The Enlightenment

The government has become a sort of punching bag. In the minds of most Americans, the government is not just a useless organ, but is easily blamed as the source of many of their problems.

It hasn’t helped that four decades of bipartisan attacks have destroyed the image of the government. Democrat Bill Clinton wanted to make government “leaner and meaner”, smaller and more efficient. Republican Ronald Reagan declared that “government isn’t the solution to the problem, it is the problem.”

So today, when most Americans think of the government, they think of a cold, inefficient, overly bureaucratic, corrupt, and lazy apparatus that never quite gets it right but always keeps asking for more of your tax dollars.

There’s just one issue with that assessment: it’s totally wrong.

Let me get one thing clear: I’m not defending everything the government is doing. Some government regulations are just plain stupid. I don’t want the government to ban abortions or the sale of precious gems.

Likewise, the government messes up a lot, and there is no shortage of poor government agencies and government corruption. Anyone trying to get public housing or welfare can attest to that. I’m not here to defend that either.

But the point I want to make is that by and large, the government fulfills a tremendous amount of very useful functions, and contrary to popular opinion, it tends to do them well.

The Government: It does it all!

Americans forget that our government has a truly awesome range of responsibilities. Almost 3 million people are employed by federal, state, and local agencies, or almost 1 out of 50 workers in the entire US.

The government oversees an innumerable number of things. Road safety, so that bridges don’t collapse? The government does it. Airplane traffic, so that planes don’t collide in mid-air? The government does it. Housing codes, so that homes are livable? You guessed it.

I could go on, and on, and on, but this blog would be a tome. Suffice it to say, the government oversees everything that you touch, and most of the time attempts to make it safer and easier for you to enjoy those things. In this way, the government provides a very serious and tangible benefit to people’s lives that most Americans aren’t aware of.

In a way, the fact that most Americans are unaware of the benefits that government provides to their everyday lives is a sign of the government’s success. People are now taking for granted the comparatively very high standard of living provided for most Americans.

The truth is, if we go back even one hundred and twenty years in this country, it was like a jungle. Spoiled and contaminated food was sold, sewage lined the streets, drinking water was filled with lead and chemicals, and children worked in factories.

Over the past century, that has all almost vanished. But it wasn’t a magical force that got rid of it: it was the government passing laws and enforcing those laws and establishing agencies that gave us safe food, sanitation, clean water, and bans on child labor, to name a few good things.

Government Efficiency: The other side

You’ve already heard the government is inefficient. You’ve likely seen it with your own eyes whenever you’ve visited the DMV, or Department of Motor Vehicles, to renew your driver’s license.

Rude staff. Long lines. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. The experience is miserable! I agree. I want to present another angle of the DMV, though.

The California DMV, which is responsible for roughly 27 million licensed drivers, has a staff of just 8,900 people. That’s over 3,000 licenses per DMV staff member!

The California DMV has to register all cars, issue license plates, initiate court proceedings, license driving schools, issue licenses, administer road tests, and file all accompanying paperwork.

And they…get it done. It may be slow, and DMV staff may be rude, but it works. Vehicles in California (and every state for that matter) are registered. People get their licenses. When you go to your road test, there’s someone there.

That’s not bad at all for an agency with just 8,900 employees servicing 27 million licensed drivers. Rather than using the DMV as an example of “bad government” (when the DMV does its job), wouldn’t it be more productive to call for more DMV employees to decrease the caseload?

No, the “market” isn’t better

The derision towards government services often comes from the private sector. The business class wishes to eliminate government services, and then run the same service the government was running but at a profit.

In order to convince the public to go along with their money-making scheme, they employ the rhetoric of “efficiency”. They point to the aforementioned DMV, or failing public schools, and say that those services would be much more efficient and have better outcomes if they were private.

The reason for-profit vultures have to use rhetoric to attack government services is because they don’t have evidence to back them up.

Take Social Security. This government service, beloved by Americans across the country, provides over 70 million retirees and disabled workers with monthly pensions with a staff of just 60,000.

The program has never missed a payment. It’s currently sitting on reserves (yes, reserves) of $2.8 trillion. And it’s administration costs are 0.5% of total revenue. Half a cent out of every dollar in taxes goes on administration—the rest is for benefits.

Compare that to private pension plans like 401ks, where the market determines your outcome and a single recession can wipe out years of savings.

Or compare Medicare, the American government health program, with your average private healthcare plan. Medicare pays 2% in administrative costs; most private healthcare plans pay closer to 17%. Likewise, private healthcare companies charge on average 2.5 times what Medicare charges.

Government services: for all

To be fair, private services sometimes do outperform government provisions. But there’s a big reason for that: private companies can discriminate.

A lot of people point to failing public schools as an example of why we need to privatize schools. But private schools have everything going for them. They can decide what students go to their schools and they can charge a large amount of tuition.

Public schools don’t have that privilege. They must accept every student, no matter their skill level, background, or readiness. They must accept students with disabilities and provide reasonable accommodations. They have to work with homeless and hungry students as well as housed and well-fed students.

So when private schools take all the well-adjusted, stable, housed, and wealthy students, and leave all the other students to go to public school, why are we surprised that public schools struggle?

That’s another thing Americans don’t appreciate—the open and democratic nature of many of our government services. You can vote for school board members, attend a water district meeting, or volunteer for the fire department. No matter whether you are rich or poor, government institutions are supposed to obligate you.

Private institutions, on the other hand, shut out the public. The boards of private municipal companies or charter schools are appointed—not voted into office—by donors. Poor citizens aren’t allowed access, and the public has no say over the governing of these bodies.

The big irony

That’s the big takeaway from this post: government is demonized, so that it can be privatized, to make certain people money. But the funny thing is that no one loves the government more than private companies.

Private companies could not exist without the government. The government paves the roads on which companies do business, guards cargo ships with its navy, and enforces its border and tariffs with border patrol. Most importantly, the government enforces contracts, so that commerce flows freely.

In essence, without government services, private companies could not exist.

So in fact, private companies want the government to stick around—when it’s useful to them. They want the government to provide police to prevent the theft of their property, but want to be able to dump waste into rivers to cut costs.

Which is why we’ve seen this rhetoric about the government being so bad proliferating for 40 years now. Just as the American people began to get a taste of the good life with President Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare, Medicaid, and other social provisions, corporate forces swooped in to kill any momentum.

Unfortunately, they’ve succeeded. Most Americans regard the government as inept and evil. But as economic inequality has soared in the last few decades, and as more and more of our once-public institutions become commodities, people are quickly waking up.

Most of the time, our government services do good, fairly quickly. They’re not perfect, but they get the job done. They’re available to everyone, they don’t work for profit, and they’re scrutinized by the voter.

That’s a good bargain. Sadly, sometimes we only realize something is good once we’ve lost it.