Personnel and Capacity

Matt Yglesias has a good post up today about military personnel costs that makes a point that I think is broadly applicable across government. Matt writes:

The soldiers themselves are the military's most important weapons, and also the most expensive ones. And the only way to reduce these costs is to either have fewer soldiers, or else to over time accept a lower quality of recruits. And that in turn would mean giving them either fewer missions, less ambitious missions, or some combination of the two.

Ditto for civilian agencies. Federal civilian employees may be somewhat less expensive than some soldiers, but the same scalability questions apply. With agencies already swamped by rising demand for social services like food stamps, the Obama administration may have to consider expanding capacity if it wants agencies to do more, and do more successfully.