Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Yglesias Blows Graphs

16 Comments

Part 2:

Liberals, especially, should be almost desperate to shrink government to a size that’s sustainable in the long run. Here’s a graph–one of many documenting the public’s declining faith in government efficacy, in this case that of the federal government. It shows that in 1986 Americans estimated that the government wasted 38 cents of every dollar it raises. Now they estimate it wastes 51 cents. It’s not hard to read the inevitable death of even Clinton-style liberalism in the rising slope of that chart, and others like it. Surely at least part of the voter’s disdain for government comes from their (accurate) perception that it’s bloated and keeps bloating, with new agencies and inefficiencies simply layered in on top of the old ones. Meanwhile, the private sector has used computer technology to streamline itself, eliminating layers rather than adding.

Democrats, as the party of government, need to turn that perception around by. Obama, by dedicating his stimulus to preserving bureaucracy as we know it, has by and large missed this opportunity. (Clinton would not have missed it.)

Public sector employment is also pretty much the worst sector to stimulate if you care about government deficits, since the unnecessary jobs saved will linger after the recession ends, protected by powerful public worker unions, where they will add to government’s long term costs. If we stimulate the construction industry, the tire industry or any other private sector industry, there’s not that same budgetary downside. If all those jobs linger after the recession ends, so much the better.

Even direct government employment in new WPA-style jobs would be better in this respect, I think, than simply paying to preserve existing government jobs. It’s easier to wind a WPA down, when recession ends, than it is to shrink the entrenched education bureaucracy.

One of the few things that Franklin Roosevelt got right was that government employees should not be allowed to unionize. It has been a disaster for the nation.

16 thoughts on “Yglesias Blows Graphs”

  1. On average, it takes the taxes of many taxpayers to pay the salary and benefits of a single government employee. When private employment suffers (despite what that moron Harry Reid said last week), there are fewer tax revenues available to employ government employees (note that I didn’t call them government workers because many of them don’t do any meaningful work). Artifically propping up government employee rolls just prolongs the problem, especially if you have to borrow the money.

    If you want to protect government employees, a better strategy would be to do the things that stimulate private employment and business because those things will lead to more tax revenues. The utter failure of Obama, Reid and other Democrat stimulus policies is that they fail to do the anything meaningful to help the private sector.

  3. This article fundamentally misses the point. Liberals do not care how big (or small) the government is. What matters to liberals is whether the public problem at issue is getting solved. If the private sector can fix the problem (whatever the problem being discussed) then great. If it takes a few government employees as opposed to many, that’s also great.

    Size of government is not a liberal concern. Effectiveness of government at solving government problems is.

    1. B.S.

      Liberals opt for the government solution first every time and they will blame the private sector for creating the problems big government causes with its screwed-up “solutions.”

    2. And whenever the government can’t fix/exacerbates a problem — the solution, is always more of it.

    3. What matters to liberals is whether the public problem at issue is getting solved.

      I see two things wrong with this assertion. A lot of things are considered “public problems” even though they shouldn’t be. For example, not getting as much health care as I want.

      Second, it doesn’t explain liberal insistence on behavior modification or their insistence on calling various privileges, “rights”. For example, complaining that carbon emission credits are too cheap to encourage people to switch to technologies that emit less (or at least are considered to emit less) carbon dioxide (such as electric cars or public transportation). Or the “right” to affordable health insurance.

      And economic innumeracy is a frequent liberal problem.

    4. What matters to liberals is whether the public problem at issue is getting solved.

      I do think liberals actually believe this. It is a symptom of their mental disease.

      1. No matter what the problem, politicians must always be seen as “doing something” about it. It doesn’t even matter what the “something” is.

        Congress’ job is passing laws. Therefore every problem cries out for a new law to be passed. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

        1. Of course, the ideal situation is when the new law has a catchy acronym, or contains the name of a child.

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