In which I compare Rand Paul, Jay Ackroyd, and David Dayan
Lifted from Robert Waldmann‘s StochasticThoughts
In which I compare Rand Paul, Jay Ackroyd, and David Dayan
Jay Ackroyd notes DDay’s excellent policy proposals. I comment That is indeed an excellent list.
I especially like point 3 (I think it is useful to ask people how much money Medicare Advantage saved the government if they object). It is petty picky and silly to quibble and I am that petty picky silly quibbler.
In point 4 you followed acqua buddha. “Adding good jobs with proper pensions in the public sector — which employs the fewest workers since 1966 — could help. ” The claim “the public sector — which employs the fewest workers since 1966” is absolutely false. The link evidence is an observation about the Federal Government. Federal Government employment is a small fraction of public sector employment (about one sixth of it). I invoke acqua buddha from the watery shallows, because this is exactly the dodge used by Rand Paul to hide his ignorance
In an interview, he was visibly astounded by Paul Krugman’s claim that government employment had declined during a period when it had in fact declined (hint the period was not “since 1966”). After the data were shown to him or, more likely, an aid — he claimed he thought that Krugman had made a claim about Federal Government employment. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/09/816761/flabbergasted-rand-paul-learns-public-employment-decreased-under-obama/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/the-zombie-that-ate-rand-pauls-brain/”
Robert:
As I am always interested in the PPACA, I was wondering where this: “how much money Medicare Advantage saved the government” is in my wanderings of your post and links?
A couple of points related to the Postal Service.
As some of the links point out one of the disingenuous tactics of the Republicans is to scream about government employment and point to numbers that show spikes during the decennial census when lots of pert-time temporary people are hired to carry out the census.
Obviously this is rather dishonest but something that gets overlooked quite frequently is that the Census Bureau and the Postal Service do not coordinate their activities very well (actually this is a symptom of a bigger problem – Federal agencies don’t use the Postal Service as mailer of first resort).
This makes absolutely no sense. The postal network is just the kind of infrastructure needed if one is going about the task of counting population. Mandating cooperative links between Federal agencies like the Postal Service and the Census Bureau would result in significant savings.
David Dayan has some nice proposals but like a good many folks his proposals re: postal banking fail to understand the current context and environment. He’s written a series of articles about the subject that included some real howlers – the President can order the Postal Service to set up banking service (he can’t) – and that the OIG study presumes the Postal Service already has full authority to engage in banking services (sort of but not without going to the PRC and certainly not without a good deal of push back from the industry).
Postal banking is a common sense idea that could work but that could comes with some serious caveats. The current statutory arrangement might give the Postal Service authority to engage in some banking services but it would likely occur through competitive products. Given the rules over competitive products and the overall focus of postal management on “profits”, it is likely that postal banking under the current regime would be come a predatory means of extracting fees; maybe less predatory than payday lenders and others but still not the kind of neutral public solution that would best serve the unbanked sectors of the economy. http://www.savethepostoffice.com/under-same-management-some-reservations-about-postal-banking
The OIG has a new report out that discusses the Universal Service Obligation (USO). It’s an interesting discussion and should serve as a prelude to any discussions about postal banking. The exercise of examining a USO is one that might be useful for several Federal activities. The report is at: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library-files/2014/rarc-wp-15-001.pdf
One additional point related to this post, is the increasing tendency to privatize government services through outsourcing. It’s not such a good deal, we would often be better off using government employees to do the job.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-28/outsourcing-can-be-a-lousy-alternative-to-government-run-services
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-better-smaller-governmenthire-1-million-more-federal-bureaucrats/2014/08/29/c0bc1480-2c72-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html