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It's easy to denigrate obvious waste like empty buildings. But context matters: even waving a wand and disposing of all of these buildings would improve the fed

by runako 13y ago

It's easy to denigrate obvious waste like empty buildings. But context matters: even waving a wand and disposing of all of these buildings would improve the federal budget by ~0.0119%. Put another way, we'd get roughly the same impact by reducing our order of Littoral Combat Ships by 1 boat. If you profile your code, you don't go after the line item that's < .1% until everything else is fixed; I'd argue that our representatives have more substantive budget fixes they can target.

exelius 13y ago
Congressional budgets are really complex and can't be evaluated like code. That $3 billion subsidy for farmers in Nebraska? The people of Nebraska really, really want that. So much so that if their senators can't push it through, they'll likely vote them out of office. So those senators trade every favor they have to get it through, which usually means voting for keeping a military base open in Colorado, funding road work and pipelines in Texas, building a new airport in Oklahoma, etc. That's how we get such a bloated federal budget. It's why Congress wants to build a whole bunch of tanks for the Army that they have said they don't need. It's really more of a tragedy of the commons situation than inefficiency. IMO the question shouldn't be "how can we lower our tax burden", it should be "how do we get more value out of our tax dollars." That may mean increasing the tax burden. There's a sweet spot between socialism and capitalism, and IMO we're swinging a bit far towards capitalism right now. I'm not saying we should go full-on welfare state, but our infrastructure is crumbling and people are losing faith in the American dream, yet companies are more profitable than ever. It's also important to recognize that government accounting is substantially different from normal corporate accounting. Governments can literally print money if they need to do so to cover debts (and thus shift the burden of debt repayment onto all holders of their currency). The flip side of that is that governments have such a massive scale, they tend to absorb a lot of economy-scale losses (such as building vacancies) that businesses wouldn't have to, so their balance sheets look awful.
jeffdavis 13y ago
That's the problem with central planning. When you look from the top down, every gain seems tiny. But small businesses would know if a chair was underutilized, and it would be sold in 10 minutes; let alone a whole building. Taken over the whole economy, these efficiencies are a big deal, and arguably account for the success of market economy over centrally-planned economies.
- runako 13y ago
  >> small businesses would know if a chair was underutilized, and it would be sold in 10 minutes Right-O, no waste in small businesses. The smaller the business, the more efficient. Hence ever-smaller businesses are gaining a growing share of the economy. (In fact, the opposite is true.)
  - jeffdavis 13y ago
    "Right-O, no waste in small businesses. The smaller the business, the more efficient." I didn't say that; no need for the sarcasm. The answer is somewhat complicated. Small businesses have an advantage because the information flow between directly involved parties and decision makers is very short; possibly the same person. They can notice an inefficiency and correct it immediately, rather than needing some kind of permission or authorization (which is inherently a slow way for information to travel because it involves other people). They can also seize opportunities quickly for the same reason (which may involve changing prices or making a non-traditional deal). Large businesses can get economies of scale, although I think these are dramatically over-emphasized. Producing one marginal unit may be cheaper up to a point, but eventually the next marginal unit becomes more costly than the last (because there becomes so much demand for the inputs that it increases the price). That's the nature of the supply curve. Often, businesses that deal in huge volumes and have great economies of scale are medium-sized or even small. Of course, there are some industries where economies of scale are crucial and only large businesses or governments can really operate efficiently. Large businesses have greater political influence and more ability to work in a regulated/political/government environment. This is perhaps their greatest advantage. I'd be interested to see the numbers you have about the share of the economy powered by small/medium businesses. Is it a long, consistent decline, or more of a local minimum?
    - runako 13y ago
      >> I didn't say that; no need for the sarcasm. Fair enough. To be fair, you did overstate the point a bit; I'm sure we will all walk into a small business today that could do with one less chair. :-) >> I'd be interested to see the numbers you have about the share of the economy powered by small/medium businesses. Is it a long, consistent decline, or more of a local minimum? There's a lot of research out there on this. I don't have the time to dig up much more than this: http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs390tot_0.pdf http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs390tot_0.pdf Note that in 12 years, small businesses lost ~6% of their GDP contribution to larger businesses (table 5). In 2010, small business share of the economy fell below 50% for the first time ever (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-16/small-businesss-shrinking-gdp-contribution http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-16/small-busine...).
cobrausn 13y ago
So, you would rather cut a feature from your application than multiple lines of code that simply allocates memory, waits a long time, and then frees it for no reason? In other words, at least the boat is actually potentially useful. The empty building is completely wasteful.
- Loughla 13y ago
  Um. A building is also potentially useful?
  - cobrausn 13y ago
    An empty building, used by nobody but costing the government money, is not useful to anyone except the people receiving the money. So I guess in that respect, if the money is going into the local economy, it's a really poor form of stimulus.
    - Loughla 13y ago
      A ship designed for war, not being used for war, but costing the government money, is not useful to anyone except the people receiving the money. So, I guess in that respect, if the money is going into something other than the local economy, it's really a poor form of stimulus. So, it's a values difference, then.
      - cobrausn 13y ago
        Most of the reason money is spent on defense is deterrent. Some people gain more value out of that than others. Hopefully it never gets used, although if you need it eventually, it's much harder to build a warship and train a crew to use it than it is to find an empty building somewhere (or just build it). Yeah, difference of values is fairly spot on. I don't know anybody who values an empty building, though. Or didn't, until now?
        Loughla 13y ago

by runako 13y ago

exelius 13y ago

Congressional budgets are really complex and can't be evaluated like code. That $3 billion subsidy for farmers in Nebraska? The people of Nebraska really, really want that. So much so that if their senators can't push it through, they'll likely vote them out of office. So those senators trade every favor they have to get it through, which usually means voting for keeping a military base open in Colorado, funding road work and pipelines in Texas, building a new airport in Oklahoma, etc. That's how we get such a bloated federal budget. It's why Congress wants to build a whole bunch of tanks for the Army that they have said they don't need. It's really more of a tragedy of the commons situation than inefficiency. IMO the question shouldn't be "how can we lower our tax burden", it should be "how do we get more value out of our tax dollars." That may mean increasing the tax burden. There's a sweet spot between socialism and capitalism, and IMO we're swinging a bit far towards capitalism right now. I'm not saying we should go full-on welfare state, but our infrastructure is crumbling and people are losing faith in the American dream, yet companies are more profitable than ever. It's also important to recognize that government accounting is substantially different from normal corporate accounting. Governments can literally print money if they need to do so to cover debts (and thus shift the burden of debt repayment onto all holders of their currency). The flip side of that is that governments have such a massive scale, they tend to absorb a lot of economy-scale losses (such as building vacancies) that businesses wouldn't have to, so their balance sheets look awful.

jeffdavis 13y ago

That's the problem with central planning. When you look from the top down, every gain seems tiny. But small businesses would know if a chair was underutilized, and it would be sold in 10 minutes; let alone a whole building. Taken over the whole economy, these efficiencies are a big deal, and arguably account for the success of market economy over centrally-planned economies.

runako 13y ago
>> small businesses would know if a chair was underutilized, and it would be sold in 10 minutes Right-O, no waste in small businesses. The smaller the business, the more efficient. Hence ever-smaller businesses are gaining a growing share of the economy. (In fact, the opposite is true.)
- jeffdavis 13y ago
  "Right-O, no waste in small businesses. The smaller the business, the more efficient." I didn't say that; no need for the sarcasm. The answer is somewhat complicated. Small businesses have an advantage because the information flow between directly involved parties and decision makers is very short; possibly the same person. They can notice an inefficiency and correct it immediately, rather than needing some kind of permission or authorization (which is inherently a slow way for information to travel because it involves other people). They can also seize opportunities quickly for the same reason (which may involve changing prices or making a non-traditional deal). Large businesses can get economies of scale, although I think these are dramatically over-emphasized. Producing one marginal unit may be cheaper up to a point, but eventually the next marginal unit becomes more costly than the last (because there becomes so much demand for the inputs that it increases the price). That's the nature of the supply curve. Often, businesses that deal in huge volumes and have great economies of scale are medium-sized or even small. Of course, there are some industries where economies of scale are crucial and only large businesses or governments can really operate efficiently. Large businesses have greater political influence and more ability to work in a regulated/political/government environment. This is perhaps their greatest advantage. I'd be interested to see the numbers you have about the share of the economy powered by small/medium businesses. Is it a long, consistent decline, or more of a local minimum?
  - runako 13y ago
    >> I didn't say that; no need for the sarcasm. Fair enough. To be fair, you did overstate the point a bit; I'm sure we will all walk into a small business today that could do with one less chair. :-) >> I'd be interested to see the numbers you have about the share of the economy powered by small/medium businesses. Is it a long, consistent decline, or more of a local minimum? There's a lot of research out there on this. I don't have the time to dig up much more than this: http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs390tot_0.pdf http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs390tot_0.pdf Note that in 12 years, small businesses lost ~6% of their GDP contribution to larger businesses (table 5). In 2010, small business share of the economy fell below 50% for the first time ever (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-16/small-businesss-shrinking-gdp-contribution http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-16/small-busine...).

cobrausn 13y ago

So, you would rather cut a feature from your application than multiple lines of code that simply allocates memory, waits a long time, and then frees it for no reason? In other words, at least the boat is actually potentially useful. The empty building is completely wasteful.

Loughla 13y ago
Um. A building is also potentially useful?
- cobrausn 13y ago
  An empty building, used by nobody but costing the government money, is not useful to anyone except the people receiving the money. So I guess in that respect, if the money is going into the local economy, it's a really poor form of stimulus.
  - Loughla 13y ago
    A ship designed for war, not being used for war, but costing the government money, is not useful to anyone except the people receiving the money. So, I guess in that respect, if the money is going into something other than the local economy, it's really a poor form of stimulus. So, it's a values difference, then.
    - cobrausn 13y ago
      Most of the reason money is spent on defense is deterrent. Some people gain more value out of that than others. Hopefully it never gets used, although if you need it eventually, it's much harder to build a warship and train a crew to use it than it is to find an empty building somewhere (or just build it). Yeah, difference of values is fairly spot on. I don't know anybody who values an empty building, though. Or didn't, until now?
      - Loughla 13y ago