What Government Does

High Level Summary

What does our government do for us? We know it provides roads and police which is important and enables our way of life, but government does a whole lot more and is a large and complex system.

The Roles of Government

Government includes the activities of lawmaking, law enforcement and judicial review.  And government occurs at the local, state, and federal levels.  Actions of government include setting rules and monitoring the safety of products, food, water, air, land, and cities. The government supports or provides the following services including:

·       Public education including K-12, colleges, and universities.

·       Law enforcement and protection of individual liberties through the legal justice system, including local police, the court system, and correctional facilities.

·       Security against and response to terrorism, and other threats, including international threats, through the military and national guard.

·       Response, prevention and recovery from natural disasters such as wildfires, flooding, earthquakes, landslides, tornados, and hurricanes.

·       Management of infrastructure including building and maintaining roads, bridges, and transportation including air travel and railroads.

·       Healthcare including programs that provide support for hospitals and programs that provide food and services for people in need, along with oversight of food and pharmaceutical safety.  For example the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) not only identifies emerging health threats, such as disease outbreaks and natural disasters, but also provides public information and education about health.

·       Social insurance programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, that provide retirement, medical, and disability benefits.

·       Economic management, including monitoring the economy and our financial systems, and monitoring economic growth and public finances.

·       Regulation of industries that protect consumers, workers, and the environment, including safety, manufacturing, agriculture, power generation, and scientific research.

Government activities include the funding and promoting of scientific research in energy (e.g. nuclear), health, technology, and environmental protection. These activities help protect people and improve the economy.

With many people and laws to support, the federal, state and local government is a large system that employs as many as 24 million people. It is a complex system that we rely on, but in many respects we take it for granted as it works in the background to provide security and support for millions of people, organizations, industry, transportation, infrastructure, including buildings and cities, and energy (including generation, transmission, and distribution).

Government provides and supports services that supply healthcare, water, waste management, telecommunications, land management, and many other services that support our human society.

It is important to understand that government often takes on services and production that industry would not address, because those services and products would not provide sufficient profits for industry. For example, a drug that only helps a very small group of people may not be of interest for development and distribution by pharmaceutical companies.  Another example is our postal system -- can you imagine any company offering to deliver a letter for less than one dollar?

One good discussion of what the government does can be found in the following YouTube video of Jon Stewart’s The Weekly Show interview with Michael Lewis, about the New York Times collection, "Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service.”

For example, Michael Lewis said, “People don't know what their taxpayer dollars are doing for them.” You can watch the video at the following YouTube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79_n1FKZwHo

Challenges of Government

As you can imagine with such a large and complex system at many levels, the government must also monitor itself to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. Personnel, systems, and procedures have to be constantly monitored and examined to provide effective administration of government operations.  This requires organizing, planning, oversight, and intergovernmental communication and coordination. While some system bureaucracies add time and cost, the fact that we take the government system in place for granted speaks to the generally effective operation of this system.  Many people in and outside of government strive to improve the system and over time government has evolved and improved as we learn more, correct mistakes, improve the system, and apply innovative techniques such as automation and other efficiencies.

In fact even with a growing population, the number of people working in government compared to the total U.S. population has been reduced over time. The federal workforce, for example has declined from 1.1% of the U.S. population in 1967 to 0.6% in 2018, as described in the following story:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/

But as you can imagine addressing diverse opinions about how to do things in a democracy is a challenge.  Often there are no easy answers or clear decisions, and many people will disagree on the best ways to improve a system. We have to work to represent all citizens in a democracy which is not easy.  For the government to provide for dialogue and disagreement is part of this process.

There are many opinions for how our government should work.  It is possible that the following quote attributed to Winston Churchill summarizes the challenge for democracy to address the needs and opinions of all people:

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others".

There is no easy way to implement a democracy, but working together we can strive to make our government work better for more people.