Too Big to Fail?

Back when we had the beginning of our current financial crisis, there were people talking about how some businesses were "too big to fail." We found out how untrue that was. In fact, it seemed that their size predetermined failure: they were like juggernauts, like the Titanic - so large they weren't nimble enough to change quickly to market events.  So the government stepped in and rescued them.

But now, we have a government that is so large that it, like the "too big to fail" financial institutions, cannot support itself.  Nor can it be responsive to just about anything with the kind of quickness that would make a response relevant.

It's obvious that some things will crush themselves under their own weight.  We saw it in the financial sector, the housing sector, and now the government sector. We must slim down the government before it collapses, because these days, the rescuers are Chinese.

How do we do it? Start by eliminating and consolidating departments.  Businesses know well that reorganizations are in order every few years to ensure efficiency.  The problem with government is that people rise to positions of authority who don't have a clue about any of this; They're happy to let staff sit around because they can brag about the size of their "empire." They ought to brag about its efficiency. But complacency rules the day in government, because pay and professional survival are tied more to work politics than to performance.

Education, for example, is known to be best handled at a state level.  So why do we even have a Federal Department of Education? The Department of Energy was created as a response to the oil crisis of the early 1970s.  They now deal with atomic energy.  But we haven't had a new nuclear energy plant built in this country in nearly as long - over a generation.  So what's their excuse for being?  And that's just to start.  It's common knowledge that current White House staff levels are in the hundreds of employees.  But during the most crucial crisis of the last few  generations - World War Two - how many staff do you think FDR had? About 45.

We've got to cut back government and start living up to our country's promise - namely, opportunity.  Let the free market do the things at which the government now fails over and over and over. But they're complacent. Don't rock the boat. Raise taxes.

At some point, everyone has to pull their heads out of wherever it is, stand up and do the things that are good for the future of the country.  America is just too special to be allowed to run down, or worse, be taken over by a foreign economic power because of our lust to spend money for nothing.

But wouldn't it be a crushing irony, that our insatiety for cheap things built the very economic power that would eventually overtake us. The communists always said enemies are best conquered from within.