Sustainable Government

We hear a lot in the media about sustainable agriculture, sustainable energy - almost everything subject to public policy has someone espousing a "sustainable" version.  It is easy to parody, but the underlying notion of "sustainability" is a noteworthy step forward in human thinking.  It involves thinking beyond what we think is best for us right now to seek solutions that take into account long term consequences - to seek solutions that also will work well for future generations.

What about sustainable government?  The history of government, even here in the US, is a history on see-sawing battles between interest groups seeking control.  Why can't we start formulating public policy with an eye to create a framework that controls some of the tendency's in government most of us would recognize as not beneficial, but which we usually can't address in the ordinary sphere of political give and take.

Things like the fact that the people that govern, even in a democracy, always manage to do well.  Almost every local government, state government and the Federal government in the US currently faces overwhelming long term debts to address promises made to the public or public employee's based on foolishly optimistic projections of future income.   Many southern European countries are on the verge of financial collapse due to their inability to control the cost's of government employee's and pensions.

A simple first step toward more sustainable government would be to directly link pay and benefits for Government employee's to a figure just slightly below what people in the private sector make.   Government salaries would adjust annually based on the private sector averages from, for example, three years earlier.  In this way in an economic downtown we would still have three years during which the buying power of Government employee's would remain stable, or even increase a little to offset the slowdown in the private sector.  

This notion would not have been very feasible historically, but with modern technology we have massive data crunching capability today that would make the computations relatively simple.

Some would argue we will not be able to get good people in government if their wages are always a little lower than the private sector.  Even if that were true, the private sector is what drives growth, so that is not necessarily a bad thing.  But I don't believe that would be true.  As an employer I have realized that many of the most reliable and dedicated employee's I have had over the years were motivated much more by the desire to meet their own high standards of performance, and a desire to help people, than by money. 

A part of sustainable government also needs to hold a baseline against the fluctuations in private sector values.  In the 1980's the old values of work as service to the public and rewarding in itself were swept aside by the folk that see only money.  We cut taxes on rich folk and filled the tax code with exemptions and credits on the theory the people with money would invest it in driving the economy forward.  Old firms where the owners valued employees and service to the public were sucked up by big money interests and every vestige of the firm that interfered with making the most money as possible as fast as possible was eliminated.  That ethic has ruled for approaching 30 years and it has sent all the money into the hands of the wealthy.  The notion that money bought competence also infected Government, so in (for example) 2010 the California Department of Corrections had over 50 employee's who made more than $500,000 a year in salary.  I don't think many people would have ever thought of the California Department of Corrections as a poster boy for competence.

The result of the money first philosophy that has dominated the last 30 years is a stagnant economy that the money obsessed are sure is going to break out in wild spending rehash of the early 2000's at any minute, but which in fact just plugs along, stagnant.  The reason is there is not enough money in the hands of consumers to support growth.  Rich folk have what they want so they buy assets, regular folk are the ones who buy stuff.  And since the regular folk don't have much money to buy stuff, investing in new businesses is really risky, so the rich folk just buy assets.  In the last 70 years, if you counted up all the media talk about "asset bubbles" it would all have occurred in the the last 20 years.  Bubbles in stocks, repeatedly, bubbles in housing repeatedly, bubbles in commodities. 

Government can't control what the private sector thinks, but it needs to have an ethic that insulates it from the influence of the greed mongers.