The Battle Joined

Posted by Lex, on February 17, 2011

Last month, the Economist published an excellent cover story entitled “The Battle Ahead” about the impending battle governments will have to wage with public sector unions to ensure that, if taxes are indeed to be eaten by a professional class of bureaucrats, they at least be eaten efficiently:

Private-sector productivity has soared in the West over the past quarter-century, even in old industries such as steel and carmaking. Companies have achieved this because they have the freedom to manage—to experiment, to expand successful innovations, to close down bad ones, to promote talented people. Across the public sector, unions have fought all this, most cruelly in education. It can be harder to restructure government than business, but even small productivity gains can bring big savings.

The coming battle should be about delivering better services, not about cutting resources. Focusing on productivity should help politicians redefine the debate. The imminent retirement of the baby-boomers is a chance to hire a new generation of workers with different contracts. Politicians face a choice: push ahead, reform and create jobs in the long term; or give in again, and cut more services and raise more taxes.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex