RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The poet Robert Burns’ advice “to see ourselves as others see us” is as valuable for societies as for individuals. Unfortunately, societies examine themselves just as rarely as humans do. Ignoring the obvious is human nature, collectively as well as individually.
That was obvious to me while reading a newspaper here in Brazil. An article noted that people increasingly fail to show up to take civil service exams. In one case, some 480 people per available opening signed up to take the test. But only 340 candidates per job actually took the test.
The article framed the question in terms of declining social responsibility: People registered for a civil service exam should go through with it!
To an economist, the phenomenon of hundreds of people taking exams for each available government job screams one important fact. Compensation for Brazilian civil servants is much too high compared to the private sector. But getting a government job in Brazil, as in many other developing countries, means that one has it made for life.
The very hiring process wastes resources. A friend estimated that applicants will spend a collective 150,000 person-hours applying for jobs recently advertised by Petrobras, the national oil company.
When I observed to Brazilian friends that civil servants here are overpaid, they did not see my reasoning. Yes, many people applied for each job. But in their view, civil service jobs were not all that good and should pay more. Cutting government employment or wages would be a mistake.
Economists look at countries like France and Germany where regulations make it difficult to lay off employees. They see persistently high unemployment as an inevitable result. The general public in both countries, however, views continuing such labor market regulation as a necessary response to unemployment, not as an underlying cause.
We in the United States have our own blind spots. Voters respond to anti-tax campaign pledges. But we are curiously sanguine about high federal budget deficits and extremely skewed balance-of-payments accounts. This year, only a few candidates will run on a platform of deficit reduction and it is not clear it will help them much.
We spend a much higher proportion of our gross domestic product on health care than do many European countries with comparable health statistics. In absolute dollar terms, we often spend twice as much as countries like Sweden or the Netherlands.
We all complain about our health care system. But few of us are willing to examine how specific features of the system contribute to high costs or declining access. We don’t want socialized medicine, rationing of care or government limits on covered treatments. We don’t want taxes to rise or limits on our choices of doctors or hospitals. Meanwhile, our European friends wonder why we ignore the obvious.
© 2006 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.