Way back in 2009, in the early days of writing this column, I shared an image that aptly summarizes the bad things that happen when politicians interfere with economic liberty.
The simple message is that more government is almost always the wrong answer.
Today, we’re going to look at an example of how government spending is the wrong answer.
Here are some excerpts from a story in the Washington Post, but the headline tells you everything you need to know.
The offer to military veterans left unemployed by the coronavirus pandemic was tantalizing: A year of online courses courtesy of the federal government. Graduates would be set up for good jobs in high-demand fields… Schedules were disorganized and courses did not follow a set syllabus. School-provided laptops couldn’t run critical software. And during long stretches of scheduled class time, students were left without instruction… The disarray…is the most painful example of broader problems with the $386 million Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program, or VRRAP. …nearly 90 schools have had their approvals yanked, according to VA officials, including several that were actively serving about 100 veterans. …only about 6,800 veterans had enrolled in the program, far fewer than the 17,250 Congress created it to serve, the agency said; just 397 had landed new jobs.
Some of you may be tempted to conclude that the program was a success since it did result in 397 jobs.
Others will conclude it was a failure since the budget was $386 million, implying each job cost taxpayers nearly $1 million.
I sympathize with the second conclusion, of course, but here are two questions that need to be answered.
- How many of those 6,800 veterans would have landed new jobs if they didn’t participate in the program?
- How much economic activity would have been generated if the $386 million was left in the private sector?
Suffice to say, the answers to those questions would show more jobs and more prosperity if the program was never created.
Incidentally, the story, authored by Lisa Rein and Yeganeh Torbati, includes this depressing bit of information.
The troubles with VRRAP were achingly predictable: A similar program rolled out in 2012 — the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program, or VRAP — also failed to attract students and was widely regarded as a flop.
In other words, it was already known that this specific type of program would be a flop.
Heck, there are decades of evidence that all types of government job-training programs are a failure.
So why did Congress approve this scheme?
Unfortunately, the story only tells us that this program was part of Biden’s failed $1.9 trillion stimulus boondoggle, but it does not tell us which politicians on Capitol Hill pushed the plan.
I’m sure we would find those politicians got a lot of campaign contributions from that the interest groups that financially benefited the boondoggle.
All part of Washington’s corrupt version of recycling.
P.S. Since today’s column highlighted how a headline can have a powerful message, here are some previous headlines that caught my attention.
- Least surprising headline
- Disappointingly inaccurate headline
- Insufficiently accurate headline
- Grossly dishonest headline
- Most predictable headline
- Multiple headlines that say the same thing
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Image credit: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.
