There’s an interesting post at RealClearPolicy on the potential for substantially improved earnings from assets owned by the federal government if they were placed under professional management:
In the U.S., for every 1 percentage point increase in yield from the federal government’s asset portfolio, general taxes could be lowered by 4 percent. Worldwide, professional management of public commercial wealth among central governments could easily raise returns by as much as 3.5 points, to generate an extra $2.7 trillion. This is more than the total current global spending on national infrastructure — for transport, power, water, and communications combined. This alone should make every individual citizen, taxpayer, investor, financial analyst, and stakeholder stand up and pay attention. And it should spur demand for action.
More than 25 percent of all land in the U.S. is owned by the federal government. Along with all this land, it holds buildings with a book value of $1.5 trillion. In addition, state and local government assets amount to $6 trillion. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis calculates that the value of nonfinancial public assets in the U.S., as a whole, was equal to 74 percent of GDP in 2011.
The post continues to develop this idea in considerable detail.
The reasons this will never happen are obvious: professional management would present fewer opportunities for graft. According to Gallup today Americans consider the federal government the single largest problem facing the country and this illustrates why. We know what’s going on—that the politicians we elect are in it for themselves. They may not start off that way but by the time they’ve been in office for ten or twenty or forty years they have so conflated the public good with their personal benefit they can’t see the difference.
This would be a good opportunity to make an observation about Bill and Hillary Clinton but you can fill in the blanks for yourself.
Meh. My bet is that the benefits would mostly go to the well placed folks who buy those assets or manage them. The taxpayer would see little relief. OTOH, private enterprise is much less corrupt. I would like to expand upon that but I need to go check the value of the Enron stock that my investment advisor (Bernie M) manages for me. Love those 10% returns every year.
Steve
The larger a centralized government’s power becomes the more it imitates a hoarder’s clutter, in that the management of so much usually weakens the quality of oversight over what one has accumulated. Tom Coburn repeatedly attempted to draw attention to the enormous waste flowing through the fingers of government bureaucracies. However, no one in government seems to listen. After all it’s not their money. And, when there are fiscal shortages all politicians do is squeal about the need for others to pay their “fair share,” allowing government to continue their willful mismanagement of revenue and public assets.
Ms Yellen and her band of cheerleaders have fixed the equity return problem, steve.