| The
debate over unilateral or negotiated US reductions in "greenhouse gas"
emissions provides a "teachable moment" about restoring limited
government in America as an example for the world.
Obama and the leftists in Congress apparently regard it
as reasonable to mandate a new "cap
and trade" tax and regulatory regime which will impose 1910 to 1875
levels of carbon emissions on all businesses and individuals in America
by 2050. There were fewer than 100 million Americans in that era,
and a much smaller GDP. This is a direct assault on our current
prosperity and everything which contributed to it over the last century
or two. It threatens to impoverish America for generations.
Let's limit all government bureaucracies to such goals
first. They can set a good example for the rest of America and the
world by eliminating the prosperity of government officials first.
Roll back government.
That would free up enough private capital to actually
have a beneficial impact on global development. |
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Restore the federal
bureaucracy and UN to lower emission targets - Cut staff by 85%
or more. If UN or federal bureaucrats think such industry targets
for emission reductions are reasonable, let them start by restoring
their own bureaucracy and budget to pre-1900 levels to dramatically
reduce their own "carbon footprint" and hot air. That should free
up a lot of private capital to invest more efficiently in the
development of new technologies for real demand. (That's right -
the UN didn't even exist before 1900, so that's a big opportunity for
50+ year improvements.) |
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Freezing federal
pay - while government growth continues |
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November 29, 2010 -
Citing deficit, Obama freezing federal worker pay - and
Obama calls for 2-year freeze on federal pay - He is still
keeping 2.2 million federal employees - and growing. To put this in
perspective, look up the total federal government employment (non
military, and excluding the Post Office) before 1900, and ask yourself
whether we really need 40 - 50 times more federal employees today for 3
- 4 times more population. Do you really think that is worth the
investment in such federal overhead as a burden on every business and
taxpayer in America, or could that be part of the problem with our
global competitiveness and the flight of industrial investment and jobs
to other countries?
Rather than freeze salaries, we need to completely get
rid of large parts of the federal government which are not really
essential. If they did not already exist, would we vote to raise our
taxes to fund such operations now? If not, we should cut them rather
than give them eternal life and growing budgets and staff. |
Chart of federal employment, excluding the postal
service, from 1990 - 2010, from the
US
Bureau of Labor Statistics. This shows how the data spikes
with temporary and part-time Census workers.
Do you think we could live with 1.8 million federal
employees as at the end of the 1990's, rather than around 2.2 million
today? Why do we need a 20% larger federal workforce today?
How about getting back to the even lower levels in the early 1960's,
before the "Great Society" programs? For reference, before World
War II under FDR the total was up to around 500,000, and quickly
escalated in wartime as shown to over 2.5 million.
Soon after the Civil War, the total was closer to
50,000 to serve a US population of roughly 75 million rather than 310
million today. That's more than 40 times as many employees now for
4 times the population. Can you imagine what it would be like
today if the number of federal employees was only 200,000, rather than
2.2 million? The government likes to cite the budget as a % of
GDP, as though it should be indexed to economic growth. In effect,
that punishes private sector productivity by raising the federal
overhead, while state and local governments do the same. |
Chart of federal employment, excluding the postal
service, from 1939 - 2003, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of the decline in employment in the 1990's may be attributed to the
outsourcing of federal work which is still being performed at government
expense, but not by direct employees, and is therefore categorized in
other service sector data series. If so, then a return to above
2.2 million federal employees, as before 1994, would not really be the
same thing unless such outsourcing was reduced, such as by the Civil
Service taking over such functions again.
Without a more detailed analysis of the specific
changes in the federal workforce composition from 1994 to 2010 it is
hard to draw reliable conclusions about the trends, but the key point is
simple. This country did very well in the past with far fewer than
the 2.2 million federal employees today, so it is hard to believe that
we couldn't cut the federal workforce by 20% or more, and the related
budget spending for their work. Instead, it is a question of the
political will to make tough choices to cut or eliminate programs which
are not essential, even if they are popular with some groups of voters.
Spending other people's money is always politically popular with the
perceived beneficiaries of such spending. Voters need to make it
popular for politicians to reduce spending and taxes, rather than
perceiving federal spending and debt as somebody else's problem. |
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A proposal for Republicans: Reduce the
impact of the federal government and UN first |
|
Restore the US government and UN bureaucracies to
their 1875 - 1910 staffing levels as a per capita social burden - and
advocate similar changes in state government bureaucracies.
Of course, there was no UN in that era - not even the
League of Nations. Likewise, many federal departments did not
exist. They should cease to exist. We must all learn to
live with less, right? We must phase them out urgently to help
save the planet. It's a crisis, right? They may have seemed
like a good idea at one time, but times have changed.
The government was a tiny fraction of the current size
and cost. Even after adjusting for population growth, the UN would
still be zero, and the federal departments fewer and much smaller than
today.
If it is so worthy to make every business and
individual go back in time and make great economic sacrifices for the
good of mankind, let government roll back to prior levels first.
Surely those in government will not be hypocrites by
insisting that their services are more essential than those in the
private sector for which people voluntarily pay the competitive fair
market price? Were their services any less important a century
ago, or when the Constitution limited their role? |
|
For simplicity, assume that the current population of the
United States is a little over 300 million, and that this is 4
times the level of 1875 - 1910. The population in 1910, for
reference, was roughly 92 million, up from around 76 million in 1900.
That means the federal bureaucracy should be no more than perhaps 4
times the size, so that the per capita burden on the American population
is similar. For reference, there were reportedly
around 3800 federal employees in the period prior to the Panic of
1873 after President Ulysses Grant had reduced their number from 6000.
By this standard, there should be no more than perhaps 15,000 to
24,000 federal employees today. Instead, there are well
over
1,000,000 federal employees today - after excluding the
Postal
Service (615,000) and the Defense Department (623,000) as well as
the Social Security Administration (62,000). |
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Thus, if America needs to commit to 85% reductions in
carbon emissions by 2050 to save the planet, a good starting point would
be to mandate an 85% staff cut in our federal bureaucracy.
It would take more than a 95% cut to reach 50,000 employees - 2
to 3 times the 1875 per capita bureaucracy. That allows plenty of
slack for the projected 40% US population growth to 420 million by 2050. |
|
How many Americans would rally behind that political
climate change? Imagine how taxes could be reduced if the federal
workforce was steadily reduced to this target level, starting with
ambitious targets such as mandatory 20 - 30% federal staff cuts by 2014
- 2020.
Let the federal bureaucrats worry about how to save
their own jobs, rather than our own. |
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If it is reasonable to impose very costly 85%
reductions on all American businesses and individuals to cap our
prosperity and trade it away to other nations, then surely the federal
bureaucracy can pay for it by making 85% staff cuts first to reduce
their own prosperity. If it is such a crisis, then we should not
let one moment go to waste, and start federal cuts now so that the
private sector can start investing in better solutions to this alleged
global danger. We should make federal staff
cuts of at least 5% every year until we achieve 85% - 95% cuts.
Those aren't cuts in nominal budget growth (i.e., slower growth), but
rather actual cuts. Out of 1,000,000+ federal employees, that
means eliminating 50,000+ positions net per year for the next 20 years.
That savings should release enough private capital to create far more
productive jobs.
The EPA would be a good place to start (18,000).
It could be eliminated completely, as in the past. Another good
place to start would be the Department of Education (4000), which should
never have been created. It won't be easy to make cuts, but it
isn't easy in business or for individuals, either. There is no
reason why the federal bureaucracy should be immune to restructuring and
job losses. |
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If we managed to grow and prosper for many decades with
less than 1 federal employee per 12,500 citizens (6000 federal workers
for 75 million population), then there's no good reason why we can't
live with a lot less than 1 federal worker per 300 people today (300+
million citizens / 1+ million federal employees). Once again, that
calculation ignores all of the Social Security, Postal Service,
and Defense Department workers, which add more than 1.25 million
additional federal workers. If we went back to
the old ratio, there would only be 24,000 federal workers today,
rather than over 1 million of them. Do we really get that much
additional social value today? Are we as individuals willing to
pay for 40 times as many federal workers per capita as a century ago?
Are we really getting 40 times more value out of our
tax investment in the federal bureaucracy than we did a century ago?
Or does this explain why it is so much harder to earn a decent living or
achieve sustainable prosperity today? Have we mortgaged our
future by tolerating the steady growth of far too large a
government? It's time to reverse that mistake, and get back to the
fundamental American principles of a limited rather than limitless
government. |
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Relocate the UN bureaucracy to the
"third world", and let the socialists fund it |
| Many
zealots are trying to use the United Nations and summits such as the one
in Copenhagen in December 2009, or the 2010 one planned for Mexico City,
as a way to enforce global standards as an excuse for massive transfers
of wealth from the developed to the developing countries.
This has been advocated by the Socialist International
ever since their obvious failure in the 1980's to push their
"North-South" agenda and prop up failing regimes. The point of an
international treaty, or even an agreement, is to make it even more
difficult to ever undo the terms, no matter how harmful. |
| Why
can't Republicans promise to roll back UN contributions by the USA to
pre-1945 levels by 2014? Reduce their carbon footprint in the world -
or at least in New York. That would give the UN bureaucrats something
new to think about. Cut their budget to League of Nations levels at
least - and to zero by 2050. Let all the UN bureaucrats worry about job
security in the larger context of US political climate change. |
| Why
not insist on relocating the UN Secretariat and all their comfortable
and very costly offices in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Rome, etc. to
someplace really miserable or dangerous (but cheap) in the developing
world which needs "fresh money". How about
Zimbabwe? It has a pleasant climate. Surely all of Mugabe's
friends and apologists in the UN would be eager to relocate there?
The World Bank could move there from Washington, DC too. The OAS
could relocate to someplace attractive like Guayaquil, or perhaps La
Paz, Bolivia. There are many multilateral organizations which
could follow the lead of business and relocate from high cost to low
cost developing countries, where they could contribute to better
governance and labor practices. |
| Let's
push hard to transfer the entire UN bureaucracy to the developing world,
where it will be much cheaper to operate, and then let the socialists of
the world fund it and live with the consequences.
Surely Venezuela will gladly offer to replace our
contributions?
Surely China and Russia will step up to the plate, or
will they support UN budget cuts too rather than transfer more of their
own growing wealth to developing nations? |
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Surely we can count on all the socialists in Europe to show their
commitment by moving all of their UN diplomats to Third World locations
where their noble intentions can be demonstrated in practice.
They can put all the abandoned UN offices in Europe to
more productive uses, as private developers would quickly do in New York
City.
Why should governments be funding these costly
enclaves of UN bureaucrats? Relocate them to much cheaper
locations with truly horrible infrastructure and governance so that they
face daily exposure to their persistent failures. If they are so
determined to create a better world, let them start in their own
backyard by sending their leaders to live and work in the worst places
on the planet, rather than in some of the most developed cities.
That should help to quickly thin their ranks. |
| Why
should American businesses and individuals be the only ones to make
sacrifices? Why should the bureaucrats never face real budget
cuts, or significant staff cuts? Their organizations have grown
far beyond their value to society, and it's time to cut the damage
rather than continue to expand it. Their emissions are harmful to
liberty and prosperity, and lead to the creeping statist tyranny of a
technocracy, regardless of alleged good intentions. Americans
still believe in limited government. |
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Businesses and workers of the world unite. Tell
those in government to start making the sacrifices, instead of mandating
that everybody else sustain their own rising prosperity.
Relentlessly cut the bloated size of government so that the burden on
American business becomes sustainable again. |
| The
technocrats and socialists who want to play God with other people's
money, and arrogate unto themselves the alleged wisdom and power to even
regulate the climate of this planet and every human activity on it, need
to be stopped. This is tyranny, plain and simple.
It is not enough to simply delay or frustrate their
latest atrocities. We need to relentlessly roll back their power
over us to a level from which they can never again threaten us in this
manner. There is still time to do this - but not much. They
are conspiring at a frantic pace to make their grip on power very hard
to reverse. We need to work just as energetically to set their
ambitions back a century or more. |
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