That’s the subject of JLF President John Hood’s column today. A highlight:
In government, however, the incentive to pursue productivity isn’t as strong. State agencies and departments can’t lose market share to competitors if they fail to innovate. Even in cases where state-assisted institutions do compete with the private sector – public universities, for example – the large share of their budgets derived from direct appropriations rather than user fees gives them an artificial advantage and weakens their incentives to promote productivity.
That’s one reason why formal fiscal constraints such as balanced-budget rules, referendum requirements, and spending caps are essential to achieving better returns on taxpayer investment. In the absence of true market competition, they force public-sector managers to find new ways to deliver services at a lower unit cost.
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2012 At 9:47 am, richie Said:
Many concepts can be promoted for imagined dream castles in the sky; but here on earth, not weighing NC’s corruption (examples abound) as a primary factor of reality – prequalifies pedantic and inconsequential ideas.
Enjoyed the big words, but it all sounds like trading cows for beans when reality doesn’t support any of it.
For example: last thing Jim Black got done before his felony conviction was passage of NC’s Ethic Law. Oddly, the reality of “How things are done here in NC” seems to escape a lot of people…