Shifting Down a Gear--Government Management

Gov. Executive has a post on the Obama administration's management efforts.  I'm reminded of the hill near which I grew up where tractor trailors would downshift (and downshift and downshift) as they hit the grade and lost speed.  Here the issue is accountability, seeing what works and what doesn't.  It's easy to say the previous administration had lots of stuff that didn't work, not so easy to say, we've been here 2 years and some of our stuff didn't work, didn't provide value for money. It calls for a different gear.

I've seen comparisons of the health care industry and the airlines: in flying the culture has grown that pilots will report errors, because there's no stigma attached. In medicine doctors tend not to report errors, because an error can end a career, or at least raise your malpractice insurance premiums.  How do we get an atmosphere in government which allows for and reports errors, particularly with the opposition party salivating at the mouth over the prospect of holding hearings and issuing statements and running on the basis of mismanagement?

A Mysterious EWG Note

From the cotton page:

Crop totals are an estimate. In the data received by EWG for 2009, USDA does not differentiate Direct Payments or Counter-Cyclical Payments by crop as in previous years. EWG allocated the region's Direct Payments by crop for the 2009 calendar year using the proportion of that crop's Direct Payments in 2008. Number of recipients receiving Direct Payments for that crop were not estimated. Due to the way Counter Cyclical Payments are made - EWG was not able to allocate Counter Cyclical Payments to crops. Also included in the crop totals are the crop insurance premiums as reported by the USDA Risk Management Agency for that crop. The crop insurance premium is the amount of money that is calculated by USDA to make the program actuarially sound. Crop insurance premium subsidies are available at the county, state and national level.

 I don't know why the data in 2009 would differ in its coding from that in previous years.

The Importance of Bureaucracy

Via Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution, this interesting discussion of the gains in human development (i.e., education and health) in northern Africa, especially Tunisia.  (A blast from the past--I can remember when Habib Bourguiba was the very model of the modern post-colonial leader.)  A sentence from the post:

The French colonial legacy and its emphasis on building a strong public bureaucracy may also have played a role here.

The Grandfather Clause

Michael Kinsley has some wise words on the "grandfather clause" in budget politics. He suspects the Republicans will use it to ensure that budget cuts don't adversely affect anyone today. 

I have to note the clause is popular across the board.  After Reagan busted PATCO and as union power started to fade, there were lots of deals made with employers which included grandfather clauses.  Typically the current employees kept their benefits and salary levels, while new employees started lower with lesser benefits.  I believe that's how the UAW handled its negotiations with the automakers in the 1980's and 90's.  You can easily find other examples. 

It's a shrewd move: the current employees (or beneficiaries of a program in the case of budget fights) are the ones who have the political power; the future employees or beneficiaries may not even know their status.  When they do, as someone who might have to work longer before being eligible for social security, the issue is down the road and much harder to get excited about. 

But, as Kinsley observes, it's not fair, it's not just.

Egg Prices: the Spread Narrows

From a recent  Farm Policy:

The release added that, “Perhaps indicating the weakness in demand for cage free and organic free range eggs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that retail organic free range eggs are being advertised this week at $2.64 per dozen, 33% less than one year ago ($4.00); cage free eggs are being advertised at $2.50 per dozen, down 14% from one year ago ($2.90); and traditional egg retail prices are up 8% compared to one year ago ($1.02).

The spreads are narrowing.  In hard times, it's hard to expect people to spend more for food.  That's particularly serious because switching to organic grain production, or cage free henhouses, requires a big investment in time for organic (3 years I think) or money for cage free. So you're asking farmers to make an investment, hoping the returns will not only cover their out-of-pocket costs when they get certified as organic or cage free, but will compensate them for the added risk.  

The (Dubious) Economics of Organic Turkeys

The Post had an article yesterday on a founder of Cisco who's using her money to subsidize an organic turkey farm in the hunt country of Virginia.  She sells a 22 pound bird for $230, sold half the 1,000 she raised last year, and lost money. The owner is a former 4-Her who vows to make her operation pay.

My first reaction was to mock her for not understanding economics, and for waste, something upon which the food movement frowns.  But perhaps a fairer assessment is this shows the weak infrastructure supporting organic meat and dairy farms and the high hurdles organic farmers have to vault in order to make a profit and survive.  How can anyone pay $10 a pound for turkey, when a reasonable bird is one dollar a pound?  The only way is to sell to someone like the Inn at Little Washington, which is a famous and highly rated restaurant, and very, very pricey.  It's the sort of place an ordinary bureaucrat might go once a decade for some special occasion if the bureaucrat was very into taste and class. You couldn't hope to sell turkeys for that at Whole Foods, or even a farmer's market.  (Remember, this is a geezer speaking, and I'm out of touch.)

Moving to E-Publication

The winner of the White House's contest for saving money suggested that the Federal Register should be distributed online, not in print. I agree and hope it means we'll see increasing use of online databases and less use of print. (For example, I just got a very big package from Kaiser, containing my materials for the 2011 year.  The charge for printing them is a small part of the bill taxpayers and I pay for health insurance.)

Dairy, Cheese, and the Post

Saturday the Post's editorial board weighed in on Dairy Management and cheese.  A paragraph:

Constitutional is not the same as wise, however. Even if this national cheese-peddling corporation doesn't waste government money, it wastes government authority. Dairy farmers are perfectly capable of buying their own advertising. And shoppers are perfectly capable of deciding whether they want more cheese or not. The federal government's only role should be to disseminate objective nutritional information free from conflicts of interest, real or apparent. Working to increase the demand for certain commodities is the epitome of big, stupid government. We'll be very interested to see whether the new Republican House has the courage to say so.

I believe they're wrong because they're ignoring the "free-rider problem" here. The only way for farmers to coordinate and to be sure everyone pays their share of the bill for advertising is to have the government enforce the rules. 

A Liberal Solves the Budget Deficit

The NY Times has an interactive page which permits you to try to solve the budget deficit by choosing among various options to reduce spending and increase revenues.  Here's my solution.  [Updated: here's another try at the solution.]As a good liberal I'm relying on cuts to military spending, returning taxes to Clinton levels, a carbon tax and some tax reforms, and relatively minor tweaks to Social Security and other programs (though I do chop farm programs--sorry  FSA. :-)

As it comes out I'm roughly 60 percent taxes, 40 percent spending cuts.  If it for real, I'd probably phase in the changes gradually.

[Note: When I tried to recreate my solution, thanks to my commentor for pointing out the failure, I probably made different decisions the second time through.]

Why Less Pickpocketing

Ann Althouse notes a report that the number of pickpockets is declining and those left are old.  I wonder why? Is it because of better police enforcement in NYC, there's a breakdown in the transmission of criminal skills from old to young, perhaps reflecting a general crisis in education,  or the fact people use less cash and more credit cards these days?