I saw that among the gov’s appointments on his public sort-of schedule was a briefing from S.C. Comptroller General Rich Eckstrom, having to do with the stimulus. The schedule didn’t say when or where said meeting would take place, but maybe it was today, since we now have this report:
Eckstrom: Revenue down 10% in June; stimulus not working
Monday, 13 July 2009
Staff ReportCOLUMBIA — State general fund revenues for June were down 10%, or $71.7 million, compared with revenues for June 2008, evidence that the stimulus funds are not having the desired effect, S.C. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom said.
For the past 12 months, the general fund revenues were down 12.5%, or $828 million, Eckstrom said.
“While everyone wants to see our economy improve, these revenue numbers indicate that it’s just not happening, even months after the president’s trillion-dollar stimulus spending bill. State and national unemployment rates keep climbing higher, so there’s certainly no evidence that jobs are being created or saved through the massive deficit spending that’s occurring in government,” he said.
How do you like that? We finally get the full stimulus coming to us after months of his ally doing all he can to stop it. It was to be spent in the budget that started 12 days ago, on July 1.
But ol’ Rich has already declared it a failure on the 13th. How about that?
You don’t suppose that, like some folks of the other party with regard to Iraq, he wants us to fail — do you?
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Of course the Porkulus Spending is not working.
1. 85% of it was allocated to bail out bankrupt states and cities, mostly run by Democrats. It wasn’t designed to help business create real jobs.
2. Only 14% of the money has been allocated to any projects, all of them government projects.
3. Only 7% of the money has been spent.
Gee whiz! We haven’t even had the opportunity to spend it yet, and its already a failure! Must be some kind of record. Of course that money could have been given to private companies, like AIG, or even Halliburton, and then surely, all our problems would be over. It would be nice to see where its actually going, and once it goes there, to see the results of that spending.
If the money had just been given back to its rightful owners, the taxpayers, it would have been in the economy instantly, and much smarter spending decisions than what we’ll get from politicians and bureaucrats.
Tracking the real spending
http://www.recovery.org/
Official government spin
http://www.recovery.gov
That http://www.recovery.gov website just got $18,000,000 of the stimulus money for a remodeling. The firm doing the work is owned by Congressman Stenny Hoyer’s nephew, according to the Washington Post.
Settle down, Lee… When I see I have 4 comments, it would be sorta nice to click and find 4 points of view — rather than three of them being from a single person. I’ve been known to add a postscript or two myself now and then, but hey, give some other folks a moment to share some thoughts…
I am not posting much “points of view.”
I am posting just facts, so far.
I could have combined them all into one post, if I had guessed in advance that Karen would want to know how to tract the wasteful spending.
Very predictable that Rich Eckstrom would declare the stimulus plan a failure, even though it started only 12 days ago. But you’ll never see him and his buds their own plan, other than to “leave it all up to free enterprise and the free marketpalce.” Funny, I thought that was how we go in this current fix to start with.
Brad,
When and how will you determine whether the stimulus is working or not? What quantitative methods will you employ to measure its success?
Or will you just give Obama credit for doing it and not for the results (ref: PACT testing)?
If you can’t tell us how you will measure the effect of the stimulus, maybe you should leave that job to people who know how to do it (i.e. comptrollers and people who can do financial projections)
Here’s a few simple measurements I would expect we could use:
1. Unemployment rate decreasing by November
2. Inflation rate remaining stable in April 2010
3. Government spending as a percentage of income remaining the same or decreasing by December 2010
4. Dow Jones, S&P, and NASDAQ index percentage change by end of 2009
5. Number of foreclosures in the housing market
Let me guess – your measurements will consist of:
1. Whether Joe Lieberman says its working or not
2. Whether Sam Tennenbaum tells you it will work any decade now
3. Whether the Rotary Club laughs more or less at your speeches
One issue with determining the effectiveness of the Recovery funds is we can only speculate about our circumstances had nothing been done at all. Would our 11.6% current rate be more or less without the stimulus?
there’s certainly no evidence that jobs are being created or saved through the massive deficit spending that’s occurring in government
It also means there’s no evidence of jobs being created or saved through actions taken by our governor or the legislature over the last several years.
Thanks to Lee for the recovery.org website. It looks sound on the surface. I also have confidence in the government’s website.
If we plug numbers into Doug’s formula for determining success, I suspect the Bush administration would register a dismal failure.
In the marketplace of ideas, it appears that the public prefers modern progressive ideals over conservative ideals (at least for now).
While I’m leery of making a crack that could be considered a sexual innuendo, given recent events in SC, I’d say that the Eckstrom comments should be considered a ‘flash’ estimate.
Norm,
So if the numbers for the Obama administration do not improve as compared to Bush, you would then agree that the stimulus is beyond a dismal failure, right?
At some point, Obama has to own the impact of the stimulus on the economy. I’d say early 2010 is a reasonable timeframe to demonstrate economic recovery. The stock market will be a leading indicator. A 10,000 Dow would mean the market shows some optimism.
Any expansion of government medical programs will only suck capital out of the economy and further retard economic recovery.
Yet that is exactly what these ideologues are threatening to do.
Today, the Obama deficit passed the mark of double the worst deficit under Bush, and there is still 3 months of deficit spending left to go.
Doug,
No, I would not agree. I’m saying we won’t ever know the full impact of the stimulus because we don’t know how things would have been without it. Personally, I’ll feel we’ve turned the corner when the unemployment rates begin to decrease, but I think that indicator will be among the last to respond to the stimulus or any other mechanism.
I was commenting that by applying your criteria to the economy in 2001 and comparing it to the economy of 2008 that the Bush administration failed on the economy.
I do agree that Obama (and the Democrats) will be held accountable for the results of the stimulus. Using a free market analogy, the public prefers the ideas of the current administration to the ideas of the previous administration. The market (elections of 2010 and 2012) will determine whether those ideas have staying power.
Norm,
I don’t know if I follow your logic. You’re basically saying that if the economy doesn’t improve despite the largest (by a wide margin) deficit spending plan in the history of the country, it doesn’t really mean anything because it might have been worse without it? Seems like the bar is set pretty low then.
I keep hearing the Obama administration talk about jobs “created or saved” yet there is no evidence of how they measure the “saved” jobs.
The free market analogy doesn’t work either. Americans didn’t vote for the Obama deficit plan. Had it been laid out prior to the election, Obama may not have won. I am highly doubtful he would have received MORE votes if he had presented the plan ahead of the election and it is plausible to think he would have lost had he done so.
If things do not improve, he won’t be able to run on a “it would have been worse if not for me” platform. He’ll be one-and-done like Jimmy Carter.
And God help us if that results in making Sarah Palin viable..
The problem is that the “public” doesn’t understand the ideas of the current administration any more than they understood the ideas under Bush. All they know is that it is in the tank and Obama was successful in placing ALL blame on the Bush administration. Hope and Change were nothing more than campaign slogans.
With the lack of experience and an attitude of a testing lab technician, the decision makers in the administration are clueless. All polls are now running against Obama and Democrats when it comes to the economy.
Bush is indeed responsible for a share of the current economic situation because he never understood the power of the veto pen and didn’t use it often enough until late in his second term.
Without getting bogged down in another discussion about who is to blame, suffice it to say, both sides share equally. A recent article written outlined the main reason we are in the current situation. The passing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and repealing Glass-Steagal without instituting sufficient oversight and relaxation of lending requirements.
Recovery will be when the economy returns to where it was under Bush: 4.4% unemployment, 0.5% inflation, 5.0% GDP growth, and the Dow at 14,000.
2007 and 2008 are not Bush’s economy, because the Democrats controlled the House and Senate and rammed through huge new spending. They had been trying to run deficits 50% larger than the ones Bush signed onto from 2001-2006.
In 2008, the Democrats’ housing scandal at FNMA and FMAC brought down Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, a bunch of subprime lenders like Countrywide, and their insurer, AIG. Clinton had loosened the reserve ratios and Democrats had prevented President Bush, John McCain and Ron Paul from cleaning up FNMA and FMAC. When they suddenly tightened the reserve requirements by 2/3, they made banks insolvent on paper, and some actually insolvent. Bank of America had $24 billion in cash, but was overnight put on the ragged edge of liquidity.
This recession belongs to Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John Spratt.
——–
Recession is when others lose their job.
Depression is when you lose your job.
Recovery is when Obama loses his job.
Doug,
I’m not saying it doesn’t mean anything. I’m saying we’ll never really know how much it has helped (or didn’t help). In any case, the public will hold him and others responsible for whatever the economy is like at election time.
I expect to see some results–mainly in unemployment rates. You suggested we should see a decrease in unemployment by November. I don’t know if that’s reasonable or not. I’m watching the Recovery website to see how quickly the money is spent. Until more of it gets into the economy, I don’t expect much improvement.
This is the largest deficit spending plan in our history by dollar amount. By percentage of GDP, it doesn’t even come close. This year’s deficit is something around 8.5% of GDP. The war years of 1942-1945 were all higher–over 30% in 1943.
I also don’t know how you measure a “saved” job.
Americans did not vote for the Obama deficit plan, that’s true. But they voted in large numbers against the product the Republicans were offering.
If things don’t improve, he will be a “one and done” like both Carter and the elder Bush, both of whom were done in by poor economies.
Sarah Palin will never be viable to more than about 20% of the voters, if that many. Most of us have more sense than that, even if we do disagree on how to fix the economy.
Recession is when others lose their job.
Depression is when you lose your job.
Recovery is when Obama loses his job.
That’s actually kind of funny, Lee. 😉
Saying that the stimulus was justified because “we’ll never really know how much it has helped (or didn’t help)” is, I think, a pretty poor defense. Just because something needed to be done doesn’t mean that just any action was the right action. And to say that any action, the results of which cannot be measured, was the right one has no rational foundation.
One of the (many) problems that I see with the stimulus is exactly this inability to measure, in any real sense, its effectiveness. Even the simplest problem-solving models all use some method to assess the effectiveness of the solutions being applied and modify them achieve improved results.
Of course, the pols in DC all know that, which leads me to the conclusion that actual effectiveness was not the desired goal. (Perhaps it was hoped for, but only as serendipitous result.) I believe, the purpose was simply to pander to the masses, to give the appearance of doing something effective and to deflect any close analysis by the un-washed of exactly why the problems occurred in the first place.
Also, comparisons of current deficit spending with WWII are misleading at best and “lies, damn lies, and statistics” at worst. Although the facts of the numbers are true, what is left out is that the vast majority of money spent by the federal government during WWII was for the actual product of private business.
American workers were producing real goods (tanks, trucks, airplanes, ships, etc), and taking home real paychecks which were, mostly, being saved because of a lack of consumer spending. The bottom line was that the deficit spending during the war years was going into the economy. The war did the consuming, and the American worker did the producing and was paid by the government to do so. A tremendous amount of private latent wealth was created and which was available immediately after the war ended.
The present deficit spending is mostly going into the government itself. Almost none of it is actually finding its way into the economy except as wages to government workers who were already drawing paychecks. (Maybe these are the “saved” jobs?)
The current stimulus is nothing more than a self-licking ice cream cone.
It took several decades for our economy to become as dysfunctional as it is now. The financial collapse and the recession are the product of a long period in which government oversight was minimized and even ridiculed. People of both parties contributed to this, but the process of deregulation was (and continues to be) an article of religious faith for many Republicans.
The problems that we are facing are too deeply embedded to be fixed in a hurry by anyone. The most that we can hope for is to keep the social costs of this situation lower than they might be otherwise while the overall economy, both private and public, recovers. Innocent people who want to work, and want to pay their bills, are the victims of this situation. Stimulus funding has only begun to be spent, but when it preserves government jobs, those are no less real than private sector jobs, and no less likely to spread money throughout the economy as the job holders pay for food, clothing, houses, and health care. Government “products” are also very real. My father designed bridges for the state of South Carolina. In what way was this not a real job? In what way did the result not employ many people, and then contribute to the overall economy? Would the public have been better served if the design had been contracted out, so that a corporation could have added its profits and high salaries for its executives to the cost? Personally, I don’t think so.
Santee,
I think several of us are of the opinion that if a stimulus was necessary, it could have been achieved more rapidly by making changes to the tax code that would influence private business to invest in jobs.
The problem with government jobs is that once created, they rarely go away and become an ever increasing burden on the rest of the taxpayers. How many government jobs have actually gone away during the recession? Why should the government be immune to the realities of the economy? The government jobs also typically come with obligations for healthcare and retirement that exceed private industry.
There will come a tipping point when the size of government will exceed the capacity of the private sector’s ability to pay for it. That is why any of us push for limits on the size.
There are a few jobs in government which do add value, such as highway design, but those are rare, and private engineers and constuction firms do most of the work and add 95% of the value.
Most of government is overhead, as it should be.
That is why it must be kept as small as possible – it is a drag on the economy.
95% of government employees are a drain on the economy.
At this point, far fewer than half of their jobs are justified, because they work in programs that should not even exist, mostly keeping other people in a state of poverty, illiteracy, and despair.
Our economic problems, long term and the immediate deep recession, are all due to government meddling and corruption. This could easily be unwound by an aggressive administration and Congress which was determined to restore free enterprise and individual liberty.
The current policies of confiscation of wealth, tax increases, restrictions on energy production, and massive confusion by threats of new programs, is turning the Pelosi Recession into the Obama Depression.
Certainly government jobs are “real” jobs. However, with so few exceptions as to be hardly worth mentioning, government jobs produce nothing nor do government jobs increase the productive capacity of the country and consequently increase the need for labor (i.e create new jobs). Expanding government programs do not increase productivity either. They simply increase the numbers of workers drawing a government paycheck.
Government jobs, at their very best, merely reallocate wealth and possibly increase consumption. This is not to say that the services provided by many government workers are not useful or in some cases, essential, just that they contribute little to nothing in overall economic growth, the domestic product, or productive capacity.
In the end, private enterprise must create the wealth that is reallocated in the form of taxes converted to wages paid to government workers. That is, unless the government just prints more money to give to its own workers.
And just for the record, I am a retired “government worker” (26+ years in the US Army).
It is not derogatory to note that government jobs don’t create wealth – it is just a fact.
A government worker, at best, is like a security guard or accountant at a factory – necessary to prevent theft and keep things honest, but not having to be paid for by production workers, engineers, and sales force.
Every dollar spent by government is a dollar taken out of the private economy, most of taxes coming from people who were smart enough to create wealth, create jobs, and hire others. Then these dollars are spent mostly by people who could not only never run a business, but not even be hired by a business.
Typo correction:
A government worker, at best, is like a security guard or accountant at a factory – necessary to prevent theft and keep things honest, but having to be paid for by production workers, engineers, and sales force.
Nice try, but you’re deliberately confusing the “stimulus” money in the ARRA with the “stabilization” money.
The stimulus has been coming for a while, and it’s been months since the time obama said unemployment would begin to ebb.
Remember that we just HAD to pass the stimulus or unemployment would exceed eight percent. Remember that unemployment would go down if we passed it, but up if we did not.
Obama hasn’t a clue about understanding, much less managing the economy.
He has never run any business of any size, nor any government project
So whatever he says is just for effect at the moment, and will conflict with what he said a month ago, and what he will say next month.
His agenda is socialism, not fixing the economic recession, but using it to radically alter the distribution of power and wealth from business people to politicians and those dependent on handouts.
ARRA = “stimulus” money + “stabilization” money + tax cuts/credits.
The “stimulus” was to create jobs.
The “stabilization” money was to prevent state budget cuts.
The money that Sanford fought was “stabilization,” not “stimulus.”
The stimulus has been coming down for quite some time. Obama strongly asserted that the ARRA would begin creating jobs by now, that the unemployment would be going down by now.
Santee, I don’t disagree with you on your observation that the current situation is a product of a long term process with equal contributions from both sides of the aisle. Yes, many Republicans are advocates of deregulation but for all those years when there were not enough votes to enact deregulations, Democrats had no vested interest in supporting any initiative presented.
However, when it became obvious that supporting Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act would give them the avenue they had been seeking to open up home ownership opportunities with fewer restrictions and requirements as a part of an ongoing social engineering program, Democrats were just as supportive as Republicans, some even more so. Clinton worked hand in hand with Gramm to achieve the final passage with overwhelming support. The votes in both houses tell the tale. “Quid Pro Quo” for the political parties, “Caveat Emptor” for the taxpayers.
As a matter of record, if you look at some serving in the Obama administration today, their fingerprints are all over the antics of Wall Street during the period from 1999 until the collapse in 2008. Wall Street votes with its wallet but most who work on Wall Street are Democrat by political affiliation. The point being, there are no clean hands associated with this fiasco.
Your father designed bridges for the state of SC but private contractors built most if not all of them for the state. Historically, states are responsible for their transportation grid by way of planning and design. What they don’t do as a practice is the physical construction of the grid except for performing minor patching and maintenance. This is a good example of government and private business working together.
doug_ross, point well stated.
“…..There will come a tipping point when the size of government will exceed the capacity of the private sector’s ability to pay for it. That is why any of us push for limits on size…..”
For this very reason, we are witnessing an about face in Europe because they cannot continue to support the massive programs where spending exceeds revenues. Reading comments and articles in several European publications and news outlets, it took a long time for them to realize socialism was not the answer and as we are so often chastised about our American provincialism, maybe our elite leadership looking to their model will pay attention to the warnings coming from Europe.
SGMret just about said it all with this one.
“…….In the end, private enterprise must create the wealth that is reallocated in the form of taxes converted to wages paid to government workers…..”
Therein lies the problem with the bulk of the stimulus package. The creation of additional jobs seems to be concentrated more on the government side, not private industry. While many advocate for creation of new jobs at the government level to stimulate the economy, exactly where does the wellspring for funding come from to pay salaries? Tax revenues of course.
The economy is shrinking, not expanding. Shrinkage equals less tax revenue. Increasing taxes at any level adds to shrinkage. Expanding government programs and adding new regulatory requirements across the board only contributes to the shrinkage. Until private industry is the recipient of the bulk of the stimulus funds without stifling government interference, recovery will be in millimeters, not miles. Private industry pays the tax revenues that allow government employees to have a job even though government employees pay the same taxes but with better benefits, i.e., health care, vacations, retirement, etc.
The numbers of those who have been targeted to pay for Obama’s healthcare package have already started to shrink dramatically so the obvious question is, where will the required funding come from? As a matter of common sense, if the revenue sources are reduced but the revenue requirements are not, someone is still going to pay. Soon, the $200,000 level will drop to something lower and when the realization the new level won’t produce the desired revenue, back to the drawing board and a lower level established, ad infinitum, until everyone who holds a job in the private sector, no matter how much or little they earn, is considered a revenue source.
This will be true not only for healthcare but all of the programs introduced by Obama. Perhaps the most insidious of all is the green initiative or the Cap and Trade bill, aka bait and switch shell game. The potential impact on the economy is devastating and will most affect those who can least afford it. But, remember, those who can least afford it, the numbers are growing each day, are the ones eligible for the accompanying government assistance programs and government assistance equals more tax revenue requirements. It becomes a perpetual motion tax wheel with no relief in sight.
Where are the adults?
I’m aware that many people believe that tax cuts would be more effective than stimulus funds as they now exist. However, we’ve tried that on a very large scale at the national level, and sadly the results are not impressive in terms of the overall health of the economy and society. I’m sure some of those cuts could have been better directed, but on the whole the strategy has given decidedly unimpressive results.
As to the permanence of government jobs — there has been a great deal of government restructuring and job loss in recent years. It is a harsh reality for many people, and has resulted in things like inadequate ability to deal with fires in the Myrtle Beach area and absurd caseloads for social workers trying to help at-risk children.
It is certainly true that it is difficult to restructure large organizations for greater efficiency, but that is true whether the organization is government or private. Our nation’s private corporations recently have given some remarkable examples of entrenched and short-sighted thinking, failure to recognize changing conditions, and unwillingness to assess and manage risk.
As to the “95% value added” by private companies after something like a SCDOT bridge design — we used to go for Sunday drives to look at my father’s bridges under construction. More than once we found that our family evening was ruined when he found that the construction company was “adding value” by using substandard steel and cutting corners. Would I rather have a public employee without a financial interest in the outcome decide how to build a bridge that I drive across? Yes. Would I rather have a National Park Service law enforcement professional protect me at Yellowstone, or a contract employee hired at the lowest possible wage? I’d go with the NPS professional. Do I want a private corporation deciding how much toxic waste they can dump in my water? I don’t think so. We need a lot of government professionals, in many many areas. We also need private business. The notion that we can have a modern nation and state without strong organizations in both areas is very short-sighted.
It’s a specious position to expect a solution within 6 months of Obama taking office given that this mess started under the W and GOP controlled government.
Doug, employment is a trailing indicator. The US has been hemorrhaging jobs for the past 16 months with a 50% increase in unemployment in 2008 alone and doubled since Feb 2008.
The notion that government jobs are a bad thing is oversimplification worthy of Reagan – especially considering how he pumped huge bucks to create all those military (government) jobs. Obama doesn’t directly affect private jobs but can boost government jobs. Hence, it makes sense that job creation is first apparent in the public sector. The New Deal created a similar situation.
Apparently, the conservatives on this blog believe Obama should have simply offered MORE tax cuts like W did twice and offered a rebate as W did last year – great plan that obviously served our country well.
President Bush’s tax cuts only partially rolled back the Clinton tax increases on the middle class, with a small across-the-board tax cut for everyone.
Yet it was very effective, because Clinton’s continual small tax increases in his second term had exceeded the saturation point of what the private sector could sustain. Bush’s partial rollback of those taxes fueled a boom that generated enough surplus tax revenue through GDP growth to pay for all of the war Afghanistan and Iraq.
The deficits under Bush were entirely due to increased spending on social welfare programs and foreign aid to Africa.
This current recession is the direct result of government intervention:
1. Restrictions on energy production led to huge price increases in oil, which other fuels followed, beginning the recession with slumping automobile sales.
2. Racial preference housing programs pushed by Democrats fell apart, and were hidden by fraudulent reports from FNMA and FMAC, until they suddenly admitted to being out of money to guarantee loans produced by Lehman Brothers.
The collapse of Lehman was followed by Countrywide and other subprime lenders tied to FMAC and FNMA. The Democrats involved need to be prosecuted, but will skate free, because they financed Obama’s initial campaign and advise him now.
3. Seizing GM and Chryler to prop up bloated union pensions and payrolls will do nothing but postpone complete bankruptcy. It frightened business to see fascism in action. Trillions of dollars in private capital have been removed from the stock markets and banks.
TARP and all the bailout programs are “trickle down socialism”, propping up investment banking firms, in the hopes they will not foreclose on businesses and homeowners. This is major mistake, if you really want to stop the collapse.
Part II was propping up poorly-managed states and cities.
Cutting taxes would have left money in the economy, so more people would have kept their jobs. When 4.5 million homes go into foreclosure in late 2009, hundreds of banks will collapse, and more money will be printed to prop up a bankrupt FDIC.
Santee, you make the mistake of false choices. It is proper to hire a motivated Park Service employee, but you have to abolish the useless jobs at the FCC, ICC, FAA, EPA, EEOC, etc.
Government employees who are doing legitimate work, and doing a good job, have to do more – they have to take action to purge the dead wood employees and unConstitutional programs and agencies.
If they don’t they are no better than the lazy bums they protect, and they will all soon go down together when the bloated payrolls and pensions cannot be paid any longer.
Santee, when your father discovered the deficiencies in the work when substandard steel was used and “cutting corners” practiced, did he do his due diligence and report his findings? I would like to think so and that something was done about it immediately. The use of substandard steel in a construction project is a criminal act and the guilty party or parties should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. It is no small matter when you consider the fact that the public uses our bridges every day and lives depend upon then being right.
Were the jobs bid with a clause allowing voluntary value added “means and methods” or “product specification changes” to save money? Given the fact that bridge projects require mill certificates and documentation of all steel products (rebar and mill steel) supplied to the project must be on record with the contractor, design engineer, and the SCDOT so it can be verified if necessary. Proving substandard material substitution would be an easy task to perform.
Your comments are very disturbing especially if the bridge contractor was allowed to continue construction of a project without being forced to make all corrections or even be removed from the job when violations were visibly evident to the bridge designer. If the contractor was allowed to continue construction, SCDOT most likely would have assigned a full time inspector to be on site at all times during the remaining construction schedule.
Don’t take my comments the wrong way or that they are critical of your father. I understand the bureaucracy involved with government agencies and the hurdles encountered when trying to do the right thing.
In response to Lee — Regulation of activities that have a public impact is a very important and legitimate function of government. Private business is very good at some things, but unfortunately there are a lot of folks out there who do great damage — from toxic waste dumping to toxic mortgage dumping — without government supervision. By the time the market regulates itself with respect to these kinds of activities, it is too late to avoid serious damage to innocent people and to society as a whole. The financial industry just proved this point for us.
In response to Bart — Yes, he did report the problems at the time. He told us that the problems were corrected. I don’t know what measures were taken to penalize and oversee the contractors beyond forcing them to redo the work. I was very young, and at the time not interested in that sort of thing. Whatever was done in those specific cases (which are ancient history at this point, I’m no spring chicken), your comments and mine point toward the same conclusion. We need those private construction companies, and the many honest people who run and staff most of them, but we also need government employees who are independent of them to insure that the public is safe and served well when someone is either not honest or not competent.
Santee, since you changed the subject from proper police functions of government in protecting public property, to regulations, let me state that the government also has only a small legitimate role in regulation of trade.
The only legitimate role of government is to police against fraud and other criminal activity. The private sector does a much harsher job of punishing those who sell inferior, much less dangerous products. Insurance companies will refuse to write policies to companies who misbehave, putting them out of business.
Much of the toxic waste dumping was done by government. I am still doing jobs where we clean up and remediate contaminated sites from the FDR era. Love Canal was one of those, where Hooker Chemical was forced to dump waste in order to save money on munitions contracts.
Just as Bart points out specifics about bridge materials being inspected and certified to engineering association standards, my personal experience working with DuPont, Union Carbide and other chemical companies found them to be much more attentive to safety and environmental protection than most common people are.
A lot of things that were problems have been totally cleaned up a decade ago. Now, we have huge bureaucracies and lobbying groups with no justification for their existence, desperately fear mongering up phony panics in order to keep the money coming in.
Shutting down manufacturing here over ridiculous standards only moves it to backward countries which have no standards. You can go see it in China, Africa and India.
Socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe ran the most polluting industries of the 20th century.