08 August 2011

SitRep

Doing reasonably well, 2 broken ribs from a bicycle mishap, knitting quite well. TB treatment going as anticipated (sputuum cultures take 2 months to incubate, and the May sample proved negative - two consecutive negative cultures and I'm supposed to be cured). So that's that for the health and fitness portion of this program.

National health, though, I dunno. As a lifelong Libertarian, I can't help but say "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah", but it hurts to do so.

It's real simple. The Government can't make jobs. They can employ people, but the money has to come from taxes. The money paid in taxes is mostly wasted. Little Billy Buckley used to say "Tsx money is a neat way to spend a buck to flip a bum a quarter", and he was right.

All the bullshit about pushing Grandma over the cliff is nonsense. The money isn't going to Grandma. The money is going to Grandma's government accountant and her supervisor, and the case specialist and the Social Security clerk and the ISO6000 consultant working to improve the efficiency of the system and, well, you get the idea.

And all of this network, all of this overhead, all of this surplusage, persiflage, embroidery, dead weight and dead wood, is where the money goes. Should the directors of Fannie MAe and Freddie Mac have been paid on the order of ten million dollars per month in "performance bonuses" for the work they did in losing billions with a B dollars? Why is the turnover rate in the FedGov sector asymptoticly approaching zero? Why is the only expanding source of jobs in the past two years with the government? And who is gonna pay for all these vermiform appendicese of the governmental excretory tract?

A very smart man, Jerry Pournelle (so smart that all I can do is point you at his weblog and let you bask in his brilliance), has suggested a one percent cut in actual spending - that is to say that the money spent should be one percent smaller. The miracle of compound interest tkes care of the rest. Not "adjusted for inflation". Not "under current baselines". Not "with Cost of Living Adjustments".

Using the sainted WFB's rule of thumb, that seventy-five percent of the expenditures are the cost of paying the chair warmers, then there should be no change in the benefits paid, just a few more empty chairs in the back rooms.

Now that I think about it, simple attrition should cover the budget cost. When the second assistant vice president to the chairman of the office of the local Medicare office retires, don't hire someone else.

Go to any government office, and look at the parking lots. There are more spaces for employees than for customers. Doesn't that tell you something?

No comments: