First of all I'd like to assert to you that government is the least effective way of doing almost anything. One of the few things that the gov't does do well is the military, but that’s more in spite of the politicians rather than because of them. Since I believe this true and have seen the inefficiencies first hand I also believe that many areas of the gov’t could be privatized.
You’ve mentioned SS. I’m still moderate enough that I will concede to you that SS was necessary at the time, I say at the time because lower income people didn’t have that many investment vehicles to build their own safety nets to save for retirement, (now it’s hardly that way). Hell, I’ll even give the Dems credit for the program although I doubt if the Dems could have passed and enforced it without Republican help.
SS highlights a problem that seems to be endemic of Democrats……They’re great at starting a program…..but inept when it comes to managing the same mostly because one is starting is popular, maintaining is not….and I might add that adequately maintaining the projects might have also shown that Illinois wasn’t exactly getting it’s bang for the bucks. Wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out that SS rules needed to be modified in order for the program to balance it’s books, however, where enacting the program would be seen as popular, making the program work by modifying the paid benefits would hardly be. So as with many huge programs it became a political football. Again, accepting that fact and dealing with the problem wouldn’t be seen as popular being that fewer people that paid into the program would receive the benefits from it,
We see exactly the same thing today with BO and public housing albeit on a smaller scale….otherwise known as the projects. B. O. may have had a lot to do with digging up the money to build public housing in Chicago, but he also had a lot to do with it’s complete failure by not, either monitoring how the money was being used to maintain the program or possibly worse, steering management to his buddies regardless of whether they were going competently manage the housing or not. Again though, we see political expediency. It’s popular to give away gov’t subsidized housing, but quite another political football of making it work. So, instead of doing the right thing and fixing the way the projects were managed and maintained, BO kept building more, even as the first project was being turned into a rat hole.
I'm not done here yet....by any means..... |
