An earlier edition of this column focused on government waste due to gross mismanagement and fraud on the part of California state and local governments. The argument then, as it is now, is that elected representatives should be spending much more of their time and energy on oversight of existing programs, rather than posture for a photo op or press release announcing a “new” program that, in all likelihood, is redundant with a dozen or more existing programs covering the same subject matter.

The problem, of course, is that elected officials and bureaucrats have no incentive to be cautious regarding how they spend our tax dollars. Here, the observations of Nobel winning economist Milton Friedman are instructive. He noted that there are four ways people can spend money:

To read the entire column click here http://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/new-ways-to-spend-opm-other-peoples-money/

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2016 at 7:21 am and is filed under Blog Posts.