2 ms·

This is the problem with the classification “public workers”. While I haven’t been able to find the statistics, my understanding is that most local government

This is the problem with the classification “public workers”. While I haven’t been able to find the statistics, my understanding is that most local government budgets are dominated by school and police/fire department personnel. Indeed, I suspect that at the local level, there are very few bureaucrats to fire (perhaps building inspectors). Red tape may have its costs (as well as benefits), but bureaucrats do not add a lot of tax burden at the local level, which is where most public sector jobs are.

nine_zeros 4y ago
Reducing red tape doesn't mean just reducing the number of personnel. It also means utilizing existing personnel effectively. Often government processes have SO MANY steps (often meaningless) that the total amount of work done by existing people is much lower than what they are capable of. When you go into the bowels of government, you realize how many steps are "Send X document by USPS, an employee evaluates for 6 weeks and sends Yes, No, Invalid, Request for more docs by USPS again." Then you send more documents and they take 8 weeks to evaluate again.