James Q Wilson

Political scientist James Q Wilson recently passed away.  For your consideration, here is one of his thoughts on why civil servants in modern bureaucracies work and think the way they do.

First, public sector agencies are not allowed to retain earnings, and therefore have no incentive towards economizing costs. A public agency that ends the fiscal year with a surplus because of efficient operations cannot distribute those savings to its managers and employees as incentives, but rather is likely to see its budget cut for the next year on the grounds that it was allocated too much in the first place. This explains the rush to push money out the door at the end of the fiscal year whether the spending is needed or not, and why bureaucracies are so often inefficient...

How true.