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« Brain food from the heartland Home
GOVERNMENT IS THE ONLY ENTITY WHERE FAILURE IS AN ACCEPTABLE STANDARD 
Posted on: October 25, 2009
I wasn't going to write tonight-then I watched 60 Minutes and freaked out. I heard about another government programme with problems - lots of problems.
We hear and see this too many times:
"Another failed, costly government program "
From the Youngtstown City Schools to Federal government programmes failure seems to be an acceptable standard. Listeners hear me say, I should say SCREAM this daily : WHY IS FAILURE AN ACCEPTABLE STANDARD IN GOVERNMENT ???
The easy answer is - they're not spending their own money.
Successful businesses get rid of employees that fail. They don't do their job correctly or properly-they're out-fired,dismissed, canned, pink-slipped---but not in government.
Now I do want to say that many agencies DO work effectivley and efficiently- township,city,county,state and federal---but too often FAILURE is acceptable.
Yeah-I know, I talk a lot about Mahoning County's little Fiefdoms battling each other.
That is very troubling to me,but ,I'll save that for another time.
Search the news-you won't need look far-for articles on government's failures.
Again, in the successful private sector - failure is dealt with -quickly. In govenment, failure is often rewarded with long careers and great benefits and pensions.
So, again, what is it? It's not THEIR money but it IS YOURS.
Hey, I just realized something - it DOES happen in the private sector !! YOU,ME ! OUR private-sector in-action, our FAILURE TO ACT ON OUR GOVERNMENT'S FAILURE !!!
Is it STILL OUR government ? Is it STILL "of the people" ? Or have we turned over the reins to the two controlling parties?
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Comments
Louie,
I could not agree more. I wish I had seen the program. Obama will have more than 50% of the population on some type of government program and the only new job growth will be in the public sector. What does that mean for those that really work in the private sector ---we are screwed.
We could start a list of all the local government failures but it would be more fun to get the names of all the local government retirees and see how much they are now getting in their retirement and benefit checks. The fire department drop program makes some millionaires on retirement.
Does any one care - sure but what can you do when there are more on the public dole than work. And elected officials are not going to challenge that type of voting block.
LbF wrote: "In govenment, failure is often rewarded with long careers and great benefits and pensions."
I can tell you from my experience, those in government that actually display a work ethic and do the heavy lifting never seem to be the ones that stick around for a lengthy career or a great pension.
From the nightmarish, bursting cannon balls at the Battle of Gettysburg to the blockbuster bombs of World War II to the thermonuclear weapons of today we have come. To quote professor and author Dr. Carl Sagan, “in less than one century, our most fearful weapon has become a billion times more deadly. But we have not become a billion times wiser in the generations that stretch from Gettysburg to us.”
Failure is also pretty profitable on Wall Street. For years now financial "innovators" have been creating vehicles that make money for a few years and then fail and blow up in their investor's faces. Yet, the people who originate them make millions. These very same people brought you our current recession. Who says the free market doesn't reward failure?
Ytownboy is correct, government is not the only entity that rewards failure. It happens in executive suites of major corporations all the time. See Robert Nardelli formerly of Home Depot CEO fame. He's the poster child of poor management and fabulous rewards. He was forced to resign in 2007 and for his years of inept management, his contract provided him a 210 million dollar golden parachute. Mr. Nardelli then got hired to head up Chrysler for its current owners and has continued his mediocrity there. He is just one of many executives whose management and compensation are not directly correlated.
Part I : Once upon a time, a few pioneers came to a beautiful valley and discovered that they could build this private sector perpetual motion machine. Although they were pleased with the machine, they soon learned that unlike a true PMM,they needed to feed this machine with ore and labor, so they cried to the old country for more labor. So more labor and ore poured in an the machine grew bigger until all mankind in the Valley prospered.
Also during that time another PMM was built, it was agreed that this machine would also be a good machine that would insure that the private sector PMM would not devour the good labor. This public sector PMM was to be fed by the large private sector PMM. There was prosperity all across the land.
Then one day the public sector PMM decided that it should be bigger than the private sector PMM and demanded more fuel and more concessions from the great private sector PMM. The beast grew bigger and larger than the great private sector machine as it kept up the attack. Finally the the great private sector machine was reduced to a machine that was choking to survive and could give no more.
That's an extremely dumb and completely inaccurate story. The largest private sector "machine" that was built here was the steel industry. What killed the Youngstown steel industry? During the post-war era when the Europeans and Japanese were building technologically superior, Basic oxygen furnaces, US companies thought it would be better to pour billions into outdated open hearth facilities. Then the "evil" federal government stepped into to negotiate voluntary tariffs to give the industry breathing room to modernize. Instead, steel companies invested money elsewhere and ran the mills into the ground instead of modernizing them. In the end, companies like Lykes, which bought Youngstown Sheet and Tube, used the company as a tax write off while put money into other business ventures. The public sector had zippo to do with it.
So your argument applies to all great enterprises once in our land. The auto, textile,electronics, etc.
So please expound, was there a conspiracy to move all industry to other countries? Please give us a motive that holds water?
It's pretty simple really: Capital moves where labor is cheapest. Textiles moved from the northeast to the south, then right out of the country. Most manufacturing can't be done in the states because it's too profitable from multi-national corporations to find cheaper and more exploitable labor abroad in most cases.
To you it maybe simple, but it is more complex if you really want to understand the evolution of capitalism. Your mention of "exploitable labor" leads me to believe that you have marxist undertones, which is not bad for theory.
Yes, the northeast textile concerns shifted to the south when they were no longer a monopoly and union labor and benefits constituted the inability to compete. And, government imposed regulations increasing cost of labor. You are right that labor shifts when wages and benefits rise.
If you think that labor isn't being exploited in places like China, you are dreaming. It's a totalitarian state where minimum wage, labor unions, and worker recourse don't exist. Vietnam is quite similar.
Notice of course that even the 'right to work' states in the south ultimately lost those jobs too; they couldn't compete with even lower wage workers in other countries.
Government imposed regulations protect worker rights. Things like OSHA and the EPA actually save people's lives. In the early industrial era-right up into the late 30's-practically no government regulation existed in most industries. There were few safety rules, no environmental mediation etc. Consequently many people suffered from hazardous work environments. Government regulates industry because in the days before regulation workers were severely exploited in all manners of industry, especially so in industries like steel, rubber, and pottery. Those same conditions-and far worse-exist in over-sea labor markets today.
I grew up in Asia.
You are making my point. We were the same before unions fought for workers rights, this is what I mean by evolution, Japan went thru it also. But from fare wages to GM wages, and regulation to over regulation, you can break the bank. The balance in modern capitalism is to share the rewards and the failures inorder to compete globally.
The problem with our capitalism, is everyone is out for themselves and not the entity as a whole. The workers need to be competitive, the government must be smaller and the corporation has to accept what competitors accept or less. Unions and governments must enforce level playing fields globally.
Mark my words, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Japan and Germany (all creditor nations) will soon demand we work for global wages, all of us. They will no longer accept dollars as security anymore.