Government lacks incentives to continually improve – explains government’s inherent inefficiency
Brownfield 1977 [Allan; a former staff aide to a U.S. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the U.S. Senate Internal Subcommittee; associate editor of The Lincoln Review], “The Inherent Inefficiency of Government Bureaucracy”, Foundation for Economic Education, June 1 1977
https://fee.org/articles/the-inherent-inefficiency-of-government-bureaucracy/
The fact which must be remembered is that inefficiency is by no means an accident in public enterprise but is built into such noncompetitive endeavor. In his important book,The Growth Of American Government,Dr. Roger Freeman makes this point: "We must recognize that, in contrast to private industry, where competition and the profit motive impose pressure for greater efficiency and a natural and generally reliable gauge of productivity, governmental programs have built-in counterproductive trends. It is a natural tendency for a public employee to want to handle fewer cases—pupils, tax returns, welfare families, crimes—in the belief that he could do a better job if he had a smaller workload, and most certainly have an easier life. For the supervisor there is a definite gain in stature, position—and even grade—by having a larger number of subordinates. This and the ideological commitments to the program goals and methods of their professional fraternities provide a powerful and well-nigh irresistible incentive for empire building."
Governmental efforts to improve the housing markets have failed
The Heritage Foundation 2016(“Housing”. The Heritage Foundation. 2016) http://solutions.heritage.org/money-the-market/housing/# The federal government has actively distorted housing markets for decades, particularly through the operations of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Proponents justified these government guarantees and outright subsidies as a way to increase home ownership, claiming that the private sector cannot provide a reliable source of financing.
These efforts to support the housing market have failed. Despite the large federal subsidies, the homeownership rate has not changed much over the past 40 or so years. At the same time, the total burden of mortgage debt has increased dramatically. Although they were not the sole cause of the economic meltdown of 2008, these policies helped to inflate the housing bubble that burst that year, leaving homeowners underwater and soaking U.S. taxpayers. Congress should curtail its harmful interference in this market and let private institutions take the leading role in housing finance.
