 4 AM. I show up and nobody's there (and the network room personnel think it's hilarious, openly laughing at me). I go down to the electrician's section; they knew nothing about it and refused to help me without authorization. I go to the front desk, which refuses to call the manager in question. I fire out an email to my civil service manager in St. Louis and leave about 4:30am (I have to be back at the 7am hour, not much sleep). The manager ends up lying, telling my manager the electrician got tied up in a traffic jam (at 4am!) and got there a little after 4am, but I had already left! Seriously, folks; this was like some sort of passive aggressive high school prank pulled by a civil servant north of 50! I don't think I ever got a personal apology, maybe a pseudo-apology over my feeling upset over the incident. (The contract allowed me only to book 8 hours for a day--I couldn't charge extra and I still had to stay until 7PM when the Missouri workers were done for the day.)
A Media Hero: John Stossel
This is a Q & A celebrating John Stossel's new book No, They Can't: Why Government Fails-But Individuals Succeed. John briefly explains how he managed to overcome the progressivism of his alma mater, Princeton, home to Keynesian economist, Paul Krugman, on his way to libertarianism. I haven't read his new book yet, but I own copies of the last two.
I don't know if John would phrase things this way, but I see his criticism of government as a logical extension of his journalistic beginning, uncovering consumer fraud. Progressives saw his report as rationalizing yet another extension of government empire building, notably led these days by Senator "Cherokee Lizzie" Warren. What John found was fraud persisted, despite the government's "best efforts." Human nature being what it is, we probably can't eliminate evil or reform dishonest people, but we can empower people with information they can use to make better decisions.
John'a experience did lead him to discover a new, even worse type of fraud: government. Ineffective, high-cost government that makes promises it can't keep, notoriously can't balance its books, etc. It's one thing if an auto mechanic rips you off; there are other mechanics. If there is a problem with government services, it's not like you have an alternative local/federal government.
A side discussion: John Stossel in the first video mentions in passing that many social conservatives had issues with 'live-and-let live" philosophy about gay relationships. One day my religious mom was upset about my blog. I get one of these classical female "you know what you did" reactions (no, guys usually don't have a clue). Somehow she got the wrong impression I was promoting "gay marriage". I will say I ran across the fact that homosexual behavior had been observed in nature while taking a psychology class at OLL. This profoundly disturbed me to the point I wrote a letter to a well known Catholic media conservative (and, to my surprise, got a personal reply). I didn't see the design, functional purpose of such behavior--it didn't sustain the species. Other things, too--like an animal in the wild accidentally crushing its offspring. But I didn't deny the natural basis of the orientation or relationships between those that share it. That's different from trying to change the definitions of traditional marriage and family.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Steely Dan,"Peg"
