One of my Facebook friends linked to this editorial from the Weather Channel about a proposed 17 percent budget cut to NOAA. Americans will die, said these Hillary supporters, if the Trumpenfuhrer’s cruel axe falls on NOAA.
One question is why would a federal agency’s work suffer from a budget cut? If NOAA is like the USDA, they could fire half of their workers without any effect on productivity. Given that Federal workers are paid roughly 2X the private sector average (higher salary plus more valuable benefits, especially pension), there could simply be a 17-percent pay cut and almost nobody would quit (since their compensation would still be higher than what is obtainable elsewhere).
Let’s assume, however, that NOAA would have to shut down the hurricane forecasts that are cited by the Weather Channel. I linked to “Are Europeans Better Than Americans at Forecasting Storms?” (Scientific American 2015), which says that the European weather nerds continuously forecast the same hurricanes and do a better job.
- me: How would you be affected if the U.S. government stopped forecasting hurricanes? What is wrong with the European forecasts that are available at no cost to U.S. taxpayers?
- Passionate Democrat 1: “National security vulnerability”
- Passionate Democrat 2: “The 2016 and 2017 budgets addressed the computing gap” (i.e., if we only had a fancier computer we would kick those European asses; it is not that they might be smarter than us regarding physics)
- me: “Why not cut NOAA back to gathering data to give to the Europeans? Where’s the national security risk? We don’t trust our allies in Europe to give us weather forecasts when we ask?”
- Passionate Democrat 1: “It’s not just trusting them to give us weather forecasts, it’s trusting their integrity protections. An attack on the US could be enabled by perhaps a one hour blackout of weather forecasts if well timed. So $ENEMY gets into their system. Ok, they could get into our system. But we could respond to that, or ensure redundancy etc, directly. Fast warfare happens in the air, so does weather.” (i.e., now that Marissa Mayer and her team at Yahoo have freed up they can show the Europeans how computer security is done)
- me: “What if we could form a military alliance with some of these efficient and capable Europeans? Maybe get something formal together with the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and other advanced economies in Europe? Do you think that it would be possible to have some kind of organization where we didn’t have to be solely responsible for everything military?” [this was apparently too oblique; nobody read this as a reference to the already-existing NATO]
- Passionate Democrat 1: “Not for something as fundamental as weather is to military operations. We might as well have them running the simulations for response deployments in the event of an attack.”
- me: “It looks like there is already a parallel military weather forecasting operation. Why would the feared cuts to NOAA prevent these military forecasters from continuing to do what you say is critical national security work?”
- Passionate Democrat 2: “It’s not just blackout, etc. It’s getting the specific information you want for your operations. We might be able to pay for that — but a major reason our forecast quality declined after 2013 is we didn’t budget money for commercial data like Tamdar. Is it really more efficient to pay someone else to do something? Doubtful — they’d have to ramp up their capabilities to provide the results we need, including buying the commercial data. … it’s not just military that has specific needs. FEMA, for example.”
- me: “How do the European countries survive then? Does each country say ‘we can’t take the security risk of relying on European weather forecasting so we’ll build our own domestic operation’? Why doesn’t a 10-year-old with a rifle take over France if France doesn’t have its own NOAA-style agency?”
- Passionate Democrat 1: ” Imagine $ENEMY changing hurricane tracking just slightly, enough that we mistakenly conclude there’s no need to secure NYC.”
- me: “Your point about NYC being unprepared is a good one, but doesn’t that suggest that we shouldn’t rely on the low reliability U.S. forecasts and should instead rely on the high reliability European ones?”
This is a selection from roughly 100 responses involving a bunch more Americans. All of them were terrified about losing something for which a free and arguably superior alternative exists on the Web.
Obviously the NOAA budget is small change and, as a pilot, certainly I would be the last person to suggest cutting it even if we do have trouble figuring out how to borrow the next $20 trillion. What I find interesting about the above is the reaction to any reduction in the Great Father in Washington’s responsibilities for us.
> they could fire half of their
>workers without any effect
>on productivity
This point is irrelevant because nobody is proposing to find and fire the right “half”. The problem is that nobody has devised a system which can reliably identify and fire poor performing government employees without significantly increasing the risk of patronage and corruption.
>Given that Federal workers
>are paid roughly 2X the
>private sector average
It is inconsistent for you to insist on comparing individuals performing similar work when discussing the gender pay gap but then rely on comparing averages when discussing the difference between private and public sector pay. It would be more consistent (and better analysis) to compare individuals performing similar work when comparing private and public sector pay.
>me: How would you be
>affected if the U.S.
>government stopped
>forecasting hurricanes?
>What is wrong with the
>European forecasts that
>are available at no cost
>to U.S. taxpayers?
I simply don’t believe that the same spectrum and level of service that NOAA provides the U.S. is available for free from European forecasters. Even if it were, there is no compelling reason for the U.S. to rely on and freeload off of the Europeans.
>What I find interesting about the above is the reaction
>to any reduction in the Great Father in Washington’s
>responsibilities for us.
Isn’t it obvious that the purpose of this cut is to punish the agency for its work on climate change even if that punishment produces adverse impacts on U.S. taxpayers. Ultimately, the reaction is driven by this unpalatable political intuition.
Having worked in four different governmental agencies my opinion is that a quarter to a half of the workforce could be fired and it would make no difference given the managerial incompetence of the bureaucracies (spoiler alert: good managers don’t go work for the federal government) and other factors. The federal government is so big and complicated it would be impossible to weed out the unnecessary workers and retain the good ones. So the way I would go about it would be to take every government worker’s social security number, them into a really big barrel and, spin the barrel and then pull out numbers at random — kind of like the lottery. You could also do it electronically but the big barrel would have more drama with each week a new batch of government workers out the door. The president in fact could be the one who pulls the numbers out of the barrel. Sure there would be a lot of unpleasant stories that the media could mine forever, the woman supporting seven kids or the guy who worked seven days a week and never took a vacation, both unfairly canned — while some lazy slob who wanders into the office at 4pm when he is not off on disability keeps his job. But on average I think it would produce the optimal result.
People don’t realize how disproportionately “diverse” the federal government is. It’s impossible to fire many people because they are bringing valuable diversity to the table.
I find my discussions with both the right and left online seem to always involve preserving if not outright expanding the Great Father’s duties.
In one discussion, a professor lamented the low amount of federal spending on research. I looked up the salaries of scientists and they seemed to be the same or declining over many years. I told the professor why should she get more money if there is no apparent demand for more scientists? Her response was that the data is not counting all the alternative careers….so we should give money to her for one purpose but expect an alternative, unidentifiable outcome.
The mane impact would be a reduction in traditional government weather satellites, but the private sector is already doing a better job collecting Earth imagery. The traditional geostationary satellites are up to costing many billions. The image quality is far inferior to a common DSLR, they’re always malfunctioning, & the frame rates are still limited by the need to photograph an entire hemisphere at a time. The private sector already has a capability to launch massive numbers of low Earth orbiting satellites for a lot less money. They’re a lot more redundant, the images can be stitched into a hemisphere view, the cameras are a lot newer, & they can get video.
What I don’t get from my liberal friends is, at what point will they start to think it is time to reduce the budget? When we reach 30 trillion in debt? 50 trillion? 100 trillion? Do they think money grows on trees?
Trump’s cuts have been farcical – it’s like a drop in the ocean. What we really need to do is cut down on the big ones: Social Security, Medicare, and Military+Veterans Benefits, and oh yeah, the interest!
What about a 5% cut on Social Security, 5% cut on Medicare, and 20% cut on the Military?
It became obvious over the last five years that there is no plan or solution and there will be a fiscal crisis and default, and likely also a currency crisis. Pretty much every industrialized country, including China, is now hopelessly insolvent and rapidly digging the hole deeper. I guess there will be a global jubilee and reset back to the gold standard after it blows up.
GermanL – I think the narrative is that debt doesn’t matter as long as we have the world’s reserve currency. In fact, the idea is that deficit spending is good for us and stabilizes the economy. I’m no economist, but it sounds like the insurance salesman who wanted me to use life insurance to ‘be my own bank.’
Sam and GermanL – If deficits are what concern you then its best to vote democratic. Since the Eisenhower administration (inclusive), the Federal deficit has gone up nearly twice as fast under Republican presidents as Democratic presidents.
@Sam – My understanding is that with traditional Keynesian spending deficits and surpluses are supposed to balance out over the business cycle but there is some evidence that a sustainable deficit (averaged over the business cycle) is better for economic growth. I think the argument is that historically very small deficits and/or surpluses have been associated with slower economic growth, but I’m not certain this is correct argument or that this association is in fact correct.
Passionate Democrat 2 is a moron. Sorry to say.
The problem with using forecasts from other countries is that they have not been optimised for outside their area. Typically forecasting agencies use a GFS or ECMWF model and then run it in high-resolution for their forecasting area. So most European models will not have the US in high resolution, and therefore the accuracy of the forecast goes down, especially for more unstable predictions like hurricane path, when a storm will hit, etc. For the same reason the US forecasters are typically rubbish at predicting European weather.
As a European it has always puzzled me why in the US there are so many competing weather forecasts (with greatly varying accuracy) and people do not just use the government’s forecast (which doesn’t seem that bad to me, at least in weather.gov).
As a previous US federal employee, the notion that federal employees are paid more than in the private sector is completely rubbish. I don’t know how such averages are calculated, but from my anecdotal experience, for positions of similar skill, I have yet to find a federal employee that does not earn substantially less than in the private sector. The same holds true for virtually every country I worked in.
@GermanL: why are in you a hurry to pay up that debt when interest rates are at record lows? Did you really fall for the “a country is like a household” fallacy used to justify austerity (which, by the way, is working wonders in Europe)?
@Tiago
And what happens when interest rates rise? Have you thought of that? You mention Austerity… I am talking about Reality.
We have been ‘priming the pump’ for more than 8 years now with fiscal stimulus and bubble producing monetary policy. Is it working?
Again, at what point do you think the debt will be too much? 30 Trillion? 100 Trillion? At what point do you think it is unsustainable?
@GermanL: when interest rates rise it makes less sense to borrow and more sense to repay the debt. You seem to be talking about a future that stubbornly doesn’t happen, I’m talking about right now. Aside from the early Obama stimulus (which arguably saved lots of jobs in the US) there has been virtually no stimulus in the US (in fact, with sequester and so on the federal government has been in mild austerity).
I don’t know at what point too much debt is too much. But considering history, it certainly is a lot more than the US have right now. For countries like the US and the UK, who borrow in their own currency, it hardly even matters. It is never a problem to repay the debt. I hope you don’t subscribe to the Reinhart–Rogoff bullshit that a debt more than 90% GDP will lead to terrible things. Have you ever wondered what happened to the UK debt after WWII (and earlier)?
@Tiago
“It is never a problem to repay the debt.” I guess so, when you can print your own currency, if that is what you are getting at. You just increase inflation – another form of stealth tax on the citizens. I’m from Argentina, I’ve seen it all before. Keep thinking you are exceptional…
@GermanL – This article from Bloomberg (link below) indicates that we could close the deficit entirely by raising taxes to Poland’s levels which still wouldn’t put us in the top 20 countries for tax collections. From there we could grow our debt down to pre-Reagan levels within a decade. I know our host thinks it is impossible to raise taxes, but according to Bloomberg there are 24 other countries which do in fact manage to collect more in taxes than we do. The U.S. financial situation may be serious, but it isn’t dire.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-11/sorry-america-your-taxes-aren-t-high