The current political debate about the debt ceiling got me to thinking about how to cure the problem. As usual, my ideas are extreme, radical, and different from those of the current administration. The only thing our government should be spending money on is our defense, and safety, Instead, over the years we have opted to pass laws that invented numerous bureaucracies and departments which have aged into obsolescence. As they have aged numerous new responsibilities have been tacked onto them to take care of so called problems of the nation. All of these laws need people to write them to proceduralize them process them, and to to enforce them. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are a lot of workers needed in these bureaucracy’s. Workers cost money, they need space, and computers to do their jobs. Each year as the population grows and more people believe they need governmental help these agency’s grow and grow. The cost of operation grows with it.
My idea is to make each bureaucracy self sustaining. Cut them off from the government’s payroll. If the agency fills a legitimate need then the users would pay for their service. If the agency deals only with indigent people who cannot pay, then the agency must raise the money. Our tax dollars should not be used to pay for anything but the protection of our country.
A much better idea is to eliminate every bureaucracy on the books today, and start from scratch. Fill the Greek and Roman looking buildings with computers that are loaded with Artificial Intelligence. The AI machines would no doubt find solutions to each problem in record time and only cost some electricity. Going one step further, I’d put a solar panel on the roof of each of these places to power the AI computer. No tax dollars needed except for the one time cost of implementation.
If the bureaucracy’s were reduced in size by 90% there would be no need to raise the debt ceiling every four years. Think of all that money going back into the economy, business would boom.
I know you are thinking that I have no heart.What would you do in a recession, like the one coming, to take care of all the people who will lose their jobs? What kind of safety net will you create to take care of these people? Government safety nets are exactly what we don’t need. All a safety net does is to incentivize workers to not work. Look what COVID did to the economy. Uncle felt sorry for all these people and they rewarded Uncle by staying out of the workforce permanently. I know people who enjoy being laid off of a job so they can live on unemployment for two years. Why work when a check comes to take care of me, and I can get food stamps, and many other bennies too?
Well Grumpa Joe, “It easy for you to say eliminate all the safety nets, you have Social Security you don’t have to worry.” My reply would be this: I never asked for Social Security, if I lose it tomorrow I will survive off the nest egg I amassed by working for a living. Granted, my lifestyle would change a lot. I’d not own a computer, I’d drop my internet connection, cell phone, cable TV, and I’d live in a smaller house. I wouldn’t drink as much wine, or eat as much steak, but I would survive, and so would the government.
We have tons of safety nets to protect people, but we still have homelessness, why?
In my last post I made some comments about the Federal Bureaucracy. Afterwards I decided to educate myself on what I meant. A search was in order to learn just how many bureaucracies we have. We all know about a few that I list here:
All of the above agencies are mentioned frequently in the news, and I thought they were the only ones. Then, I made the mistake of searching the government websites for information on how many there are. I was amazed. The first page of the website
was a table by alphabet. Clicking on a letter yields a list of agencies with names beginning with the letter selected. I can create a table showing you just how many agencies there are listed under each letter of twenty-two alphabet, but it will be easier to click on the link and go there yourself. The letters Q, X, Y, & Z were not on the list. I counted the agencies and got a sum of 629. No wonder no one wants to tackle the problem of reducing government spending. At first glance the problem seems to be insurmountable.
How do bureaucracies begin? It is simple. When Congress passes a law to spend money on something like Civil Rights they need a way to implement the law. They hire people to put the law in place and to enforce it. That act becomes a new bureaucracy. I have never seen a Bureaucracy disbanded or a law repealed in my lifetime. The only law I know that was repealed was Prohibition.
In my job as an engineer, I was introduced to the Pareto-Principle by one Joe Duran a American Quality Control guru who converted the Japanese car industry to the QC system that would reverse their shitty cars into the most sought-after vehicles in the world. The Pareto Principle was invented by an Italian engineer in the 1800’s. Basically it states that 80% of the benefit comes from 20% of the effort. My first step in analyzing this problem of bureaucracy is to use the 80/20 rule on the whole problem.
The total budget for the federal government is $4.829 trillion. Applying the Pareto Principle to the budget means that we spend .9658 trillion to get 80 percent of the services, and flush 3.8632 trillion dollars down the drain for twenty percent of service. How smart is that? Why our simple-minded politicians can’t wrap their brains around that is astounding. All I can figure with my feeble old brain is that it is too hard for Congress to undo what they have already approved.
After a few seconds of research on the web I found some suggestions for how Congress can restrain executive agencies.
By:
revising statutes that established the agency’s mission.
exercising control over an agency’s budget.
conducting audits or holding hearings.
influencing the selection of agency directors (Senate)
Would it be a wet dream to believe that 469 Congressmen and 100 Senators could take on 503 Government agencies to reduce spending? In my book that is 503/569 = 0.884 agencies per Congressional seat. If a single Congressman can’t reduce costs of an assigned agency by eighty percent by the end of his first term he should pack up his bags and let someone in who knows how to do the job. That objective should be written in the job description.
I know, I know, a single Congressman cannot cut costs by himself. We are a country of laws and a Congressman’s responsibility is to draft laws to get things done. Well, with that in mind, a Congress-person can write a law to cut the costs and present it to the legislature for approval. Of course, if the law does not pass those that voted against the law will have to come up against you to pass theirs. Since your jobs depend on cutting costs. It won’t take long for Congress to get the idea, and begin to cooperate with each other.
My whole plan depends on people who run for office wanting to save the country, and stop inflation by reducing government spending. It also depends on us (We, the People) to pick the right individuals at election time. If we don’t like who is running, maybe we should throw our own hat into the ring.
Here are a few more goals to think about using the 80/20 rule:
Eighty percent of the benefit comes from 126 Agencies. Eliminate the remaining 503. Which ones would you save?
Cut the Federal Budget by twenty-five percent to save 1.2 trillion dollars.
Use the savings to pay off the National Debt over thirty years.
Cut the federal budget another 25% to save 905 billion dollars, and return it to the tax payers.
Think of all the money that would put in your pocket. A total of $905,000,000,000/350,000,000 = $2585.71 would go to each member of the population.
Instead of setting goals such as I have listed we will get nonsense like printing more dollars to pay bills. Since President Nixon finally ended the Gold standard in 1971 the US dollar has lost 70% of its value meaning one dollar can only buy thirty cents worth of goods today as it could in 1971.
Our current inflation rate exceeds 11% and is climbing. If it rises higher the USA will go bankrupt, and I don’t want to live to see that happen.
Listening to the Liberals cry and accuse Trump and his administration reminds me of me, except I cried and accused Obama. The latest cry is to cut I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Libs don’t want laws, they rail against police, they yearn for open borders, and they refuse to obey existing laws. what do they want? It appears to me they want to return to the ancient days before kingdoms. Kingdoms were the first move toward needing borders to define what was under the king’s jurisdiction. Kingdoms are ruled by a of course, a king. The king was the executive, legislator, and adjudicator for all within his borders. Kings ruled with an iron fist, and all of his subjects were equal in stature, except of course the royal court, knights, jesters, shamans, etc. Those special people were special to cater to the kings needs.
The era before kings was a wild and wooly one. People were afraid of their own shadow, and if a stranger walked across your property, and you did not recognize him you killed him; “Better be safe than sorry” is the mantra people lived by. If the stranger wanted what you had he killed you and took it. Of course you had supreme liberty to do what you wanted to do. If you wanted to smoke pot, go smoke, if you wanted sex drop the first woman, girl, child you see and rape her on the spot. If you needed to eat you killed something. Sometimes it might have been your neighbor. Eventually people began to see value in living in groups, or tribes. Soon there was one among them who was strongest and he ruled the tribe. Eventually, he became king and ruled many tribes within a defined territory. Gee, they spoiled everything by making rules, and keeping order. The modern-day example of a liberal king right this moment is Nicolás Maduro, dictator of Venezuela. How can I tell he is king? He is getting fatter while his people are starving, it is the liberal way.
Here is more of what I see the liberals wanting:
Open borders to allow the free movement of people, animals, and goods. People can roam freely like the native Indians did, how else will they be able to avoid punishment for a crime committed.
No laws. What use are laws, they interfere with your imagined right to live as you please. It smacks to obey the ten commandments, and what fun would it be if “thou shalt not kill” was formally accepted as the norm. Killing seems to be an act that incites anger, and a need for revenge even in the most primitive people, therefore the need for open borders to allow escape from the avengers.
Drugs, what drugs? Free and open borders will allow men from strange countries to freely expand their trading enterprises without impairment. A nation on drugs would be a Utopian society. Everyone happy, and no one hurting you, unless of course you are coming down and can’t afford a fix immediately.
I seem to recall that originally, the “C” in ICE stood for citizenship, but my memory isn’t what it was. No citizenship runs parallel with no borders, and no laws, What is citizenship anyway? I thought is was something that made you responsible for your country. Citizenship implies that you make laws, enforce laws, and obey laws.
Liberals do not like order. Meaning populations that keep laws and civilly debate differences. Order-less societies can dispense their own brand of justice when some little thing ticks them off. If you don’t like the way your neighbor mows his law, shoot the bastard. Oh, excuse me, liberals don’t like guns. Choke him to death instead, but dispense your punishment for having committed an act that upset you.
Liberals don’t like the four letter word spelling “work.” They seem to enjoy living off the land, except the land is a made up of a mass of people in congested cities, and not in the wild where you have to use your body’s energy to seek sustenance. They would sooner stand on the corner with a hand printed cardboard sign begging for something to eat like, “Work for Food.” I have never seen one of these people jump into a car by invitation to go work for a sandwich.
Liberals riot against the separation of children from families, i.e. somebody else’s family, yet they demonstrate to have free, paid by you, abortions. In my mind that is the greatest separation of your child from your family. Isn’t divorce a form of family separation? When the parents decide to split from each other by abandoning their marriage vows until “death do us part” the kids they abandon the kids they made. I see too many screwed up kids today resulting from broken homes. Granted, single women do a great job of raising their kids, but it isn’t the same as when two parents (one man one woman) do the job.
Getting back to the protest to cut I.C.E. I want to rail against some other bureaucracies that are more important to drop before we move to I.C.E. For starters, let’s eliminate the Department of Education. Oh no! We can’t do that we have to educate our kids. Well before there was a huge educational complex in Washington to oversee what we learn we had schools, and they did an outstanding job of teaching us. We learned more before the Department of Education than we do now. The difference is now, the Dept of Ed has a huge say in what our kids learn. For instance; before we learned reading, math, history, geography, penmanship, English, and art. Today we have new math, (the long way to learn how to do basic additions and subtraction. It saves all the brain power kids needed to spend memorizing their tables.), sociology (instead of geography), political correctness (let’s not upset anyone), gun control, what history should have been instead of what it was, how bad white people enslaved black people for their gain, how bad white people stole North America from the native Indians (oh, just to keep things streamlined let’s leave out how bad white people from Spain and France) committed genocide in Central America to find gold. Let us also leave out the fact that for thousands of years one of the rewards of winning a war was to enslave the losers (not all wars were against black people). Let’s make sure that we teach our majority white population that they have special privilege over all other races because of what transpired in history. Then there is the omission of how one European country decided to eliminate people with specific genetic make-ups that they thought were undesirable. How was this science conducted? By starvation, shooting, gassing, etc. The latest is to teach Islam, and to justify doing so under the realm of teaching world religions, except there isn’t enough time in the year to get to the other world religions, and the final exam just happens to be the same test given to converts to Islam (Then make a big argument for separation church and state). Let’s make sure we feed these kids a good breakfast, and lunch to make them less dependent on their parents, and more dependent of the Department of Education..
Another area the government meddles with is money for teachers. The idea is that all fifty states should have the same level of education. Some states are more poor than others, so let’s make them all the same so every kid is equally smart. If you look at the level of smarts that the kids have against the money spent by Uncle over the past forty years the picture is nothing short of dismal failure. Remember the adage “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?” Well for the past forty years we have done nothing but throw money at the educational system without improving a single leaning level. Where does the money go? Good question. I don’t think the educational complex wants anyone to know. Why? Because we would realize that the money goes into education-administration, and not into education of kids. There are more PhD level workers in our schools today than ever before. Why? Because teacher’s get paid by their level of education, the more you know the more you make. Another problem is that their fringe benefits are all tied to the same education. A PhD retires with a larger pension than a B.S degree. I am still not convinced that this is the problem, because the teachers should be state of the art in their skills. What about the unseen administration: like physical plants, i.e. school buildings etc. Chicago maintains a special corporation for handling their school buildings and properties. Every large school district in the country does the same. These agencies spend money on new schools, and upgrades to the old ones, but if Chicago is an example, they have tons of 100-year-old schools and very few new ones. What the hell are they spending money on? I can almost tell when the teachers union will strike by what month it is. August is prime time just before the schools open. Where does that money go? Certainly not to the teachers they are alway complaining about how poor they are. Meanwhile the State government is always crying about the under funded pensions they have for public sector workers like teachers, police, and firemen. That one blows my mind. Where does it all go?
It is time to hit the reset button on education and get rid of the Department of Education from Washington. Starting from scratch would be a hell of a lot smarter than throwing more money at a losing proposition.
I could go on further with other bureaucracies that are equally useless, but I’m getting tired of bitching about things because the only voice I have is my vote and election time isn’t for another few months.
Forget I.C.E. and go for the Department of Education, the EPA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the Department of Agriculture. I can write an equal to or better rant on each of these crappy bureaucracies, but I won’t because I ruined my Sunday writing this one.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be last on my list.
Hope and Change are the hallmark campaign slogans that excited the country. So were all the promises. Most of which can never be kept. Consider the promise, not to have any lobbyists in the administration. Even I loved that one. The government is loaded with big money interests trying to buy favors. That system is exactly what the voters believed would change. It has not. Instead of lobbyists who work for capitalistic interests, we have thirty something czars on the payroll. Obama hired all of them to change the country by infiltrating and revising the procedures of the bureaucracy. How is this any different from a bunch of former government employees who know how to use the Washington ropes?
The inside lobbyists (czars) are affecting non-capitalistic type policy. So, instead of affecting what business favors a company can get, they are affecting the liberties we enjoy. They promote ideas like manmade global warming, and propose policies to tax the polluters and give the money to third world countries. What is that all about? What about the idea, that the country becomes less dependent on foreign oil? The insider lobbyists defeat any move toward drilling that affects the environment. Instead, they push for nuclear power without any regard for how to deal with waste. Never mind that the waste remains lethal for twenty thousand years. I guess we will have to wait for the Chinese to find a way to neutralize the waste. Also being affected are gun control, freedom of speech, your paycheck, the car you drive, health care, and more. There is a minimum of thirty-two insider lobbyists working overtime to get favors from the system. This excludes all the campaign donors like Soros who like to push the president’s buttons.
Yesterday, I read a news item about George Soros. He thinks Obama screwed up. Soros actually condones the takeover of the banking system, and he is angry with BO for missing the opportunity. He invested a lot of money to get the boy elected, and he expects a return.
Imagine every page of the House Bill H.R. 3962 loaded with doublespeak, and references to prior bills, and paragraphs. Each branch leading to a new trap for the American consumer. Each one leading toward a take-over of our liberties. How can our Representatives be so delusional as to think that the contents of this bill are good for their constituents. All they know is what their leadership is telling them, VOTE FOR THE BILL.
My guess is that H.R. 3962 is loaded with perks for congressional leaders, and new ways for Congress to become wealthier off the tax payer. Health Care? There may be a hint of that in there too.
Will the bill create jobs? You bet it will, but they won’t be doctors or nurses, they will be highly paid government clerks who will interpret the law and decide if you get treatment. I’m positive the law will be loaded with ambiguity, thus giving those clerks more control over you and me with their interpretations. In the meantime, salaries for doctors will be frozen. Their ability to make more money by treating more patients will be removed from their control. They will be given a quota of patients to see. Once they have seen them, they will go fishing. In the European system, the doctors meet their yearly quotas by hustling in the early part of the year, then they go on vacation for the remainder of the year.
The Democrats invented Medicare back in the nineteen sixties. Since then it has become the standard for health care. A crummy one at that. What amazes me, is that Medicare must be something that only the wealthy get. Otherwise why would it be stripped of five hundred billion dollars from its budget to help pay for HR 3962? This is clearly another example of the redistribution of wealth. The government is going crazy thinking about how it will pay for the healthcare of all the baby-boomers coming into the system. Their answer, redistribute the wealth of the senior health care system to pay for an even larger system, and ration health care for seniors. Who cares if seniors die early? Liberals encourage seniors to die early, just as they encourage controlling the population by murdering unborn babies. Medicare has put a monkey wrench into that philosophy by extending life. Therefore, kill Medicare to kill seniors.
If you are wise, you will get sick in the first six months of the year, and die just before you are ready to retire.
