If It Ain’t Broke…Smash It!

The immense faux-cherry-wood executive desk is no match for the John Deere All Terrain forklift, and the wood-veneer splinters effortlessly under the forklift tine’s descending 10,000 lbs ft lbs of hydraulic force.

The debris of the once-gently used office furniture litters the driveway as yet another desk and chair set are brought to the chopping block.  Within 30 minutes the full set of office furnishings are reduced to toothpicks.

As an Airman in the Air Force I witnessed the annual office massacre take place every September, the end of the federal fiscal year, as a military budget balancing act.

Our troops were sent to fight a war with outdated Kevlar flak vests and chemical suits, transported with inadequately armored vehicles and loaded onto 50 year old cargo planes bound for the hot-spots of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But our offices sure looked nice!

The military, like many federal and state run systems, operate on a “use or lose” budget;   meaning that if a budget is not completely exhausted by the end of the fiscal year then the remainder is lost and will be deducted from the next years budget.

With that “use or lose” mentality, there is always a frantic scramble for each squadron to spend $30,000 to $60,000 of “left-over” money in the last two weeks of the fiscal year.  As a result, whether it is needed or not, new furniture is bought and the old is smashed to justify the purchase.

Let me put the amount of money into perspective for you:  If each squadron is a $30,000 under budget, there are on average 5 squadrons to a group, 4 groups in a wing, and 2 wings to a base.  That is a rough average of $1.2 million dollars being thrown away annually on each military base.

Are you mad yet?  You should be!

As yet another year of financial budget crisis emerges for many state and federal governments, some divisions of government are turning to privatizing sections as a way to cut costs.

According to Wikipedia:

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector (the state or government) to the private sector (businesses that operate for a private profit) or to private non-profit organizations.

The trend to privatize government is not new and has in fact been slowly evolving since the late 1980s and early 90s with the privatizing of social services and welfare.  Currently several aspects of the Department of Defense are privatized with civil servants and private security services such as Xe.  Other failing government services such as the library system and prison management are turning towards privatization to continue business and save money.

The privatization of some aspects of government, such as the library, Caltrans, and Waste Management, can reform services and lowers costs by operating within the free market competition of a capitalist society.  This competitive market increases output, increases efficiency while lowering costs and offers the ability to reward performance and punish those who don’t perform.

Privatization reduces bureaucratic motivation by holding the private business accountable for profits as well as losses.  The chances of corruption are lower in a competitive market than with a politically encouraged government monopoly.

While not all facets of government neither can nor should privatize, having a mix of privatized services while reforming federal and state government to operate on a supply and demand budget can greatly reduce the budget deficit while saving social services.

There is no reason why the government and the American tax payers should be, literally, throwing away billions of dollars in unnecessary “use or lose” spending.