Paul Krugman:
Art Laffer (why is he, of all people, on my TV?) asks what it
will be like when the government runs
Medicare and Medicaid.
This is supposed to be snarky, and it would in fact be funny if
Art Laffer, the patron saint of supply-side economics, thought
that the government did not run Medicare and Medicaid. But if you
follow the link, it goes to a Media Matters clip with the
headline "Economist Laffer on CNN:'[J]ust wait till you see
Medicare, Medicaid ... done by the government.'" That's some very
selective editing; if you watch the clip you'll see that Laffer
had just finished up talking about the government's unfunded
liabilities for Medicare and Medicaid when he says, "...just wait
till you see Medicare, Medicaid, and health care done by the
government."
Then Krugman goes on to say -- and he really says this -- the
following:
But I'd raise a further question: he warns that when the
government takes over these, um, government programs, they'll
be like the Post Office and the DMV. Why, exactly, are these
public functions unquestioned bywords for "something bad"?
Maybe I'm living a sheltered life here in central New Jersey,
but I don't find the Post Office a terrible experience - no
worse than Fedex or UPS. (Full disclosure: I worked as a temp
mailman when in college.) And nobody likes going to the DMV,
but the one on Rt. 1 I go to always seems fairly well managed.
Can he really be that detached from reality? The only things that
don't work well in my life are government-run things like the
Post Office and the DMV. For the sake of brevity, let me take
just my most recent experiences with each.
Last year, the mailman broke my mailbox. While delivering the
mail he slammed it shut or somehow jammed the lock. I called the
Post Office during their very limited hours, and they promised to
look into it. Nothing happened. About a week later, still no
mail, so I called again on a Saturday. This time they told me my
only option was to pay them $25 to fix the mailbox. When I asked
whether they could waive the fee in light of the fact that they
broke the box, the person on the phone literally hung up on me.
Enraged, I went down to the office to confront them. I was given
the runaround, and told that the maintenance guy had left earlier
(I'm guessing he was the same guy who hung up on me.) After a
week or two of this kind of treatment, I go into the other
Arlington post office during work hours, with the idea of doing
an end run on the counter guys at my own office. Sure enough,
they give me the name and number of a supervisor for my office. I
call the number, and she promises to help, but I have to come in
during office hours to sign a work release. A week or so passes
before I can get there during office hours, meanwhile about a
month has gone by since I was last able to access my mail without
accosting the postman on his rounds. I go, sign the work release,
and pay the $25 because I'm feeling defeated. They tell me that
they'll do the job as quick as possible and give me my new keys.
Fast forward about another month. I still have no new lock and no
access to mail. I storm down to the office again, and wait
through another huge line. I finally get to the maintenance guy
and tell him what I'm following up on. He looks at me as though
I'm an idiot. "Yeah, we've had that done for weeks," he tells me
condescendingly. "Why haven't you come in for your new keys?" he
asks, as though I must be crazy not to have figured out such a
small problem as setting up a new mailbox lock. "We've been
calling you a lot," he glibly lies, apparently not knowing or
caring that cell phones list all missed calls. Remember, this is
only my most recent experience with the Post Office.
They have all been about this bad.
As for the DMV: Last month, I attempted to get swap my
Massachusetts driver's license for a Virginia one. I arrived at
the DMV 10 minutes after it opened to find a line hundreds of
people long. I waited in this line for over an hour and a half --
outside the building. This line didn't even get you to
the counter. It got you to the people who asked you what you
wanted, took your number, and told you if you had the proper
applications material for that particular process. In my case, I
didn't, even though I'd followed the website's instructions
perfectly. So I waited in line for an hour and a half just to be
told I couldn't wait in the real line. I can only imagine how
long that would have taken.
Krugman wraps up:
And in general: is dealing with these government agencies any
worse than, say, dealing with the cable company?
To be fair, I did also recently have a terrible experience with
Comcast. Apparently the rate they quoted me was only an expiring
promotional rate, and they had started charging me much higher
rates in addition to random fees every month. I called them and
they didn't fix the problem. I also wasn't 100 percent
happy with their customer service (although never in a million
years would they have hung up on me as the Post Office did). So
guess what... I cancelled my cable.
