I often wonder why people think that private industry is more efficient. It could be that I am jaded by 25 years of working in US corporations and investing in our stock markets, but the US Govt is usually a much better return on my investment dollar.

Let's look at a few examples, but there are literally hundreds.

1) Microsoft. Ms spends roughly 8 billion per year on labor, but hasn't produced any well-placed market items in the last 10 years. It's successes are few (Windows 7, Kinect). The only thing that saves them is the market need for office (which is dwindling) and the Windows OS. In terms of return on investment, it's nice to know that they are profitable, but exactly why are they spending 8 billion per year with very little result?

2) Sun Micro. What the hell is wrong with this company? They have been inefficient wasting nearly every investor dollar poured into them over the past 20 years. Their products are generally not a great value. If there were a govt agency this inefficient, it would have been shuttered a long time ago.

3) General Motors. This company has repeatedly lost money or barely broken even for 10 years. They were the most profitable company in the World in 1996 (or 1997, I cannot remember) and now they limp along due to bad mgmt decisions again and again. Of the Big 3, only Ford is doing a really good job and of all major auto manufactures in the US (Toyota, Honda, and many other manufactures), the only star is Ford. So, out of 5 auto makers, only 1 is a good investment and that means about a 20% efficiency rating (depending on how you measure these things). This makes investing in the US automaker market only slightly more efficient than the combustion engine (around 15%)

/------------------------- Now let's look at some govt.

1) Welfare money has a 98.5% efficiency. That is to say, for every dollar paid into that system, about 15% goes to labor and administration, and the rest goes into the hands of the recipients. Granted, I am cherry picking here because Welfare is known to be the most efficient govt program we have.

2) Nasa. This govt agency produces almost nothing. Yet, by it's mandate, it is 96-98% efficient meaning that if we pay them a dollar, we can account for the labor, materials and rocket acquisition, and advertising (yes, they has massive expenditures on outreach). They are highly resourceful and a very efficient agency producing a lot of free science that benefits most of us.

3) The military. Long known to be the most inefficient and wasteful govt agency, the US military is still 40-45% efficient. This makes your dollars that you pour in more likely to create a net benefit than if you invested broadly in the US auto market by over 2x.

Our govt is not perfect, but it is efficient, generally has nearly perfect oversight compared to most corporations which have very little oversight, and is in most measures far more efficient than corporations... particularly large corporations. In fact, it's hard to find a company that provides a better return on investment (in terms of cost-benefits ) than nearly all govt agencies except the military.

/-------------------------

So, why the bad knocks? Why do we consider govt so inefficient. Even as a consumer/citizen... I get a lot more bang for my buck when the govt does something. If I hire some mom/pop (or large corporation) to run a wedding or feed the homeless, after profit and so on, the best that I can hope for is around 80% (and that level of efficiency is rare... 30-40% is more common). When we ask the govt to run a homeless shelter, do parks and recreation, or almost anything, we get a much better value.

Am I smoking crack? It really seems that the US govt is at least twice as efficient as any other money-making organization to me but 25 years of working in corporate America...