Name 10 Things Government Does Well
The Least, FirstMonte Asbury’s blog
Note from BFIA: Check out Monte Asbury's blog, The Least First, for refreshing, thoughtful blogging – even the comments are civil.
A dear friend of mine left a challenge in a comment.
Other than the military, can you name 10 things that the government has done really well, better than the private sector?
It’s an important question, for skepticism toward all government (rather than reform of bad government) is not only common, but at the root of a couple of major political outlooks. And because it’s important, it seemed worth a post of its own.
Here’s my quick response. Maybe you can do better:
You betcha. Off the top of my head, I’ll give you twenty, most of which are under-funded for the work they do:
1. The FAA. Crashes are a rarity here, thanks to equipment safety tests and massively successful air flight controlling.
2. Medicaid: private sector insurance companies make money by ditching their customers when they get very sick. Medicaid picks up the castoffs.
3. Social Security: What if Mr. Bush had succeeded in privatizing SS before the markets crashed? Can you imagine how many old people would be working at WalMart, since their SS would have been cut in half? And did you know that before SS, thousands of older Americans simply starved to death?
4. SCHIP: Healthcare insurance for children who would not otherwise have it – enormously preventive of school absence, long-term illness, loss of physical and mental development.
5. The CDC: How do we know that the virulence of H1N1 is less than expected? Who is telling the world that US pork is safe to eat? How do we know whether an illness is H1N1 or not? It’s all the CDC.
6. School hot lunch programs: For many children, their only serious nutrition all day every day. What industry would do it?
7. The Soil Conservation Service: though bureaucratic, there is no private industry comparable. How vastly different would America be without the wetlands your dad and a thousand like him have created.
8. Head Start: kids from homes that have seriously dysfunctional emotional and learning environments have benefited enormously.
9. The Department of Motor Vehicles: how many mistakes have you had on your car registrations or titles?
10. E911 commissions: how long does it take an ambulance or fire truck to reach you if a child who can call 911 can’t tell the operator an address? When I first came to Washington, there was simply no way to know. People died.
11. University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics – known around the world for ground-breaking medical research.
12. Open meetings laws for city, county, and state government office – nothing like it at all in the private sector. But if public officials make decisions without notifying us, they can get in big trouble.
13. Free public libraries – which most nations simply don’t have.
Blog For Iowa 
I'm going to add one gigantic area in which I think the U.S. government does a spectacular job…the U.S. Postal Service. Don't laugh. We take the USPS for granted. You will never know how good we have it until you've lived overseas. I lived overseas for 9 years in 3 different countries and there is simply no comparison to how well the USPS is run. For example, did you know that in France, when you move into an apartment, you can't just go give the post office your change of address form? Forever after, you must put the name of the first person who lived in that apartment on all your mail or you simply will not receive it. When I was teaching at Kuwait University, the school would occasionally send a staffer over to the PO to pick up our mail. He would then bring it back at his leisure and bring it up to our office. We sometimes waited for two weeks to get any mail, with all of us longing to hear from home. So, several times, I drove over to the PO and asked them if I could get my mail. Without even looking at any ID, they let me in behind the mail boxes. The university mail box was stuffed to the brim and overflowing onto the floor. So, I'd go through all that and I'd go through another bin or two and I'd grab all the mail of every teacher who worked in my unit. Then I'd take it back to the campus and distribute it. Can you imagine such a casual attitude existing in regards to the postal system here?
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