“An incarceration program is not an employment program,”
announced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier this year, in justification of his recently announced plan to close seven New York state prisons. So true, and the argument made by the local communities housing those unneeded prisons that they should be kept operating because they provide jobs is absurd.
But how about extending this wise principle—government is not a jobs program—beyond functions, such as incarceration, that the left despises. Public employee union apologists defend cushy government jobs with their virtually free medical care and astoundingly generous pensions on the ground that in many localities, they provide the best middle class jobs available.
It needs to be endlessly reaffirmed that the purpose of government is to provide services—such as law and order or national defense—that the free market cannot efficiently provide. It is not to transfer wealth from one group of productive workers so that another group of workers can have secure jobs. Europe has long regarded the public sector as simply a stable source of employment. It is now paying the price.
Personally I believe there is a place for certain kinds of government jobs for unproductive people.
The thing is, although it would be eugenically sound to allow the incompetent and unproductive to starve in the streets, none of us actually wants to live in a society where that happens (e.g., 16th century England). So we’ve got to feed such people. And yet having them get used to receiving money for nothing (welfare) is such a terrible idea! So if you can’t find a way to move such people into the private sector, then IMO onerous and low paid government jobs are the next best thing. They can be lugging rocks back and forth across a field for all I care, as long as they have to show up on time in order to get paid, and as long as the pay is low enough that McDonald’s would be a step up.
The idea that government is able to achieve anything whatsoever more “efficiently” than private enterprise is certainly not something widely accepted nor even EVER capable of demonstration. And it is certainly not (even though believed by some) a foundation for the justification of government.
Rather, it’s the fact that some of the most important services required by a community involve the routine use or threat of use of physically coercive measures and a readiness in their application where submission does not occur voluntarily (and promptly). People wish such an entity to exist as shall free them from the necessity to engage in violence themselves in the everyday protection of their selves, their families, their property, and peacefulness of their communities (protection from foreign and domestic aggression). This function is called the “police power” and is the only social function in which there is necessity for other than private means of production.
We do not know what a man’s life is “worth” nor the ability to walk about, unmolested. All we can do is decide how much we’d devote of our incomes to that purpose–and charge our political leaders to install such measures and tax us for the necessary costs. We care not that some private firm might do the job more cheaply because then, that private firm, organized for the profit of its owners, would have perverse incentives: the more of the desired services they provide, the less they’d profit. With government, we give ’em the money we think necessary–and they’re charged with giving us as much as they can for our money. “Efficiency” might provide material for argument about which set of leaders we choose to implement such functions but not of whether the same could be obtained of private entities forbidden by law the use of coercive measures and enforcement.
In the private sector, “efficiency” and the attaining of it is an entrepreneurial function absent from government. The businessman is driven to please the customer by a desire for profit and a profit is his proof of accomplishment. In the public sector, all that can be accomplished is to deliver as much of the good intended on the funds provided and the reward to successful leaders is re-election to do more of the same.
“Jobs” are ALWAYS costs; if the job be not necessary, efficiency–and profit–is increased by eliminating the job. In the public sector, it is impossible to distinguish readily between productive and unproductive–there are no measures but meaningless ones (and a job elimated may certainhly result in fewer votes for the present leadership at election).
Whereas, in the private sector, money saved increases profit, in the public sector it is (rightfully so!) primae facie evidence of a job not completely done or of necessity to reduce the size of the bureau; it is only plain common sense that every penny–or close to it–be spent every accounting period, by every bureau.