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Tech CEOs Tell US Gov't How To Cut Deficit By $1 Trillion
alphadogg writes "The US government can save more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years by consolidating its IT infrastructure, reducing its energy use and moving to more Web-based citizen services, a group of tech CEOs said in a report released Wednesday. The Technology CEO Council's report, delivered to President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also recommends that the US government streamline its supply chains and move agencies to shared services for mission-support activities. 'America's growing national debt is undermining our global competitiveness,' said the council, chaired by IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano. 'How we choose to confront and address this challenge will determine our future environment for growth and innovation.' If the cash-strapped US government enacted all the recommendations in the advocacy group's report, it could save between $920 billion and $1.2 trillion by 2020, the group said. The federal government could also reduce IT energy consumption by 25 percent, and it could save $200 billion over 10 years by using advanced analytics to stop improper payments, the report said."
And they'll happily provide consultation and hardware... should be about $500 Billion by 2020.
Because 1) CEOs proposed it and everyone knows they're all evil 2) The outcry of lobbyists in the industries that depend on the government wastefulness to pad their bottom line will put out the message that this is "killing private business and costing citizens their jobs."
You'll save $1.1 trillion dollars, and it'll only cost you $900B in investment! Please make check payable to IBM in capital expense dollars, not the operating expense savings that we're showing you.
It's funny how such studies show fantastic savings, but you can't actually buy the solution with those purported savings. You can't point the finger and say "these are the people you'll fire, and these are the systems that will get turned off". And the companies offering such a solution won't accept payment with the funny money savings either.
the government is already in the process of doing.
real forward thinking, dumb ass~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Fewer lawyers, fewer inmates, fewer LEO, happier population. For bonus points, get rid of excessively generous government employee pensions.
Should we be suspicious when the IBM CEO thinks the U.S. needs a massive IT overhaul? I guess you could say he is qualified to know whether it can be done or not, but it would no doubt steer a lot of money to large IT corporations, such as IBM, that are large enough to handle such a large undertaking.
It's too bad that none of those businesses are Minority or Women owned, otherwise they would get the contracts for sure. Because in the world of Government, it is
The last thing I want to see is an efficient government. In the words of Will Rogers, "Thank heaven we don't get all the government we pay for."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That summary seemed to be full of buzzwords.
Unfortunately, part of what is keeping our country propped up is the inefficiency of bureaucracy and that it allows a lot of otherwise useless people to remain employed. If you go through and wipe out a ton of government positions there won't be anywhere else for those people to go. Though, I suppose with all those savings we could just give everyone microloans that allow them to try and at least be productive at something they are interested in.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Cut accumulated debt, cut defecit*s*, or something else? The defecit is a yearly thing, and I don't think they mean to make the entire cut in a single year.
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also recommends that the U.S. government streamline its supply chains and move agencies to shared services for mission-support activities
Sounds just like... well... all the other consultants. You know, the people who come in and say "Hey, we haven't ever worked in this organization but this seems inefficient, make it better and you'll get massive savings! What? No, we haven't bothered to find out whether there is actual some reason why you are doing it in the inefficient-seeming way in the first place. If we did find that out, we couldn't make this fancy recommendations..."
I think that the first thing where government should save is this: Stop forming entities like "Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform". Any entity with such a grand name can only come up with grand suggestions that don't relate to the real world in any meaningful way. The actual improvements stem from lower levels of organizations, occur over time and resemble babysteps towards the ideal solution. Massive remakes suggested by people from outside the organizations tend to fail miserably.
Seconded. I'll also add this:
Fine countries for each citizen found illegally residing in our country, *10 for repeat offenders.
Open our governments R&D dept to beyond defense and license the tech out to the private sector to pay for our infrastructure, and help create a real need for scientists.
Create regulations to stop the salary collusion that goes on in every executive board room, bring back excess taxes to discourage excessive greed.
Reform our tax structure to pay from the bottom up, instead of top down. Make my city pay to my state, who pays to the feds.
Or do more of the same for yourselves rich fuckers, eventually enough of us little guys will be pushed so far we won't care to make it better for ourselves. Our focus will be on how bad we can make it for you.
The only way to reduce the national debt is by selling more stuff to other nations than you buy from them. Aside from energy savings (which I bet won't be anywhere close to $1T), I don't see how to switch to e-government or any of the rest of this stuff will make any difference.
No, the way to reduce the national debt is to...
wait for it...
STOP SPENDING MONEY!!!!
You can do that by turning over any service that can be performed by local and state governments to local and state governments.
BAM!!!!
Deficit solved.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
but, but, then how would the low-GDP republican-dominated flyover states siphon money from the coastal blue states to pay for their social services?
So I'm not sure which is worse, humans or machines.
I'll tell you. Humans that write long diatribes with machine fonts!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
How many billions has Treasury spent trying to update computer systems? DoJ (FBI, etc.)? Military (how long did RPAS get kicked around sucking up $$s)? The plain fact is government has a horrible track record with IT spending boondoggles.
This sounds like another one; massive cash outlays today to buy illusory future savings.
Wait a minute...that sounds like most government programs period... :-(
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
That doesn't work. You're just shuffling chairs around. You've reduced the national debt by converting it into state debt, state debt which gets paid at a higher interest rate than federal bonds. With the added bonus that nearly all states have a balanced budget requirement.
Which sounds good, until you realize that there are times when deficit spending is legitimate and necessary for the good of all those that are concerned. It's just when you start wasting money on things like pointless wars and tax breaks for the rich that you start to run into trouble.
On that note, the other way we could reduce the national debt would be to go back to taxing the rich. I know that people get outraged by it, but the fact is that even if we put the tax rate on them back at say 40% it's still far lower than what it was when Reagan took office in early '81. Back thing it was 73% IIRC.
It is a commonplace that gov't is "wastefull" and "inefficient" and full of overpaid hacks,etc etc /. and dilbert ? /., is the gov't more wastefull the MS ? doesn't anyone remember the thread where there were some number of people >10 on the MS committee to figure out what was on the vista start menu ? not to implement it or anything like that, but just the list of what was on teh default menu....
But doesn't this describe most private biz, at least viewed in the eyes of
why is private jets for CEOs no less wasteful then anything the gov't does ?
You could go a long way with this, but I think it is a Myth that large publicly traded companies are, on avg, more efficient then the gov't and there is a lot of evidence to support the opposite posistion, eg look at he amt spent on admin in the social sec administration.
To give an example: I work in a biotech lab. The other day, a guy comes in with a 400 dollar piece of equipment, "free". What gives ? well, "they" through out a whole pallet (maybe 50) of these jobbers cause the name of the company changed, and they didn't want to bother changing the logo on the equipment....
yet it is gov't that gets blamed for being wasteful.
I mean come on, this is
Debt is how much you owe, like how much your credit card balance is.
Deficit is how much you're borrowing/losing/hemorrhaging in a given time, like how much your credit card balance increases in a year.
Cutting the deficit by 1 trillion dollars would save TEN TRILLION DOLLARS in ten years.
I guess, technically, the summary could be valid if we're talking about a ten-year budget, but the national budget is something that's settled upon on an annual basis. Cutting the deficit by "an average of 100 billion dollars per year" would be more accurate.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
This is small government, letting your house burn down:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/tennessee-firefighters-watch-home-burn/
Just scale it up, and imagine what a small USA government can't do. Welcome back to third-world agricultural, Dickens, industrialization-level America.
You gotta pay to be in first-class.
i know it's not the american way, but maybe you guys should look at some of the tax curves in other countries, i really don't see how it hurts the economy to tax 5% of the population at a higher rate when it's not like they have identifiably higher spending rate (i'd say 5 people earning 50k a year would pump more back into the economy than someone earning 250k)
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Which sounds good, until you realize that there are times when deficit spending is legitimate and necessary for the good of all those that are concerned. It's just when you start wasting money on things like pointless wars and tax breaks for the rich that you start to run into trouble.
I would go even further: there is significant evidence that on average, deficit spending is a requirement for a well functioning economy in a fiat money system - where by well functioning I mean that there are no resources left to idle, in particular it means there is no waste in the form of idle production capacities and involuntary unemployment.
The key is to understand the basic mechanisms that underlie a modern monetary system, as that will forever change your understanding of the function of federal government debt. I recommend the book by economist Warren Mosler 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds for a start, it's not too long a read and really challenges your understanding of money in a good way. Once you're through with that, I recommend the blog of Australian economist Bill Mitchell, billy blog.