According to the World Economic Forum’s GCR, the U.S. is ranked 68th in the world in terms of wastefulness of public spending. That is, 67 of the 139 countries in the index are doing a better job of channeling public dollars into productive activities, including Singapore, Rwanda, and Qatar at the top of the list and Australia, New Zealand, and Canada among our large English-speaking peers. Not surprisingly, to those of us who follow work on the quality and cost-effectiveness of public spending across countries, the northern European market democracies perform well, with Sweden at 12, Finland at 14, Denmark at 16, and Norway at 20. Switzerland is at 9, Holland is at 17, Germany is at 33. There are no real shockers on the list.Incidentally, one argument that the statists make is that we are so inefficient because our Federal system causes waste and duplication. I note that the top performers most culturally similar to us also have federal systems and indeed have systems that are in many respects more federal than ours has become.
Which is one more argument for breaking up our Federal behemoth and letting the states do far more. For the states, not having magic money machines, must deal with the reality of limited means. And facing competition from other states, must order their policies to be attractive to wealth creators. Illinois is learning a bitter lesson about what happens when you abuse those that pay the bills.
And now we find ourselves engaged in a titanic struggle to see whether we can prevent the 'sons of Illinois' from taking their 'boffo' performance nationwide. Which is strange, because it sure as hell isn't playing in Peoria.
Because Canada is too cold to flee to. And Australia? well they talk funny there.
Things are about to change, as the U.S. dollar will lose its privilege as the world's reserve currency. This will be a big game changer for every citizen in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteFor being basically a socialist country, we are not very good at running it. We need to compare ourselves to the northern European countries, which are comfortable with their public sectors and use them strategically to their benefit. By delusionally denying the existence of our huge public sector, we implicitly lets it get away with inefficiences and waste.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Anonymous, and this is where every Republican since Reagan has led this country down the garden path. By convincing the American public that the govt. was their big, bloated enemy, they got us to stop paying attention to it, so that now it serves the needs of business and the very wealthy, rather than the people who actually pay for it and have every right to expect decent services in return. These inefficiencies and waste you mention clearly only benefit govt. employees, contractors and suppliers. Notice that when they talk about deep cuts to govt. spending it's always social programs and what they demeaningly call "entitlements" that are first on the chopping block, not our insanely out of line military budget or govt. pensions.
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