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debate over unilateral or negotiated US reductions in "greenhouse gas"
emissions provides a "teachable moment" about restoring limited
government in America as an example for the world.
Obama and the leftists in Congress apparently regard it
as reasonable to mandate a new "cap
and trade" tax and regulatory regime which will impose 1910 to 1875
levels of carbon emissions on all businesses and individuals in America
by 2050. There were fewer than 100 million Americans in that era,
and a much smaller GDP. This is a direct assault on our current
prosperity and everything which contributed to it over the last century
or two. It threatens to impoverish America for generations.
Let's limit all government bureaucracies to such goals
first. They can set a good example for the rest of America and the
world by eliminating their own prosperity first.
Roll back government.
That would free up enough private capital to actually
have a beneficial impact on global development. |
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A proposal for Republicans: Reduce the
impact of the federal government and UN first |
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Restore the US government and UN bureaucracies to
their 1875 - 1910 staffing levels as a per capita social burden - and
advocate similar changes in state government bureaucracies.
Of course, there was no UN in that era - not even the
League of Nations. Likewise, many federal departments did not
exist. They should cease to exist. We must all learn to
live with less, right? We must phase them out urgently to help
save the planet. It's a crisis, right? They may have seemed
like a good idea at one time, but times have changed.
The government was a tiny fraction of the current size
and cost. Even after adjusting for population growth, the UN would
still be zero, and the federal departments fewer and much smaller than
today.
If it is so worthy to make every business and
individual go back in time and make great economic sacrifices for the
good of mankind, let government roll back to prior levels first.
Surely those in government will not be hypocrites by
insisting that their services are more essential than those in the
private sector for which people voluntarily pay the competitive fair
market price? Were their services any less important a century
ago, or when the Constitution limited their role? |
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For simplicity, assume that the current population of the
United States is a little over 300 million, and that this is 4
times the level of 1875 - 1910. The population in 1910, for
reference, was roughly 92 million, up from around 76 million in 1900.
That means the federal bureaucracy should be no more than perhaps 4
times the size, so that the per capita burden on the American population
is similar. For reference, there were reportedly
around 3800 federal employees in the period prior to the Panic of
1873 after President Ulysses Grant had reduced their number from 6000.
By this standard, there should be no more than perhaps 15,000 to
24,000 federal employees today. Instead, there are well
over
1,000,000 federal employees today - after excluding the
Postal
Service (615,000) and the Defense Department (623,000) as well as
the Social Security Administration (62,000). |
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Thus, if America needs to commit to 85% reductions in
carbon emissions by 2050 to save the planet, a good starting point would
be to mandate an 85% staff cut in our federal bureaucracy.
It would take more than a 95% cut to reach 50,000 employees - 2
to 3 times the 1875 per capita bureaucracy. That allows plenty of
slack for the projected 40% US population growth to 420 million by 2050. |
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How many Americans would rally behind that political
climate change? Imagine how taxes could be reduced if the federal
workforce was steadily reduced to this target level, starting with
ambitious targets such as mandatory 20 - 30% federal staff cuts by 2014
- 2020.
Let the federal bureaucrats worry about how to save
their own jobs, rather than our own. |
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If it is reasonable to impose very costly 85%
reductions on all American businesses and individuals to cap our
prosperity and trade it away to other nations, then surely the federal
bureaucracy can pay for it by making 85% staff cuts first to reduce
their own prosperity. If it is such a crisis, then we should not
let one moment go to waste, and start federal cuts now so that the
private sector can start investing in better solutions to this alleged
global danger. We should make federal staff
cuts of at least 5% every year until we achieve 85% - 95% cuts.
Those aren't cuts in nominal budget growth (i.e., slower growth), but
rather actual cuts. Out of 1,000,000+ federal employees, that
means eliminating 50,000+ positions net per year for the next 20 years.
That savings should release enough private capital to create far more
productive jobs.
The EPA would be a good place to start (18,000).
It could be eliminated completely, as in the past. Another good
place to start would be the Department of Education (4000), which should
never have been created. It won't be easy to make cuts, but it
isn't easy in business or for individuals, either. There is no
reason why the federal bureaucracy should be immune to restructuring and
job losses. |
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If we managed to grow and prosper for many decades with
less than 1 federal employee per 12,500 citizens (6000 federal workers
for 75 million population), then there's no good reason why we can't
live with a lot less than 1 federal worker per 300 people today (300+
million citizens / 1+ million federal employees). Once again, that
calculation ignores all of the Social Security, Postal Service,
and Defense Department workers, which add more than 1.25 million
additional federal workers. If we went back to
the old ratio, there would only be 24,000 federal workers today,
rather than over 1 million of them. Do we really get that much
additional social value today? Are we as individuals willing to
pay for 40 times as many federal workers per capita as a century ago?
Are we really getting 40 times more value out of our
tax investment in the federal bureaucracy than we did a century ago?
Or does this explain why it is so much harder to earn a decent living or
achieve sustainable prosperity today? Have we mortgaged our
future by tolerating the steady growth of far too large a
government? It's time to reverse that mistake, and get back to the
fundamental American principles of a limited rather than limitless
government. |
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Relocate the UN bureaucracy to the
"third world", and let the socialists fund it |
| Many
zealots are trying to use the United Nations and summits such as the one
in Copenhagen in December 2009, or the 2010 one planned for Mexico City,
as a way to enforce global standards as an excuse for massive transfers
of wealth from the developed to the developing countries.
This has been advocated by the Socialist International
ever since their obvious failure in the 1980's to push their
"North-South" agenda and prop up failing regimes. The point of an
international treaty, or even an agreement, is to make it even more
difficult to ever undo the terms, no matter how harmful. |
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can't Republicans promise to roll back UN contributions by the USA to
pre-1945 levels by 2014? Reduce their carbon footprint in the world -
or at least in New York. That would give the UN bureaucrats something
new to think about. Cut their budget to League of Nations levels at
least - and to zero by 2050. Let all the UN bureaucrats worry about job
security in the larger context of US political climate change. |
| Why
not insist on relocating the UN Secretariat and all their comfortable
and very costly offices in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Rome, etc. to
someplace really miserable or dangerous (but cheap) in the developing
world which needs "fresh money". How about
Zimbabwe? It has a pleasant climate. Surely all of Mugabe's
friends and apologists in the UN would be eager to relocate there?
The World Bank could move there from Washington, DC too. The OAS
could relocate to someplace attractive like Guayaquil, or perhaps La
Paz, Bolivia. There are many multilateral organizations which
could follow the lead of business and relocate from high cost to low
cost developing countries, where they could contribute to better
governance and labor practices. |
| Let's
push hard to transfer the entire UN bureaucracy to the developing world,
where it will be much cheaper to operate, and then let the socialists of
the world fund it and live with the consequences.
Surely Venezuela will gladly offer to replace our
contributions?
Surely China and Russia will step up to the plate, or
will they support UN budget cuts too rather than transfer more of their
own growing wealth to developing nations? |
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Surely we can count on all the socialists in Europe to show their
commitment by moving all of their UN diplomats to Third World locations
where their noble intentions can be demonstrated in practice.
They can put all the abandoned UN offices in Europe to
more productive uses, as private developers would quickly do in New York
City.
Why should governments be funding these costly
enclaves of UN bureaucrats? Relocate them to much cheaper
locations with truly horrible infrastructure and governance so that they
face daily exposure to their persistent failures. If they are so
determined to create a better world, let them start in their own
backyard by sending their leaders to live and work in the worst places
on the planet, rather than in some of the most developed cities.
That should help to quickly thin their ranks. |
| Why
should American businesses and individuals be the only ones to make
sacrifices? Why should the bureaucrats never face real budget
cuts, or significant staff cuts? Their organizations have grown
far beyond their value to society, and it's time to cut the damage
rather than continue to expand it. Their emissions are harmful to
liberty and prosperity, and lead to the creeping statist tyranny of a
technocracy, regardless of alleged good intentions. Americans
still believe in limited government. |
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Businesses and workers of the world unite. Tell
those in government to start making the sacrifices, instead of mandating
that everybody else sustain their own rising prosperity.
Relentlessly cut the bloated size of government so that the burden on
American business becomes sustainable again. |
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technocrats and socialists who want to play God with other people's
money, and arrogate unto themselves the alleged wisdom and power to even
regulate the climate of this planet and every human activity on it, need
to be stopped. This is tyranny, plain and simple.
It is not enough to simply delay or frustrate their
latest atrocities. We need to relentlessly roll back their power
over us to a level from which they can never again threaten us in this
manner. There is still time to do this - but not much. They
are conspiring at a frantic pace to make their grip on power very hard
to reverse. We need to work just as energetically to set their
ambitions back a century or more. |
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