You asked what they do really well right??  

1.  They lie really well
2.  They give themselves nice pay raises really well
3.  They create beaurocracies really well
4.  They steal peoples taxes really well
5.  They keep themselves in power really well
6.  They pretty much manage to f@#$ everything up really well!!

What you should have asked was what does the govt do to benefit and improve our lives really well??

The Nitional Institutes of Health is a premier agency that impacts the health and well being of all our citizens.

What has the government ever done for us? Nothing! Well, there's the roads. But other than that what have they done for us? Ok, the armies. But other than the roads and the armies what have they ever done for us.... etc


-- Modified on 2/11/2004 10:21:24 AM

-- Modified on 2/11/2004 11:10:04 AM

Gave Fwew thoughts

-Protect environment- can you imagine that privatised? Like it is under Bush? Ouch

-Courts -gotta have some people removed from society to judge and administer

-Prisons- sorry usually better in public hands, bad as they are

-Minting and regulating monet and transactions- bad as they do - they would be better that alternatives

- all kinds of regulation-

-taxation- best left with a bureaucracy than the old system of benefices and grants to act by kings - usually abused by collecting body- EVEN MORE THAN IRS type groups

Sorry-  If you ask someone WHO IS ACTUALLY CONVERSANT WITH HISTORY- you find that we are actually pretty well off with a need for tweaks not revolutions.  And if you factor in that today's upper economic class actually support the state and the poor FAR LESS (percentage-wise) than in the Middle Ages- we are doing damn well.

Personally I think we get a bargain and a more aggressive tax code evenly applied might get us a higher standard of living with schools and health paid for.  But that's just me.

Governments can (and do these well):
  a) build infrastructure (roads, sewers, water);
  b) provide for the common defense (army, navy);
  c) guard public safety (police, fire, corrections);
  d) provide basic education (3 Rs); and,
  e) collect taxes for purposes of doing above.

Government should:
  1) get the hell out of my car (seatbelt law);
  2) recognize the de facto government of a sovereign nation
     (Monroe Doctrine);
  3) never spend more money than it collects in taxes;
  4) have elected officials who are not compensated for their
     service (i.e. no pay, benefits, etc. this works in NH);
  5) should enact term limits (no more career politicians); and
  6) for the next 100 years be required to kill at least 2
     programs for every new program created.

Can't disagree with you.  It's managed virtually to destroy the Black family, something that 400 years of bondage wasn't able to do.  But then again, I don't want a government that's too efficient.  I want a government inefficient at seizing taxes, and putting citizens in jail.
Problem is, we've got a government inefficiently trying to do more than governments should.

Through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the U.S. government funds the best basic scientific research programs in the world.

An important consequence of this support has been the technological advances that fuel our economy and better our lives. Private firms (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) depend on this long-range, basic research to support their own, more narrowly-focused research programs.

Megapig,

I believe our government does a number of REALLY BIG things very well.  The trouble is, the govt. NEVER says, "OK, we've done our job, now we are eliminating this _______ (Dept., etc.)"

Some Good things done by Uncle Sam:
Interstate Highway System
Rural Electrification
Defense
National Park System
GPS (those are military satellites we use)

In many instances, the Govt. funds the work, private industry does the work.  Just my opinion.

EVERYTHING that the government does, it does inefficiently.  The ONLY thing that government does MORE effectively than the private sector is to COMPELL people to do certain things.  So essentially, the government is only good at doing things which people would NOT choose to do on their own.  There are also things that have major spillover costs and benefits to society, where something that is known as a Free-rider problem would exist, whereby you have no incentive to pay for anything where you would otherwise derive free-rider benefits from them by NOT participating with your own budget.  But even in THESE cases, Government has NOT shown that it can do the implementation.  What it needs to do in these cases, is to outsource the implementation via COMPETITIVE bidding, but to FUND the contract.  I believe that this could be done with just about ANY activity, including Road Building, and Law Enforcement.  I Do believe that National DEFENSE, on domestic soil, is too big, and probably too immediate a task to effectively outsource.  However, OFFENSIVE war, such as overthrowing Iraq, would certainly be the type of thing that could be more effectively out-sourced under contract.  We could sell the rights to overthrow Iraq to Haliburton, their payment would be based on delivering results.  They would have to pay their employees properly to compensate them to put their lives at risk, but their reward could be stock options, or Iraqi Oil options, for example.

So, essentially, the ONLY thing that government SHOULD do is collect taxes, create laws that compell behavior (such as the one making you pay taxes) and disburse the monies as determined through representative voting.  EVERY other expenditure of the money should be a function of whether people (either directly or through chosen representatives) vote to make such a program governmentalized (meaning funded through tax levies and procured through bidding) rather than privatized.

People might choose to have Health Care federalized, because you might need it while unconscious or otherwise unable to make an informed procurement decision, or gain immediate access to emergency care.  And, because it is an unpredictable risk pool, which many folks believe should be shared equally or otherwise fairly (based, say on risk premiums for smokers, or obese people, or drinkers, or etc.)  Or, the public might vote to have this done privately, and join risk-sharing groups like HMOs, which they then pay for themselves.  But still, we need to be conscious of the spillover costs for poor people who can't afford to join the HMO dying and rotting in the streets, which could spread disease to the rest of us.

In any case, ALL governmentalized programs should be funded through tax levies, by competitive bidding with a compliance review process.  All other programs ought be private.  And the only fair way to determine this is to have the public or the public's representatives vote on this.  Which, BTW, is pretty much the system that we have now.  The only problem is that not ENOUGH stuff is subject to competitive bidding and compliance review grading.

What does government do well and what do politicians does well.  Government does the jobs that should not be given to the private sector, because profit motive should not be an effluence in the process, like education, I don't what a private company cutting costs to raise profit margin on backs of our children.  Politician on the other hand are very good at distracting us from the real problems by making noise about things that don't really matter, like Janet Jackson's boob, Howard Stern's mouth, gay marriage, instead of dealing with the real problem like, "not tax and spend" policy of the Bush white house, the large deficit that is drying up the supply of money for you and me to buy homes at a reasonable interest rate or putting enough teachers in our schools to teach our children or stop giving tax breaks to the rich and screwing the middle class.  Politicians are really good at those things.   Does it bother anyone that Justice Antonin Scalia believes that there is no conflict in him ruling on his duck hunting buddy VP Dick Chainey's Energy case that is before the supreme court.  Here is a Judge on the highest court in the land and sees no conflict of interest that he pals around with one of the litigants before his bench, we are screwed.

I have studied the Federal budget over the last forty-five years (no I'm not a masochist, it's partly how I make a living). The Federal government basically does three things: 1--Provides a social safety net (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc.); 2--Provides insurance (National Security); and 3--Provides the infrastructure of trust in which a free market economy can function. The first two are fairly obvious; the last one is subtle. Think about it--the food you eat meets federal agricultural standards; many of you have not seen a paper paycheck in years, because there is a banking system you can *generally* trust; you get imported goods becuase the Navy and the Coast Guard ensure the freedom of the seas; you think nothing of driving from New York to Miami, because there is a Federal highway system that makes the trip relatively easy.

I don't claim that Uncle does this perfectly, but considering the complexity of the tasks and the diversity of stakeholders involved, the system works better than any of the alternatives.

Next time you see a civil servant, thank him or her for their service.

You should really visit Seattle and go look under the Aurora Bridge. They have a giant troll there you could empathize with.

You know, your kind of myopic perspective on history is pretty typical of right wingers, so to illuminate you her is a list of LIBERAL govt program success.

1. Rural electrification
2. Social Security
3. Veterans Bill (GI Bill)
4. Interstate Highway System
5. Public education
6. Family Medical Leave Act
7. American Diabilities Act
8. Civil Rights Act
9. FDIC
10. Child Labor Laws
11. Morrill Land Grant Act
12. Product Labeling/Truth in Advertising Laws
13. National Weather Service
14. Women's Suffrage
15. The Tennessee Valley Project
16. Peace corps
17. Space Program
18. Workplace Safety Laws
19. Food Safety Laws.
20.  Marshall Plan

That's just a few.  I am sure it is not enough to convince you govt can be good. And I am sure with Mad Cow disease you think Food Safety Laws shold be left to the corps.

TET

I think "THEY" are doing a damn good job of that, and have been for a VERY LONG TIME  

Before Social Security, more than 50% of older adults died in poverty.  Today, almost none do.  There is no way any private organization could replicate those results.  

Government should, and in most countries does, support the arts.  New ideas in the arts rarely come from popular art.  Popular art plays to the lowest common denominator, which is not something any country should aspire to.  

Arts education is every bit as important as the "3 R's".  It is well proven that students who get music education do better in math.  Arts education improves performance in all the "3 R's".  This has been proven consistently for decades.

Well I am on the subject of education, can I just say that the idea of "increased accountability" for teachers, which is so popular in political circles these days, is an insulting joke.  It assumes that teachers are not doing well because they are not trying.  The average public teacher’s salary is around $40,000 a year.  They are clearly not in it for the money.  So why do you think they are there?  Because they care deeply.  They don't need "increased accountability," they need increased resources.  They need be given the freedom to do their jobs, and to get it done right.  More testing (unfunded testing no less) does not improve education.  When you increase mandatory testing, you force teachers to teach the tests, not skills or critical thinking.  This is a phenomenally bad idea.  Here in Minnesota, our current education secretary is taking our top ten in the country educational system, and is redesigning it based on a model of an educational system which is one of the two worst in the country.   Needless to say, teachers (not me, but my sister), and other people who have a clue about education, up here are a very pissed off.

Government is also very good at protecting natural treasures.  The National Parks Service is very effective.  

WIC was an amazingly effective program.  In 1992, it was feeding low income infants and mothers at about ten cents to the dollar of buying at retail prices.  They would buy formula on bid from whichever company could provide a product which met the criteria at the lowest price.  Then the republican congress in 1993 changed the rules for WIC, and WIC was required to buy from one of the three major companies, and they were required to pay whatever price the company chose to charge.  The next year, that same congress used the way WIC purchased infant formula (which was mandated by Congress) as an example of government inefficiency.  

Private organizations can be very good at small aims, such as making a profit or improving the lives of a small targeted group of people.  If you want to make a major improvement for a lot of people, you need a government.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi