164-3-742
To lose weight, governments have to do two things: learn how to do more with less, which means modernising the state, and cut back on what they offer, which among other things means tackling the social transfers. Both are inevitable, but the first offers the best chance of immediate gains.
Most attempts to “re-engineer” government thus far have fared poorly. But the failures of the current system are getting ever more obvious, especially given the jaw-droppingly large variances in performance. Why should one British health area have eight times more “unscheduled admissions” (the costly sort) than its very similar neighbour? Why should Americans spend twice as much on health as Swedes yet die younger? Each new international education ranking makes it clearer that American schools and continental European universities do not lack money, as unions claim, but need to hire better staff—and be able to sack lousy teachers. Merely bringing the useless bits of the public sector up to something close to average would save a fortune and improve services dramatically. And there are also common themes that emerge time and again: pay good staff well make performance transparent simplify taxes (see article) and move towards a small core civil service with a lot of competing suppliers for services.

A. 어휘
tackling 처리하다. inevitable 불가피한. fare 되어가다, 지내다.
current system 현재의 시스템. jaw-droppingly 턱이 떨어져 나갈 만큼, 대단히.
variance 偏差(편차), 변이, 변동. sack 해임하다.
lousy 불결한. themes 주제. time and again 반복해서.
transparent 투명한. core 핵심적인. suppliers 공급자(업체)