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How Small Do You Want Your Government?
Reflecting upon our debates – or, at least, disagreements – about WHINOS vs RINOS, I began to wonder if there was a difference in assessment of the relative merits of a GOP presidency vs a Hillary/Warren/Sanders (HWS) presidency. We probably all agree that anyone is better than HWS, in at least the short term. But how much better?
If you think things are bad, but not too bad, and in many important areas trending well, then the difference is pretty big. If you think things are really, really bad indeed, then the difference is pretty small. The first camp wants the immature bomb-throwers to shut up and let the adults win the election. The second camp thinks the important thing is to wake the sheeple, and if this election is lost it is a small price to pay for the longer term objective of saving the republic (if that is still possible).
But what do we mean by “bad?” And how does the presidency figure in this? One approach is to ask what would be an acceptable, long-term, sustainable size for the Federal government. Now, government size is notoriously hard to define and/or measure, so I have arbitrarily chosen two measures: number of pages in the Federal Register, and Federal outlays per capita (in 2014 dollars). To give you some context, the two graphs below show their evolution over time.
The number of pages in the Federal Register per year is a proxy for regulatory activity. It’s not necessarily a great proxy, but it does, I think, give a flavor of the activity of the regulatory state. Prior to 1935, there was no Federal Register: Before the New Deal, it wasn’t needed. (The graph is from the Congressional Research Service (PDF).)
Federal outlays per person, on an inflation adjusted basis, give another window on the absolute size of government. (The idea that things should be measured as a proportion of GDP has a lot of problems.) This graph is from Mercatus. It goes back only to 1945 because … I don’t know. The 1948 figure is $2,214. (Remember, these are 2014 dollars.)
My questions to you:
- How many pages should the Federal Register have in a normal year? (It would have a lot of pages in a year that a lot of regulations were repealed, so ignore those.)
- What should be the Federal outlay per person (in today’s dollars) in a normal year?
By normal, I mean on a long-term, stabilized basis, ignoring transitional costs and world wars.
You might also comment on whether you think there is any correlation between the size of government one considers appropriate and one’s approach to the forthcoming election.
Published in Domestic Policy, Economics, Elections, General, Politics
The attitude expressed by this type of conservative pushes for our politicians to make the perfect the enemy of the good. While I agree with the overall end goal – the value placed on combativeness and style over actual substance prevents any gradual reforms from actually gaining headway with Republican legislators.
Let’s do it Jamie’s way. We shall stand athwart nothing, yelling nothing.
Let’s do it Ball’s way. Unfocused anger and rage. No policies. No new ideas.
Canada seems to be embracing the idea of regulatory budgets (currently in BC, but I understand from reliable sources the Prince of Canada is coming on board nationally). It seems to be catching on the US campaign trail. Senator Rubio has even introduced legislation. For the “we can’t possibly ever, ever do this liberal society thing it’s just too hard” crowd: yes, friends, we will undoubtedly fall into the old scalpel vs. thermonuclear device debate should we adopt such budgets. Just suggest to scalpel proponents that they go carve up a blue whale with a scalpel. Or complete the longstanding project to dig a one-way tunnel from Pasadena to the beach using gophers (as originally proposed). (Very obscure reference to a long-ago radio dj in Los Angeles named, somewhat confusingly, Hawthorne.)
With my remaining words I hereby denounce Claire Berlinski as an agent of the devil (possibly the Canadian Devil). Her post on writing a new constitution made my head hurt when I tried to do it and gave rise to depressing thought: if we can’t do this with the documents we got … . Such a subtle serpent. New Zealand is the comparatively easy answer for the cowards’ hiding place: Hobbits as neighbors; proximity to Erewhon.
Guys. . . you don’t want some official M-type cluttering up this thread, do you?
Knock it off. Jimminey!
I certainly don’t wish to give the impression that my fury is unfocused. Where is the return to 2008 spending levels? Where is the border fence? What about this ObamaCare? And so forth.
The Tea Party has had some of the most achievable, justifiable goals in the history of the Republic, and the GOP won’t have any of it.
“New ideas”. I spit on new ideas. Why can we not defend the old ones?
Review your performance in this thread.
How many times has the house voted to repeal Obamacare? It must be in the dozens by now. There simply aren’t enough votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster not to mention a president that will veto such a bill immediately. The same goes for both a reduction in overall spending and a border fence. Both proposals have been brought up for a vote in the house and failed to gain enough votes to overcome the filibuster in the Senate.
So you’re really just mad that your ideas aren’t more popular. I’m sure yelling at everyone and telling them what traitors and idiots they are will go a long way to bridging that gap.
Annyhoo. Do you think that the government will be reduced in size by even a single dollar? Paul Ryan’s budget went out for ten years, reducing the deficit all the way, and *still* never balanced.
I think it is possible but it will require either an extremely long timeline (it look liberals 100 years to get us to this state of affairs) or a calamitous event.
I guess a simple “no” was too embarrassing.
Or the issue is more complex than simple cro-magnon grunting noises will answer.
I agree that it’s complex and that we have to address the complexities. But I don’t think you should disrespect any cro-magnons among us. We want them all on our side. They have a salutary effect on the bad guys.
Well, a beginning metric could be how many bureaucrats can fit on the head of a needle and then adjust the size of government as needed.
Gradual? The problem with gradual is that the unintended consequences of undoing matters partially are as unknowables as those created in the first place. There is nothing magical about gradual and much that is problematical. Every interest knows it’s little piece of turf, but nobody can know the totality of the tax code or the regulatory regime, and we cannot know the results of the iterative log roll. Free markets respond rapidly and we cannot know where they are headed, but that’s the point. Partially free markets, respond with blistering speed , at least in their narrow special interest way, as interests know immediately what they must do. Moreover, the focus remains the government and it’s instruments, rather than competition and its demands. We won’t know how that shakes out either, but the bureaucracy and Congress will remain in the middle fighting against further change and new interests will consolidate behind the new regimes and become the enemies of further reform in the next cycle. A new administration must dive in and take no prisoners. Radical change can be based on specific ideas rooted in the notion of freedom, and each, like a flat tax, or a fair tax or a regulatory equivalent can be defended from the high ground of a simple idea that most can understand rather than a vague, indeed meaningless phrase such as “reform” behind which anything can occur. Social programs? Just pass them to the states where they belong.
So, blow everything up and see what happens. Right?
Not at all, just know what you’re doing and keep it simple. See what happens? that’s the thing about the future, it’s not knowable under any approach but we know the forces at work. The default position is big government and creeping corruption, sometimes, not so creeping, so gradual just won’t do the trick.
Only decay works gradually.
Unfortunately, you may be right. But the stuff that works quickly usually makes things worse.
That’s just not true. Look at the Right to Life movement. And all of us learn a musical instrument, study a subject deeply, write a book, raise our kids not instantly but gradually.
So I guess the pyramids were built in a day.
Merina, the one pertinent example there is right to life, and if you stack that against, say, the decay of marriage, well. Not so hot, as today’s headlines tell us. Secret government abortions for our kids and the organ selling were just hearing about? Not so hot.
Jamie, is that the closest you can get to the point? Thousands of years ago, thousands of miles away?
My point, BDB, is that some things, personal and public, do happen gradually, or they happen when the right person gets in office, Reagan for example. Look at history–eugenics had its day until everyone realized that it was barbaric. Slavery had its day until people realized it was barbaric and fought a gradual campaign, then a war, to end it. Communists had their day in the Soviet Union until it became clear that it wouldn’t work, then they had to try something else. Decay is not the only direction in history, though it frequently is the direction, but usually not on all fronts at once. Some of these things rear their ugly heads over and over, but when they don’t correspond to truth and the good of humans, they generally die out. History just doesn’t correspond to your pronouncement that decay is the only direction and gradualism never works.
No just pointing out how stupid your one liners are.
One man’s decay is another man’s growth. No?
My point is that the last hundred years have shown us a strong progressive bias to incrementalism.
Feel free to talk about pyramids and other things. Just don’t pretend you are responding to my point.
There is nothing written in stone saying that incrementalism can only be used by progressives for their ends. The progress of the pro-life movement proves your one-liner to be untrue on its face. There is also the massive shift in tax policy that we have seen in the American electorate – we now argue over differences between a 35% and 32% tax rate instead of a 70% one. Or how about Free Trade? Trade protectionists are a thing of the past even among the majority of liberals. How about the steadily declining participation in unions we have seen over the last 50 to 60 years? The slow steady advocacy that has effectively nullified the gun-control movement as a political force?
By all means continue rage on in your revolutionary zeal. Just don’t pretend it has any relationship with reality.
BDB, it would be nice to be able to reclaim our country quickly, and it might even be possible in some ways. I really can imagine some of the current presidential hopefuls making great changes. Not as Obama has, by being lawless and deceitful, but by being the anti-Obama, above-board, competent and good at working with Congress–which I think a great many people are more than ready for. Change is the only constant, and certainly the last 6 years have been a negative example of that, but keep on the sunny side–sometimes good things happen too. Sometimes corruption and lawlessness are beaten back, sometimes Republicans win, sometimes people come to their senses. Have you read Charles Murray’s new book? He has some interesting ideas in there for defeating agencies run amok.
Yes, love his book, I’m not stupid, we need a multi-pronged approach, and the endless chorus of “these things take time, just win some elections” is a death sentence.
We will NOT restore anything by waiting.
People like Obama do damage at a rate that simply cannot be set right using the same sort of lawfare.
This is an asymmetric battle, and all I hear from the moderate chorus is “wear red coats and march in straight lines”.
Note for the thuddingly literal — I do not ACTUALLY hear those words. It’s a metaphor. Jamie.