Experiences of the U.S. defense industry in contracting out without competitive bidding
Homework
Discuss the recent experiences of the U.S. defense industry in contracting out without competitive bidding. Are they successful ventures? What might be the fundamental problem in these contracts?
Lately, the United States defense industry has put more focus on the cost-plus type of contract ignoring the number of risks involved and not supervising the private contractors (Mahoney, 50-59). Nevertheless, the number of contacts has improved and at the same time, the workforce for managing these contracts has reduced. This has resulted in restrictions for the government to establish a correct agreement or contract with the contractor. Contracting out is likely to be delivering the efficiency gains if the candidate contractors are competing to deliver increased accountability for service providers, benefits of cost savings, improved work and management practices, better services flexibility, improved service quality, and improved equipment and capital utilization to the government in competitive bidding. Regrettably, a huge number of defense industry contracts such as Applied Energetics, DHB Industries, and Wackenhut Corporation are not competitive. All of these contracts failed. The main problem of these contracts is not meeting the needs of the contractor for instance the contract of Applied Energetics was canceled out because the commander in the unit in Afghanistan did not meet the requirements that were needed.
To Charlie, the marginal benefit (MB) of national defense is MB = 4,500 – 90Q, where Q measures units of national defense. Sally’s marginal benefit is MB = 3,000 – 60Q. The marginal cost of providing national defense is constant and equal to $2,700. Calculate the efficient quantity of national defense. Graph aggregate MB and MC to illustrate the efficient quantity of national defense (label functions and include all relevant values in the graph). Assume policymakers can choose the efficient level of national defense because they know each voter’s marginal benefit function. If tax shares are set to force each person to pay exactly what they think national defense is worth at the optimal level, what is Charlie’s tax share, and what is Sally’s tax share?
The units of national defense for efficient quantity is 32. Working this amount of quantity into the MB function of Charlie and Sally is shows that Charlie values the thirty-second unit at $1,620, which is sixty percent of the cost. Therefore, tax for Charlie is supposed to be sixty percent. Sally should have the remaining percentage of the tax that is forty percent, for the national defense.
President Barack Obama appointed Arne Duncan to be the Secretary of Education in 2009. Discuss Secretary Duncan’s methods to address education woes during his tenure as CEO of the Chicago public school system as well as his efforts during his term as Secretary of Education. Summarize the views of his supporters and opponents
Arne Duncan put more focus on the local primary, secondary education, and charter schools to implement better needs on the students and professors (Pinkerton, 46). He demonstrated the willingness of helping the schools that were failing and open more than a hundred educational institutions. Duncan passed legislation that was directing about fifty-four billion dollars to invest in schools and creating job opportunities, and twenty-five billion dollars was allocated to educated the students that were not financially stable (51). The supporters considered these changes as fundamental education reform. The opposition to the bill that helped charter schools, including Gerald Bracey said that Duncan is blackmailing states. The stated that there is no evidence to justify the benefit of the charter schools
Work cited
Mahoney, Charles W. “Buyer beware: How market structure affects contracting and company performance in the private military industry.” Security studies 26.1 (2017): 30-59.
Pinkerton, M. Jodilyn. Educational Leadership Model: An Historical Analysis of Arne Duncan (2001-2015) as Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools and as Secretary of Education of the United States of America, and Impact of His Leadership Style on Implementation of Educational Initiatives. Diss. Loyola University Chicago, 2020.