Briefs | Globe Editorial
By year’s end, an estimated 1.5 million unemployed workers will have exhausted their federal benefits, which last between 46 and 79 weeks, depending on the state. With six workers vying for each open job, Congress needs to get busy on extending the allotment. With jobs so scarce, economists aren’t especially worried that extensions would be an incentive to loaf. The average weekly benefit is $300. The economic recovery remains a long way off, but the unemployed are still living just around the corner.
Government: Like Scrooge, but in a good way
State and local officials could soon run out of excuses for tolerating bloat in government. A new website from the Ash Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School - try searching “Better, Faster, Cheaper’’ - highlights the best innovations from across the public sector. Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis, is a self-confessed plunderer of good ideas, which earned him a reputation for efficiency and a professorship at Harvard. In a recent issue of Governing magazine, Goldsmith says attentive officials could reduce the operating costs of nearly any public agency by 10 to 20 percent. Goldsmith is a veteran of the budget wars of the 1990s. So he has plenty of credibility when he says there are choices beyond raising taxes or slashing services.
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