Canadians no better than US when it comes to efficient government
TheStar.com - The never-ending war on government waste:
"In a second, equally depressing report to the committee, Griffiths found that city workers assigned to recover overpayments mistakenly issued to welfare recipients cost the system far more than they were able to recover. Last year's net recovery to city hall totalled $143,000. But landing that relatively small amount cost $920,000, leaving a net loss of $777,000."
To be fair, one has to ask how high the fraudulent collections might be if no one were minding the store. That $777,000 deficit might be a bargain; but, to quote a former head of the US War on Poverty, "we lack appropriate metrics" to make that determination.
The important point to keep in mind is that most politicians - even most of the ones who say they oppose "waste, fraud and abuse" - want to keep the system much as it is, except worse. Among other things, "waste, fraud and abuse" are effective ways of buying votes. And, it distracts attention from more important questions like "should these programs exist at all?"
posted by J. Keen Holland @ 4:04 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Keen,
The expression "efficient government" is an oxymoron.
Government does not have the required metrics largely because it chooses not to have them. In many cases, the metrics it uses are meaningless. In many of those cases, the metrics are meant to be meaningless.
I am still waiting for someone, anyone, to ask this question: "What is our exit strategy from the war on poverty?" If the US has waged any "war" which can reasonably be referred to as a "quagmire" and compared (in some wierd way) to Vietnam, it is the "War on Poverty". This "war" has been being waged for 40 years, with little documented progress and little hope of future progress. It appears that it is a war to make multi-generational poverty survivable and bearable, rather than a war to end poverty.
My recollection is that the words of the Preamble include the term "promote", rather than the term "provide", with regard to "the general welfare". Perhaps this was just a case of "mean" original intent!
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