That was long. The private sector would cut the verbage to one page. It costs money and diverts attention to beat a topic to death.
As to DOGE, when you are cleaning out the Augean stables after 90 years of millions of bureaucrats filling the floor with ... stuff... you have to expect some of the bulls will get washed out with the ... stuff. If you clean the stables frequently, or keep the bulls to a minimum, there is less bull stuff to remove.
Even if a specific government program has real benefits, that is not enough to justify it. What benefits would the same spending produce in the private sector? Bastiat would have something to say here on the seen and the unseen. Also, even a beneficial program can -- and usually does -- decay into something that costs ever more and causes problems.
It’s been said that the price of a good or service is a signal wrapped up in an incentive, in essence that prices are actually the conveyance of information.
What recipients of that information - “market actors” - make of that information is what actually makes a market, and what is perceived as a positive incentive to one may well be a negative, disincentive to another. Obviously, I'll tend to favor a tariff favoring my business may well work against my competitors; the “value” of that tariff is subjective relative to my business interests.
I tend to agree that DOGE is a crude tool and can see it as a bit of a stunt; eventually Musk will get frustrated and go back to being innovative; this is not the path to Mars …
Yet, like prices (price signals) in a market system no matter how imperfect, votes in a democracy also convey information wrapped in an incentive for those seeking and holding elected office and - of much more importance - everything from non-governmental organizations down to individuals.
If you accept the above, I don't see how something like DOGE can address the very good points Dr. Kahn has raised. That the voters expressed a preference for policy basket Trump over policy basket Harris isn't very satisfying.
That was long. The private sector would cut the verbage to one page. It costs money and diverts attention to beat a topic to death.
As to DOGE, when you are cleaning out the Augean stables after 90 years of millions of bureaucrats filling the floor with ... stuff... you have to expect some of the bulls will get washed out with the ... stuff. If you clean the stables frequently, or keep the bulls to a minimum, there is less bull stuff to remove.
Even if a specific government program has real benefits, that is not enough to justify it. What benefits would the same spending produce in the private sector? Bastiat would have something to say here on the seen and the unseen. Also, even a beneficial program can -- and usually does -- decay into something that costs ever more and causes problems.
It’s been said that the price of a good or service is a signal wrapped up in an incentive, in essence that prices are actually the conveyance of information.
What recipients of that information - “market actors” - make of that information is what actually makes a market, and what is perceived as a positive incentive to one may well be a negative, disincentive to another. Obviously, I'll tend to favor a tariff favoring my business may well work against my competitors; the “value” of that tariff is subjective relative to my business interests.
I tend to agree that DOGE is a crude tool and can see it as a bit of a stunt; eventually Musk will get frustrated and go back to being innovative; this is not the path to Mars …
Yet, like prices (price signals) in a market system no matter how imperfect, votes in a democracy also convey information wrapped in an incentive for those seeking and holding elected office and - of much more importance - everything from non-governmental organizations down to individuals.
If you accept the above, I don't see how something like DOGE can address the very good points Dr. Kahn has raised. That the voters expressed a preference for policy basket Trump over policy basket Harris isn't very satisfying.