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 detrimental–on failure to chop main spending packages, on cracking down on each unlawful and authorized immigration, and on tariffs.
The one probably vibrant 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 realized 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:
Based on Chris Edwards, complete compensation for the three.8 million federal protection and nondefense staff accounts for less than 8 p.c of spending(excluding postal workers).
Why does this matter? As a result of authorities isn’t like a lot of the personal sector. The personal 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 p.c, you in all probability received’t lower authorities spending by even 1 p.c.
From a dialogue with an economist buddy
It issues which workers you narrow. In fact, many individuals have famous that. You in all probability aren’t going to chop the fitting workers by slicing probationary staff, for instance. However I’m getting at one thing totally different. An worker at sure authorities businesses–I’m you, SEC and EPA–may need the power and the ability 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’d save $10 million. The saving on his wage could be rounding error.
However lower the variety of Park Service workers by 5% and also you’ll save somewhat by probably giving up priceless issues they have been doing.
Added notice:
After 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 seek out it and, lo and behold, realized 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 current 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 elucidate the U.S political system in a couple of traces. Right here’s what he stated:
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 known as bipartisanship.
