Peter the Great Saves Russia From the Hipsters

Alarmed by the growth of Hipster Douches in the Russian Empire, in 1705 Peter The Great issued a Degree, forcing  his citizens to shave off their beards. Only the clergy and those who paid a beard tax were exempt. In light of Chicago's budget deficit and hipster surplus, should we not consider the same? 

Brief Reflection on Safety Nets (part III)

In our previous posts we explored the nature of safety nets. While I recognize the necessity of government  run welfare programs, the manner in which they are administered are problematic. I do not believe that these problems can be legislated away, because they are products of the culture and values that underlie and guide the decisions made by individual administrators and larger organizations. For example, I showed an apartment to an gentleman with a section-8 voucher. As with all apartment seekers I asked him "where are you moving from?" To which he responded, "I am moving from my mother's house...it's really nice and spacious...she loves having me there...but I want my own space." In another incident, a well off associate of mine asked me to help his mother find section-8 housing, even though he, as well as his siblings were able to accomodate her in their own homes.

While I sympathize with the desire of both individuals to live independently of their family, I do not believe that it should be subsidized by tax payers. Scarce housing subsidies should only go towards individuals and families who truly do not have any other options. If the section-8 administrator had taken a few minutes to investigate the circumstances of both individuals, they would have discovered that they did not fall under this category. So, the question is, why doesn't the Chicago Housing Authority, as a matter of policy, ask each voucher seekers: "Do you have any family members or friends that you can reside with?" If not, "have you sought assistance from any private charities?" And if the individual absolutely requires assistance, what is the most cost effective housing option they can find? If these administrators considered themselves guardians of limited public resources these questions would be a given. If they believed that dependency on government services is a temporary aberration,  these need for such questions would be a given.

Regarding the former, zero incentives exist to control expenditures, rather department heads seek to maximize their share of public resources and like minded politicians seek to maximize the amount of resources usurped from the private sector. In fact, if a department head were to achieve their mission with less resources, they would see their budget cut and staff cut. This is a prospect that would be painful for them, but one that they would pursue if they were truly "public servants" concerned with the fiscal health of local communities and the nation as a whole. Cuts are always forced from above and are almost always first felt by the recipients, rather than the administrators of government services.

Regarding the questions of why administrators rarely if ever demonstrate concern about large scale dependency on government services, the answers are two hold: institutional culture & incentives. In the texts and lectures of social work courses that I reviewed, not once did I encounter sentiments that held dependency on governments as a social pathology to be avoided. Early progressive efforts to encourage hard work, thrift, assimilation and independence among the poor were held to be "regressive" and an example of "blaming the victim." This vision compliments the incentive structure that administrators enjoy; if they were able to lessen or eliminate dependency, they would diminish the ranks of their clientele, which would lead to a reduction in the resources and influence that they command.

As fiscal realities start closing in, government welfare institutions will be faced with shrinking resources. Their choices will be to maintain their current modus operandus, which means that safety nets will be undermined. Or, they can undertake cultural and institutional reformation that will allow them to wisely allocate resources to the our neediest citizens, while not placing an undue fiscal burden on the productive economy. Under such a system, the gentleman may have to "suffer the indignity" of living with his mother for a few extra years: a small sacrifices to maintain a viable safety net.

Why There Is Needless Intervention...

A landlord I know rented his property out to a section-8 voucher holder. The process involved having a CHAC (Chicago Housing Authority) representative inspect the premises to ensure that it was up to code. The property was in great condition, so the inspector came up with a light list of things that he needed to address. My friend wrapped up the work in a matter of days and called CHAC to schedule a follow up inspection.

Two weeks later, when a different inspector came out, the landlord presented him the original list and showed him that he had dutifully attended to each and every repair. The 2nd inspector replied "the last guy's list don't mean nothing to me..." and proceeded to write up a list of minute repairs, which the landlord was able to knock down in less than an hour.

Two weeks later a 3rd inspector came out. Ignoring the the reports of his predecessors, he wrote up a contrived set of repairs...which necessitated a 4th inspection two weeks later! Naturally, my friend and the prospective tenant were quite perturbed that the terrible organization of CHAC dragged out the process for over three months. The end result was three months of lost rent for the landlord and a tenant who needless had to wait for her apartment.

If CHAC were efficient, they would have sent the same guy to re-inspect the property or at least required that all inspectors use the same case sheet for each property. Either option would have resolved the problem in two inspectors, rather than four. At first we attributed this to terrible organization, but after hearing this same story from a half dozen other landlords we became convinced that it was intentional. The 2nd and 3rd inspectors had to generate arbitrary lists of repairs to justify their presence in a bloated, overstaffed bureaucracy. If enough inspectors were able to wrap up a case in half the time, with half the work, sooner or later the bureaucracy might be forced to do what is fiscally and ethically sound - streamline their operations to waste less of the taxpayer's money.

I am certain that the same dynamics apply to other government workers, from the lowliest bureaucrat all the way to Pelosi and Obama. We can be certain that not even the highest mountain of evidence that indicated that the market will correct itself and the recession will run its course would ever prompt Pelosi or Obama to take a less interventionist course of action.

To do so would diminish their importance and power. The expansion of their power and prestige is contingent on the existence of a crisis that only they, with their divine intervention, can solve. And by spending a trillion dollar on permanent programs to solve a temporary ailment, these demagogues increase the dependency of individuals, businesses and whole communities on the federal government.

Intelligent individuals and communities who are not dependent on the state hold politicians and parties accountable and accordingly are more independent in their voting patterns. And of course, those who are dependent on the state will always vote for the same statist politicians and parties, no matter how poorly they deliver. Just look at how awful public schools and public services are in African-American communities in Chicago, yet the democratic machine is strongest in those very communities. Now that's change we can believe in!