Bill, > No matter how you slice it, public sector jobs are a long term drain on the economy.
Some of that is necessary, of course. Roads, law enforcement, schools, etc.
Law enforcement maybe (also national defense, the court system, etc.), but not schools. There isn't any good reason why schools should have to be run by governments (if your concern is the poor wouldn't be able to afford schooling, 1 - you might be surprised, 2 - charitable scholarships could be created, and 3 - you can have the government pay for it if you want without having the government actually do it, that's still a big government role, but it doesn't require anywhere near the current level of federal employees, esp. if you do it through some sort of voucher system with the parents and the students and the markets deciding, rather than having some bureaucratic funding mechanism).
Roads are in between, more private roads and road building would in my opinion be reasonable, but I don't see any way to make it anywhere near a universal thing. Private courts can be (and often are) built by developers as part of building a new development, high traffic limited access roads can be toll roads, but I can't see the profit motive to build any other type of road. And the scope for changing from the "government runs it", to "government pays for it" change I mentioned for education is limited because the roads are already mostly built by private sector contractors for government money. We could privatize more existing toll roads, but many type of roads would be rather difficult to privatize. |
