Where will inflation stop?

In reply to Duke :

My experience has been that you have those same types of people at private companies too. 

It seems to me from the impression I get from friends who work for the government is that everything they do is very tightly regulated, everything has very rigid and specific rules for every detail. This has to be done to avoid fraud. Because of that these programs are very difficult to make changes to. In the real world when you implement a new solution to a problem, if it sort of works but has problems you make adjustments as you go to keep improving that new solution until you get it where you want it. With a government program you cant tweak it, that minor change will go against article x paragraph y. So you end up stuck with inefficient programs. Loosen regs and you could improve programs but would have people skimming at every step because of loopholes. Damned if you, damned if you dont. 

93EXCivic said:

In reply to Duke :

My experience has been that you have those same types of people at private companies too. 

Mine too. BUT:

In private companies, the third and fourth types affect their employer's projects and waste their employer's money.

In government, they affect everybody's projects and waste everybody's money.

As a corollary to that comment, it's much easier to fire them or at least minimize the damage they can do in private enterprise. As government employees, not so much.

In reply to gearheadmb :

Which is maybe an argument that we shouldn't have made so many things the government's responsibility to deliver...?

In reply to Duke :

Right cause for profit fire departments worked out so well in the past. 

Duke said:

93EXCivic said:

In reply to Duke :

My experience has been that you have those same types of people at private companies too. 

Mine too. BUT:

In private companies, the third and fourth types affect their employer's projects and waste their employer's money.

In government, they affect everybody's projects and waste everybody's money.

As a corollary to that comment, it's much easier to fire them or at least minimize the damage they can do in private enterprise. As government employees, not so much.

 Plenty of people are terminated. For government jobs.  While they do have a Union to protect them from capprious termination  the reality is budgets limit employees. 
  They are typically fired the same way Ford gets rid of troublesome employees. They are reassigned  to jobs they will hate. If a line worker at Ford is a chatter box  they give him a broom. It's against Union rules to talk to line workers because that distraction causes injuries. 
 If you're a gregarious person it's hard not to talk to your friends and buddies as you sweep past them.  3 violations and the Union drops you. 
  Same works for government employees. They transfer you to places where you will fail and three write ups for failure and the Union stops protecting their job. 

gearheadmb said:

It seems to me from the impression I get from friends who work for the government is that everything they do is very tightly regulated, everything has very rigid and specific rules for every detail. This has to be done to avoid fraud. Because of that these programs are very difficult to make changes to. In the real world when you implement a new solution to a problem, if it sort of works but has problems you make adjustments as you go to keep improving that new solution until you get it where you want it. With a government program you cant tweak it, that minor change will go against article x paragraph y. So you end up stuck with inefficient programs. Loosen regs and you could improve programs but would have people skimming at every step because of loopholes. Damned if you, damned if you dont. 

Exactly. Politics is all compromise.   Until the people get tired and support one party enough so they can dominate. Then look out, here comes  fraud and waste.  
   It takes a real statesman to disappoint his supporters and let the opposing party get "a win"  even if it is good for the country.  
   If you really want a good efficient government eliminate the legal bribery of campaign contributions.   Have campaigns paid for by the government . A fixed amount so we can all see how effective that politician would be in a one on one campaign. 

Fueled by Caffeine said:

In reply to Duke :

Right cause for profit fire departments worked out so well in the past. 

A) They worked better than the government fire departments that existed before insurance companies invented fire departments. Oh, wait...

B)  I said "so many things", not "all things".

In reply to Duke :

You need to check your history in #1.  All fire departments were volunteer in the us before about 1853.  

None of this is either/or. Many of the examples defending government waste are either/or examples. Either we waste millions "feeding" kids that don't need the assistance or poor kids starve. Either we cut waste from a school lunch program or we cut military spending. Either we lock up criminals or we feed people. Either we accept wasteful spending or we cut beneficial programs. These are nonsense arguments, meant to distract. 

In reply to gearheadmb :

It seems to me from the impression I get from friends who work for the government is that everything they do is very tightly regulated, everything has very rigid and specific rules for every detail. This has to be done to avoid fraud. Because of that these programs are very difficult to make changes to. In the real world when you implement a new solution to a problem, if it sort of works but has problems you make adjustments as you go to keep improving that new solution until you get it where you want it. With a government program you cant tweak it, that minor change will go against article x paragraph y. So you end up stuck with inefficient programs. Loosen regs and you could improve programs but would have people skimming at every step because of loopholes. Damned if you, damned if you dont. 
 

This makes a lot of sense, and I've seen in in action many times on public projects. I'd argue this is why we need to be extra critical before we roll out new programs, and reduce the number of overlapping programs. The goal might be sound, but one mistake on the implementation and lots of waste results before any hope of a fix. The opposite is also true- if there is a loophole that opens the door to fraud, it can be difficult to close. See the 20 billion in unemployment fraud paid out in CA last year. 

Government waste and fraud is not inflation, the last 5 pages have nothing to do with the subject. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

It's a large contribution. The government is the county's largest employer. Dollars are printed and pumped into the economy to fund government projects that compete with private projects to drive up costs. The larger government is, and the faster it grows, the more effect it has.Federal contracts even have their own minimum wage. 

So about inflation.  I don't see us coming down easy. There willl be some sort of cliff event.  Whoever is in the whitehouse when thst happens will get all the blame despite the years long run up. 

Fueled by Caffeine said:

The national school lunch program was $14B or so last year.  Farmers got 22B.  The oil and gas industry got about the same.  
 

our defense budget is $778B a year    
 

 

we always argue about the small potatoes  and never really address the big problems    That's our largest failing  

 

Yeah, it's pretty insane. It cracks me up when I see people say other countries could take us over. 

We have more air craft carriers than the rest of the world COMBINED. Our air and naval superiority is crazy. We have how many military bases around the world? We don't need them. 

But I'm also not so naive to ignore the reason we do that is to keep oil traded in US dollars, if it no longer wasn't, the US dollar would be worth a loaf of bread, if that. 

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

It's going to get worse before it gets better. The supply chain is heavily damaged, yet the economy is still cranking away like nothing is wrong. We are getting ready to pump a bunch of money into a system that can't keep pace with current demand. The stock market is hitting highs that don't match reality. Take  Tesla for example. It's valued more than all of the biggest auto makers combined. I did some quick math a while back, and Tesla would need to sell every passenger vehicle in the US for 5 years to justify it's valuation. I believe It's even longer now. When the bubble bursts, I think we'll find that cliff. 

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

If we can't agree on and solve a simple problem, how do you propose that we solve the complex ones?

I'd actually say the defense budget is a lot less complex than school lunches.  But whatever. 
 

Military spending is the primary responsibility of the federal government, almost everything else was supposed to be the responsibilities of state and local governments. I agree that there is a lot of waste and excess in the military, but I don't share your opinion that it's not complex. Most of the things that the government purchases I can compare with the private sector. I don't know how to price a 5th gen air superiority fighter. Though I'd guess the extended warranty is a rip off. I can figure out how to feed my kids. But I don't want them drafted into a war where we need to throw bodies at bodies. I'd rather shoot dollars at the bad guys. Is killing a bad guy with a $1 million dollar missile cost effective? It depends, ask the soldier who didn't have to risk his life being shot at. We don't want to match force, we want overwhelming force. One, it keeps the bad guys from trying anything. Two, if they do- they will get the worst of it. I can put a price tag on a car, or building. I can't put one on security and freedom. None of this other stuff matters without those. I believe any obvious waste should be rooted out and remedied. I'd rather it go to better equipment for our soldiers. But for most of the overall military budget, I honestly couldn't tell you. In a time of peace, most of it looks like waste, ignoring the role it plays in maintaining the peace. In a time of war, it's priceless. Could we do all of that with less money? I'm sure we could, but the consequences of failure would be catastrophic. 

Connecting this back to inflation and the supply chain issues- the one good thing that I hope comes out of our current situation is that it highlights how stupid it is to rely on our biggest potential foe for much of what we need. They could cripple us without firing a shot. We won WWII with our industrial might, which we have since largely outsourced to China. 

z31maniac said:

But I'm also not so naive to ignore the reason we do that is to keep oil traded in US dollars, if it no longer wasn't, the US dollar would be worth a loaf of bread, if that. 

Last I checked, a loaf of bread costs about 3 USD.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

But that sword cuts both ways in our modern, globalist world. No one, not even China, manufacturers all the whole products they would need from start to finish.

A world war would cripple *everyone's* supply chains. Even if the nuclear option were off the table, it would be another sort of mutually assured destruction.

This is actually the sort of topic that I think Science Fiction deals with well. Reminds me of Asimov's 'Foundation', or of the military/political tensions of The Expanse.

1988RedT2 said:

z31maniac said:

But I'm also not so naive to ignore the reason we do that is to keep oil traded in US dollars, if it no longer wasn't, the US dollar would be worth a loaf of bread, if that. 

Last I checked, a loaf of bread costs about 3 USD.

I thought the same thing at first but it occurred to me that he may have meant that all US dollars combined would be worth a loaf of bread.

In reply to RX Reven' :

Which would be false, since we would still have our markets. The purpose of the American military is to enforce free trade.

RX Reven' said:

1988RedT2 said:

z31maniac said:

But I'm also not so naive to ignore the reason we do that is to keep oil traded in US dollars, if it no longer wasn't, the US dollar would be worth a loaf of bread, if that. 

Last I checked, a loaf of bread costs about 3 USD.

I thought the same thing at first but it occurred to me that he may have meant that all US dollars combined would be worth a loaf of bread.

Well, yes.  I considered that possibility as well, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from posting a provocative, inflation-related fact.

Fueled by Caffeine said:

Duke said:

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

I'd argue that the first program should be reviewed heavily and probably cut by 20% after figuring out the best way to do so, the second and third programs should be cut by 100%, and the last one by 30%~50%.

And then those savings should be spent paying down debt, not MORE FREE STUFFS.

 

The "Free stuffs" argument carries the implication that those who are getting whatever they are getting do not deserve it.   The next argument will be finding small parts of a large organization where there is waste or fraud and then calling the whole thing corrupt, because you know it must be.

Exactly. A lot of it comes down to the attitude of FYIGM. And "that corrupt government is stealing my money and giving it to lazy bums who need to raise themselves up by their own bootstraps! No more free stuff on my dime!"

Chris_V said:

Fueled by Caffeine said:

Duke said:

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

I'd argue that the first program should be reviewed heavily and probably cut by 20% after figuring out the best way to do so, the second and third programs should be cut by 100%, and the last one by 30%~50%.

And then those savings should be spent paying down debt, not MORE FREE STUFFS.

The "Free stuffs" argument carries the implication that those who are getting whatever they are getting do not deserve it.   The next argument will be finding small parts of a large organization where there is waste or fraud and then calling the whole thing corrupt, because you know it must be.

Exactly. A lot of it comes down to the attitude of FYIGM. And "that corrupt government is stealing my money and giving it to lazy bums who need to raise themselves up by their own bootstraps! No more free stuff on my dime!"

Interesting that both of you chose to concentrate on the "free stuff" part while completely ignoring that my actual point was that we need to substantially reduce government spending of all kinds in order to stop burying our unborn generations of kids and grandkids under a mountain of debt they had no choice in accepting.

But carry on imagining my posts in Monty Burns's voice if it makes you feel better.

In reply to Duke :

burying our unborn generations of kids and grandkids under a mountain of debt they had no choice in accepting.

Which is FYIGM (I had to look that up) on a grand scale.