Reply to Carl and Teresa
Carl
Your point about political structures guiding the budget process, as Rubin (2015) points out, is really the most important, I feel. Politics is key to understanding budgeting, particularly because politics is key to understanding government. My thoughts on this matter are that in any democracy, the political process is inseparable from the budgeting process. In theory, the budget should be a reflection of the government's priorities, with different departments being allocated funds based on their importance. However, in practice, politics often plays a role in how the budget is allocated. Different interest groups lobby for funds for their favored programs, and legislators may use their positions on appropriations committees to secure funding for their districts. As a result, the final budget is often a compromise between different special interests, rather than a clear reflection of the government's priorities. While this may be seen as an efficient way to allocate resources, it can also lead to wasteful spending on programs that are not effective or necessary. Therefore, it is important to understand how politics affects government budgeting in order to ensure that resources are being spent in a way that is equitable and efficient.
Even when it comes to correcting externalities and other market failures, politics can be found managing the process. For instance, I...
…world thanks to government induced lockdowns), or when there is insufficient competition, or when externalities distort the market price. In each of these cases, government intervention is required to correct the market failure and restore efficient market functioning. In some cases, this may involve providing subsidies or regulations that encourage greater production or consumption of the desired good or service. In other cases, it may involve direct government provision of the good or service itself. Whatever the specific remedy, it is clear that governments must take responsibility for correcting market failures if economies are to function effectivelybut they should also strive to not be the cause of failures in the…
References
Binder, S., & Spindel, M. (2020). How Politics Shapes Federal ReserveCommunications. Cato J., 40, 467.
Mikesell, John L. (2018). Fiscal administration: Analysis and applications for the publicsector. 10 ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
With all of these factors contributing to the American auto industry nearly collapsing, the U.S. government had to take into account how critical this is as an industry for the economically ravaged states of Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and many of the southern states including Alabama, Kentucky and Mississippi. The U.S. government actually had no choice but to bail out this failed industry as at one point it was
They see alternatives and their consequences as costlier and pay very little attention to them. Rationality exists less in public than in private organizations. A public agency's ends often compromise incompatible interests and neither occasionally nor accidentally. Conflict becomes inevitable and the end-system goes haywire. And the end-systems of public organizations are much more complex than those of private ones. The more complex, the harder to institute courses of
Government can have some influence on market failures, but cannot eliminate them. Conditions of perfect competition are usually created outside the influence of government. Often, government policy contributes to market failure rather than prevents it. Government can, however, reduce the impact of market failure. The programs by which government would do this must be well-conceived and well-executed, however, or they can worsen market failure. An example of this would be
Government intervention can also extend to public goods that cause the private-decision rule to fail in terms of the efficiency rule. According to Julianle Grand (1991, p. 426), externalities are the focus of market failure, in that they focus on a third party, otherwise uninvolved in the transaction, that is affected by production or consumption. Grand distinguishes between the benefits and costs to such third parties; where the former entails
In this article there is a hint that Vista is yet another system that requires collaborative software (also from Microsoft) to be utilized effectively and marketing it in quips is ineffective because of this interrelated operating style. (Wilcox, Dec. 30, 2007, NP) Any real marketing failure would simply relate to Microsoft's inability to foresee that the complicated nature of Vista would not easily play to traditional marketing attempts, as
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