Comment by thwarted
1 day ago
PJ O'Rourke had a line in his book "Parliament of Whores" when he, as a layman, ham-fistedly cuts a bunch of stuff from the federal budget, and then just subtracts 10% from it at the end. Probably not the originator, but a quote I think about often.
"Add it all together, and I've cut $282.8 billion, leaving a federal budget of $950.5 billion, to which I apply O'Rourke's Circumcision Precept: You can take 10 percent off the top of anything. This gives me another $95 billion in cuts for a grand total of $337.8 billion in budget liposuction."
Parliament of Whores, page 103.
I have never worked for the government, but have worked in industry that deals with government employees. One thing that is very different in industry than in government budgets is that industry budgets do have that 10% of waste. But the budgets of all government orgs I have seen are incredibly lean, especially on the salary side. The government gets mission-driven folks that are willing to give up income in order to accomplish the things they want in the world. I saw this most clearly at CDC, all the scientists I interacted with could double their salary over night by going to private industry, but they stayed where they were because they were more interested in doing meaningful and impactful work. And when it came to the budgets that CDC used to accomplish scientific work, they were even more frugal and effective than the most penny-pinching academic labs I saw. Industry is awash in waste in comparison to how effective the dollars were that were spent at CDC.
And the CDC work is all pre-competitive work that boosts the efficacy of everything else in the economy. A tiny amount of money that results in so much more economic activity and savings than could be imagined in most private industry. And all the numbers for the public savings on, say, food safety are all clearly laid out in long reports. Reports that nobody at DOGE would ever read because they don't believe than anything good could be produced by people who accept lower salaries for higher impact.
I've seen private companies cutting down on logging expenses that would completely fund my friend's whole research department at Stockholm's University.
There's absurd waste in private companies which always makes me laugh when people say the government is inefficient.
Government IS inefficient though, and it's inefficient because there is zero competition and also complete job security. It's also inefficient because the employees are generally bottom of the barrel folks due to the incredibly poor wages.
So you can get people working in the government who couldn't get a job in the private sector if they tried, working with total job security (they can't get fired) for an entity with zero competition so there is no drive or motivation to get better or otherwise improve.
Whereas with private companies you can get hired quickly and fired quickly, meaning you have to perform well (motivation), you are paid better so you attract higher quality candidates, and also if the company does badly you go bankrupt, which means the whole company performs better or dies. The companies which remain win the market and are more efficient (as they are the companies which survived).
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My understanding of what you say is true, and NASA is a common example of high value cultural and economic outcomes for the pittance the US government budgets/allocates for it.
O'Rourke's take is an interesting read; it is commentary that is meant to be more humorous and entertaining than political, I think he excelled at that in the entirety of Parliament of Whores. It was published in 1991 in a different political climate. He does admit he's doing this for fun, that the takes he express are mostly uninformed about the nature of many of these government departments and programs, and takes a (traditional) conservative (high level, and ahem, naive) view of many government programs. For example, additional quotes from that PoW chapter:
> Training and employment is properly the concern of trainees and employers: $5.7 billion.
> Insurance companies should gladly pay for consumer and occupational health and safety: $1.5 billion.
> If unemployment insurance is really insurance, it ought to at least break even: $18.6 billion.
I shared this for the Circumcision Precept bit; the portions of the quote surrounding that were context.
Yes, certain government agencies appeal to professionals as vocations rather than jobs. I have a friend who joined the FBI straight out of college. They don't EVER chat about their job, but I GUARANTEE you a private-industry offer at a significant bump in pay wouldn't make them flinch.
CDC? Every day you go home believing that you are part of a machine saving thousands of lives. BATF? Keeping guns away from terrorists.
And it's not a self-delusion. They ARE doing good things, even if the agency isn't perfect.
O'Rourke also said “The Republicans are the party that says that government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it,” which I've thought about a lot this year.