Effective management?
A well-known management practice, but one that isn”t taught and seldom admitted-to, is doing nothing, and frankly, it more effective than one would think. With the failure of the super committee I think we are seeing another application of the practice. In little more than a year triggers will set in motion some things a lot of people are dead set against. A $1.2 trillion spending reduction over 10 years really isn”t much when one year”s deficit is more than that, but may be it is a start. To me, a major effort to combine spending reduction and revenue growth to achieve $12 trillion over 10 years would really have been the way to go
I feel that those members who signed the Nordquist pledge even before sitting on the committee that was designed to achieve some compromise, should have had the honor to disqualify themselves. I don”t think they adequately acted for the people they represent. Certainly current polls indicate that.
The country is in debt some $15 billion at present. The country is adding $1 billion, or so, each year if no substantive action is taken to reduce it. Problem is that very few people recognize the scale of the current situation and even fewer are willing to recognize the sacrifice needed to correct it. Cannot be done with simple spending cuts because no one wants to have to live with results. Over time it might be affected by assessing or taxing Americans close to what other developed countries do. Perhaps the worst sacrifice is going to have to come in the form of reductions in cherished personal/individual rights as privacy, property, water, access and so on, simply because of increased population and the reluctance to let people die off and in the recognition that spending priorities have to meet the needs of the people, not the (whole) country as defense and national security.
A major problem is that we Americans revel in the world”s most inefficient government style. And we complicate it by being so large that we have to depend on a representative democracy to offset unmanageable numbers, we elect individuals to represent large populations. Once the political parties developed a platform outlining what the party stood for in fairly specific terms, the platform was important since it was out in the open and people could agree or disagree with it. Prospective candidates were selected based on the peoples perception of how well they felt the candidate”s dedication to the platform was and his ability to do the best he/she could to accomplish it. Wonder what happened to that practice? Once elected, I think the people have the right to assume their representatives represent them. Actually, that is why there are polls and surveys of voters. Maybe it is na?ve, but I think any representative represents him/herself rather than their constituents ought to be drummed out of the service.
Guthrie “Guff” Worth
Lakeport
