Posted by
VBushmills on Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:31:32 PM
Chester, Virginia Oct 29, 2009
If you go to Vegas or Atlantic City they take no special cut. That's because you're playing against "the House". But if you've ever rolled the bones, or played Texas Hold' em in Deadwood in what the LA cops call "off-premises" gambling, you're playing against the other players, and the House simply takes a cut....for providing the venue, and the table and the chips, and sometimes, protection. It's not a lot. Reasonable.
In Government it was always assumed their House man would take about 20%, for handling or admin costs. This was more than speakeasies charged, but was still considered reasonable...for government. This is the cost we (the taxpayers pay) pay when we send our money to Richmond or Washington or Lansing, and they in turn send it to the Highway department, Defense or various entitlement programs.
It's important to understand this concept, as it is never taught in school. But it has always been understood that government bureaucracies want to scrape off as much as they can, when they can. In the Third World, from Mexico to Zimbabwe, this "take off the top" runs closer to 80%. Western Europe's socialist governments runs 50%-60%, depending on the program. In the US, we've been pushing toward 40%-45% for years, and consider under-achievers for the effort of keeping costs down. ("Damn constitutional republics, anyway!") The United nations, of course, the paragon of cost control, always runs 100%. Even in Virginia, where the big line item is the highway budget, they charge approximately 40%, which goes to admin costs in two tiers as a kind of sleight-of-hand. Very high for states. But wait, look at your state university, or even your local school budget, where costs are sky-rocketing (even worse than medical care), and see how much of those tax money goes to people who have nothing to do with delivering education to our children.
When looked at from this perspective, it's easy to see what the real game of most government programs is. Feed the Beast.
We always knew the Obama Administration would push America closer to the 60% European model but the Cash-for-Clunkers program ($2 billion) made us stop and look again. For every $4000 given to the car dealers to give as trade-in's to the buyers of new cars (mostly Japanese, which they were going to buy anyway), the government kept $24,000!
That's a whopping 84%!
It seems we may be by-passing Sweden altogether and going straight for the Mugabe formula.
So look out!
Robert Hightower
President, TekTrans