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Tuesday, Aug 29, 2006

wsj katrina

Yeah, that's the tragedy: that the government is spending money. Worst. Possible. Tragedy.

I'm wating for the WSJ editorial denouncing the expenditures associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

- mark 8-29-2006 8:13 pm [link] [add a comment]

This Just In ... Bad Government is Bad

I read a couple of opinion pieces on Katrina this morning. One was a Krugman piece, reprinted in the San Jose Mercury News. The other is an editorial from the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ piece is moderately coherent, but I believe the point they are trying to make is that government is bad and capitalism is good. They point out that Congress has "spent" vast sums of money, far more than for any other disaster, on Katrina. Actually they meant to say "allocated". As Krugman points out, there's a big difference between allocation and disbursement. One would expect capitalists to know the difference between approving a budget and writing a check.

The subtext of the WSJ piece is that the lack of progress, despite all the "spending" is proof that government is bad. Krugman argues that incompetent government is bad.

Apologists for the administration will doubtless claim that blame for the lack of progress rests not with Bush, but with the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracies. That's the great thing about being an anti-government conservative: Even when you fail at the task of governing, you can claim vindication for your ideology.

I must reject the implication by the WSJ that the federal spending on Katrina is out of proportion with other disasters. The disaster in New Orleans was fundamentally an engineering disaster. The Army Corp of Engineers, and no one else, were responsible for the levees. The engineering of the levees was fundamentally flawed in multiple ways -- that's why New Orleans was flooded.

New Orleans was flooded because of failures by the federal government. This is not to say that government is inherently bad, but that bad government is bad. Because, besides the federal government, who can take on engineering tasks of this scale?

Perhaps we should take more seriously the WSJ's call for more capitalism in New Orleans. Perhaps New Orleans would be better served if it could shop around for a different national authority. I know if I was a New Orleanian, I would rather secede from the Union and become part of the Netherlands. At least they know how to keep the ocean at bay.

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