It seems to me that the arguments about taxes and government spending are completely beside the point. The issue is really, “what price does the consumer of government services really need to pay for the services he buys?” If we approach this problem from a cost vs. benefit viewpoint, things become much clearer. Does the “man in the street” really NEED the EPA to tell him that his car has to be replaced ($30,000) because it makes too much CO2? Do I really NEED a war in Afghanistan? Did I NEED a government bailout of the banks?? Do I NEED Congress to have so many staffers that they write the bills, read them, and recommend them to the actual members of Congress? Do I NEED the government to tell me that they will “take care of the borders,” only to allow the invasion of cartels that cannot be controlled? In other words, this is a royal gripe session about prices and services. It seems that when I go into the post office, there’s always a line. When I go to the UPS store (used to be Mailboxes etc.), there’s sometimes a line, but not often, and when I have to wait, it’s not long. And don’t let me get started about the California Department of Motor Vehicles, where there are always hundreds of people waiting. Of course, if I go to AAA, and have the same business done, it’s usually momentary. I might have to wait, but not long. So the question is, “Why is it possible to get so much better service in the private sector from people who do either the same or similar jobs as the various government agencies???” The answer is simple. In a private business environment, we have choices. We can choose to ship UPS or FEDEx or whatever. With the government, there are no choices, because they are the only ones “authorized” to do this particular job. So the value of the services drops, while the price of those services goes higher and higher, because there is no competition. This is where “representative government” comes in, and where we are supposed to have advocates to take care of the differentials that naturally occur when there is a monopoly. The problem is that they don’t do it. They just rubber stamp the latest increase, and pass the results on to the taxpayer. Since the governments discovered borrowing (bonds, treasuries, etc.), this problem has grown to almost unmanageable size, so that now we are borrowing a huge percentage of the money we eventually spend on these services. The solution is simple. The prices are too high. The dichotomy that’s often presented is that either we pay the price for those services, or we don’t get them. It’s a false dichotomy. The price of the services we DO get is far too high. Those prices need to be reduced. This might mean across the board pay and pension cuts, workforce reductions, so that the people who still have jobs have to work more or harder for the same money, or that the agencies that are unnecessary have to be cut out of the budget.
There is a great deal of discussion about the term “entitlement” today. Every employee of every government agency, Federal, State, and Local, should realize that his job is not an entitlement, nor is the level of wages he’s enjoyed in the past. This is a difficult message to get across, because the consumer of the services is rarely heard. What’s heard is the various voices of government and the media, telling us that we have to accept a lower level of service, or a higher level of taxation. Why?? Maybe what we need is a “Wal-Mart government,” where they roll back prices, make do with less, and live on the money we are paying now, looking for reductions in the future, and at the same time provide a superior level of service and a superior level of benefit to the consumer–the taxpayer.
Here is what one country did when they were presented with “bailing out the bankers” and offered the opportunity to increase their costs by their government:
