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 applications, on cracking down on each unlawful and authorized immigration, and on tariffs.
The one probably 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 realized from my analysis and in addition from a dialogue with a fellow economist.
From my analysis
Alex Nowrasteh and Ryan Bourne famous, in “Six Ways to Understand DOGE and Predict Its Future Behavior,” the next:
Based on Chris Edwards, complete compensation for the three.8 million federal protection and nondefense staff accounts for under 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 includes authorities handing folks large quantities of cash. So if the variety of workers falls, even by, say 10 %, you in all probability gained’t lower authorities spending by even 1 %.
From a dialogue with an economist good friend
It issues which workers you narrow. After all, many individuals have famous that. You in all probability aren’t going to chop the best workers by chopping probationary staff, for instance. However I’m getting at one thing completely different. An worker at sure authorities businesses–I’m taking a look at you, SEC and EPA–may need the flexibility and the ability to impose $10 million in prices for little profit. Minimize 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 just a little by presumably giving up precious issues they have been doing.
Added be aware:
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 search 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 just a few strains. Right here’s what he mentioned:
There are two events in America, the evil occasion and the silly occasion. I’m a member of the silly occasion. Sometimes, we do one thing each evil and silly. That’s known as bipartisanship.
