One of my first blog posts, way back in 2009, was about bureaucrats from the Social Security Administration squandering more than $700,000 on a boondoggle conference at a fancy Arizona resort.
To pick a more recent example, taxpayers have plenty of reasons to be upset about IRS bureaucrats partying at their fancy conferences (including line dances, the real message of which is captured by this Lisa Benson cartoon).
The General Services Administration, meanwhile, had a good time on our dime at a posh confab in Las Vegas.
So did revelations about all this waste cause programs, agencies, and departments to be more careful with our tax money? As you can imagine, the answer is a big fat no.
The latest scandal to be unearthed is that “public servants” from a bunch of government agencies have been enjoying fun times in the Caribbean. Here are some excerpts from a Washington Times expose.
A group of federal officials skipped chilly Washington this month for a taxpayer-funded trip to the Virgin Islands in the name of protecting the world’s coral reef. The organizer, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, isn’t saying much about the total cost or reasons for the trip or why officials chose the St. Croix beachfront resort Buccaneer Hotel (made famous by an episode of TV’s “The Bachelor”) as their destination. But life couldn’t have been too bad for the G-men and G-women at the swanky resort, which is surrounded by a lush green golf course and boasts rooms with rates that begin at $323 a night. …topped off with a $74 meal per diem. …In addition to the room rates and food per diems, the various departments were also responsible for providing airfare for attendees. A quick search of travel websites shows that flights from Washington to St. Croix, where the meeting was held, range from $500 to $1,000.
So what was the total cost of this boondoggle? Well, we have no idea.
And this doesn’t even count the fact that many of the bureaucrats got to party at another sun-and-fun conference!
With 11 agencies involved in funding and support for the coral reef task force, it can be difficult to track down just how much is being spent and by whom. Spending records are spread across multiple agencies, with no single record of just how much these meeting might be costing taxpayers. An Interior Department representative said the task force meeting was held in conjunction with a meeting of the Caribbean Regional Planning Body, and many people participated in both.
So let’s think about big picture of what this means for taxpayers.
We know bureaucrats are overpaid.
We know they work fewer hours.
We even know bureaucrats admit to being lazy!
But the real insult to injury is when they get to do fun things at our expense.
“If you outlaw cannons, only outlaws will have cannons”
P.S. By coincidence, I happen to be in Antigua while doing this post. I’m a big fan of the Caribbean, so it doesn’t bother me for people to go where there is warm sunshine. I just don’t want them taking trips at my expense.
P.P.S. I’m happy to report that I wasn’t detained at the airport, which happened on my last trip to Antigua.
P.P.P.S. My friend has a real (but non-operable) cannon mounted on one of his terraces. I think I read someplace that it’s legal to own a cannon in the United States, which is part of what makes America a great country. Heck, we’re allowed to own tanks, which is even cooler.
It is indeed legal to own a fully functional cannon, at least one of the muzzle loader varieties. I’m a reenactor and have, on occasion, helped crew replica Civil War vintage cannons. The noise is loud, the smoke is copious, and the fun was endless.
There is a strong case for eliminating the deduction for “business entertainment” expenses, when and if we move to a flat tax on income. This does not mean that businesses cannot pay for what they consider important, only that such expenses are 100% paid for by shareholders/owners. [Note that this is not an issue with the FairTax.]
The question is: how to deal with such expenses for government and non-profits. One answer would be to add such costs to taxable salaries. With a 25% flat tax, the organization would then have to add 33% of the entertainment cost to salaries to pay net taxes, in order for the individual to come out whole. An additional constraint would be that published salaries would then be considerably higher, reflecting true cost. And, while we’re at it we might as well add the cost of defined contributions to salaries also and eliminate taxes on distribution, if taxes have been paid, so the true cost of public officials can be shown as shockingly higher than their outrageous current compensation.
All such minor transgressions will be forgiven, so long as bureaucrats are perceived as necessity to a redistribution engine that redirects much greater sums — and so long as the long term effect of flatter effort-reward curves, lower motivation, lower growth, and compounding fate to decline, remain hidden in the elementary arithmetic of exponents.
To a majority of voter-lemmings, a redistribution dime today is worth five prosperity dollars in the future…. hence most of the western world is heading to relative decline. America, where HopNChange is still young is an unlikely candidate to escape such fate.
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