WHAT PARTS OF THE GOVERNMENT should be permanently furloughed?

Foreign Policy magazine tends to be a liberal domain, so there’s lots to quibble about in the first 8 items, but they generally come off as reasonably thoughtful. But the ninth? The best that can be said is that Michael Lind, of the New America Foundation, has come unglued. Here is his contribution (in italics):

[T]the federal government is too small, not too large, and should be expanded. At the price of inefficiency, things which could be done more simply and efficiently by the federal government have been delegated to the states or subsidized private corporations.

Name one thing - just one - that the federal government has ever done more simply or efficiently.

For example, hybrid federal-state programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance are threatened by unstable state revenues, unlike purely federal programs like Social Security.

Uh, Social Security is stable? Only Harry Reid doesn't recognize it is destined for eventual bankruptcy.

Tax-favored private retirement savings programs like IRAs and 401k's are riskier than Social Security and allow brokers to fleece unsuspecting clients with their fees. These programs should be shrunk and Social Security should be expanded.

Not so. My social security check is not nearly as big as it could have been had I been allowed to invest privately what I paid in FICA taxes.

Medical cost inflation threatens both the efficient Medicare program and the dysfunctional, employer-based health insurance sector.

Employer-based health “care” is dysfunctional because of government interference, not in spite of it.

The solution is cost controls, not rationing access to health care by Americans.

Wrong again. Cost control is a means of rationing access.

In a rational country, the federal government would take over functions that never should have been shared with the states or off-loaded onto the private sector.

Only if “rational” and “insane” are synonyms.

Higher federal taxes would be offset somewhat by lower state taxes and the abolition of tax subsidies for private insurance and private retirement savings.

It’s sufficient to just say “higher federal taxes.”