Originally Posted by filtherton

I think that a more efficient government will require less money, obviously. What i'm not too sure of is whether you can force efficiency by allotting less money. Certainly it is possible, but currently it seems that funding cuts are followed by service cuts. Are reduced services more efficient? Depends on the economies of scale. I doubt any economist would say that reduced spending is always followed by an increase in efficiency. I think if you were going to use the recent economic unpleasantness as an example you could simply lay of a bunch of public employees and force the remaining workers to do the work of their departed coworkers in addition to their own. At this point i think we could afford to lay off the entire e.p.a. since they aren't really doing anything right now anyway.

A more important question is what causes the inefficiency. Too much money might contribute, but it can't be the only cause. What do you think is the root of all the inefficiency that seems to be rampant in the bureaucracy that is our government.

On a side note, the military is notorious for spending money like they're getting paid for it, yet i've never heard anyone expressing a yearning to cut military spending to try to improve efficiency. This leads me to believe that the idea of an inverse relationship between spending and efficiency in government is just a complicated ruse to justify the cutting of social programs. Not saying that this applies to you onetime, just to fiscal conservatives in general.