Government Failure Of Government In The United States

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The final aspect of our discussion of government failure involves the enormous size of government that has developed as a direct result of the problems discussed above. The current size and scope of the federal bureaucracy overwhelms politicians. They simply do not have the time to understand the programs that they attach their namesakes to, nor do they have the time to provide the necessary oversight of such programs that would allow them to properly fix flaws. While the size of government is concerning, a perhaps larger concern is the scope of government. In addition to handling its core functions such as national defense, the federal government also runs more than 2,300 subsidy and benefit programs that cater to a multitude of previously …show more content…
For example, some programs keep food prices higher than normal, while others subsidize food for people with low incomes. Some programs work toward minimizing flood risks, while others, such as subsidized flood insurance; incentivize people to live in areas where flooding is more common. In addition, many programs seek to subsidize health care and infrastructure, but many regulations often increase the costs of those activities. In the end, the government is too large to coordinate these activities in any meaningful way; which ultimately leads to a declining marginal value of government spending and regulating. When government grows in size, each increment added has less value than the previous increments. When the air force adds a fighter jet to its inventory, the individual jet has less value than the jets that were purchased previously. In addition, when education spending increases, each additional dollar produces less net benefit than the previous dollars spent. Regulations work in a similar fashion. Each new regulation has less net benefit than previous legislations. Therefore, additional regulations on air quality are going to have less of an effect than the initial regulations on air quality; which brings up an important point, are such things cost …show more content…
Instead, they often assume that more funding for education helps students and more defense spending bolsters defenses. However, in reality they are confusing the average value of all current spending with the marginal value of the last dollar spent. In other words, they do not appreciate the idea that each additional dollar has little benefit due to fact that we already spend a lot of money on such things. Declining marginal utility also relates to increases in the scope of government. As the federal government expands beyond the scope of its core functions, the benefits associated with that expansion decrease as expansion continues. More importantly, as the government expands more of its functions are increasingly dedicated to narrower interest than the general welfare. In other words, as government increases in scope, the power of special interest over the lives of the people increases in
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