I gave an OLLI (Osher Lifelong Studying Institute) discuss on Tuesday on President Trump’s financial insurance policies and actions. As you may think, it was fairly damaging–on failure to chop main spending packages, on cracking down on each unlawful and authorized immigration, and on tariffs.
The one doubtlessly vivid spot was on DOGE. I led by telling them that I don’t have a DOG within the hunt.
However I identified one thing about DOGE’s limits that I discovered from my analysis and likewise from a dialogue with a fellow economist.
From my analysis
Alex Nowrasteh and Ryan Bourne famous, in “Six Methods to Perceive DOGE and Predict Its Future Habits,” the next:
In accordance with Chris Edwards, complete compensation for the three.8 million federal protection and nondefense employees accounts for less than 8 % of spending(excluding postal workers).
Why does this matter? As a result of authorities isn’t like a lot of the non-public sector. The non-public sector produces issues. An enormous quantity of the federal authorities entails authorities handing individuals huge quantities of cash. So if the variety of workers falls, even by, say 10 %, you in all probability received’t minimize authorities spending by even 1 %.
From a dialogue with an economist good friend
It issues which workers you chop. In fact, many individuals have famous that. You in all probability aren’t going to chop the best workers by reducing probationary employees, for instance. However I’m getting at one thing totally different. An worker at sure authorities companies–I’m you, SEC and EPA–might need the power and the facility to impose $10 million in prices for little profit. Reduce that worker and ensure the opposite workers are too busy to choose up his portfolio, and you’ll save $10 million. The saving on his wage could be rounding error.
However minimize the variety of Park Service workers by 5% and also you’ll save a bit of by probably giving up beneficial issues they have been doing.
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Added be aware:
Once I was prepping my discuss final Friday, I remembered a humorous line that Alan Simpson, the previous Republican senator from Wyoming, had had about politics. I googled his identify to search out it and, lo and behold, discovered that he had died that day. I did discover a humorous line I remembered however not the one I used to be in search of.
Right here’s the humorous line I discovered (right here on the 8:37 level):
Politics is derived from Latin. Poli means many and tics means blood-sucking bugs.
There’s one other one I’m going from reminiscence on, and I used it to criticize a latest bipartisan measure to extend Social Safety advantages for retirees who’ve state and/or native authorities pensions.
Apparently, Simpson was giving a tour of the Capitol constructing to a bunch of Japanese dignitaries and was making an attempt to clarify the U.S political system in just a few traces. Right here’s what he mentioned:
There are two events in America, the evil celebration and the silly celebration. I’m a member of the silly celebration. Sometimes, we do one thing each evil and silly. That’s referred to as bipartisanship.
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