Inflation Might Spell Doom For WokenessVoters have been conned into paying an inflated price for inefficient and ineffective policies.
JANUARY 17, 2022
LEWIS M. ANDREWS
As more people, both in the U.S. and around the world, wake up to the reality of spiraling inflation, it becomes clear just how much of the overspending and deficits driving inflation are attributable to self-serving government inefficiencies. As the great economist Friedrich von Hayek once said, outbreaks of inflation are almost always “engineered by governments for the gain of governments.”
* * *
It shouldn’t be surprising that waste and inefficiency account for a significant portion of government overspending. Because the cost of every public service is annually folded into a much bigger federal, state, or city budget, creeping inefficiencies and even outright fraud are almost always guaranteed to escape timely correction. It is only when, as now, average citizens begin to feel the delayed inflationary consequences that public spending finally becomes a pressing political issue.
* * *
Regrettably, the public sector’s efforts to resist efficient restructuring have not been limited to demonizing the most promising reforms. Many of those who work in and for government have discovered how easily an arcane theory purporting to show how the social structure unfairly benefits white males—”critical race theory”—can camouflage inefficiency and waste.
In other words, the public sector avoid can institutional accountability by masking its mediocre-at-best performance with the high-minded rhetoric of social justice. Williams College professor Darel E. Paul calls this contriving the appearance of “noble tasks” to justify the opposite.
The most obvious example in the U.S. is the effort by public educators to substitute bilingual instruction, gender-neutral language, classroom activism, gradeless coursework, and other therapeutic endeavors for traditional, rigorous academic programs. This switch allows American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten to brag that all public school “children [have] a fair chance to achieve their dreams and reach their potential,” even as statistics show low-performing U.S. students making absolutely no gains over the last 30 years.
Social-service bureaucracies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities similarly attempt to substitute sociological enlightenment for actual performance. Instead of holding themselves accountable for local instances of carjacking, public urination, molestation, property destruction, and other offenses, urban institutions seek to be evaluated by the sophistication of their racial and gender outlooks.
* * *
Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/inflation-might-spell-doom-for-wokeness/
