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re: Federal govt employement is 3 million or 23 million ????
Posted on 2/28/25 at 11:31 am to Trevaylin
Posted on 2/28/25 at 11:31 am to Trevaylin
There are not 23 million federal employees, but I have no doubt there are at least 23 million people whose jobs directly or indirectly depend on federal contracts, funding, and general "normal" operations of the federal government. Multiply that to include their spouses and children and you have 50-75 million people reliant on a large federal government, not including the 100+ million more collecting entitlement checks. Add all that up and you have a 1929 level economic depression in this country that takes everyone down with it if you try to tackle it all at once.
There are orderly ways to tackle the deficit like the bipartisan cooperation of the 1990's and disorderly ways. Trust me, you do not want to see the consequences of a fast and disorderly way. For better or worse, the whole economy is reliant on federal spending. Eisenhower warned us and no one listened.
There are orderly ways to tackle the deficit like the bipartisan cooperation of the 1990's and disorderly ways. Trust me, you do not want to see the consequences of a fast and disorderly way. For better or worse, the whole economy is reliant on federal spending. Eisenhower warned us and no one listened.
1
Posted on 2/28/25 at 11:50 am to Gaston
quote:
humans don’t just work less hard because of who is paying.
I agree with this. The contractor isn't necessarily entirely to blame for a shitty product. Government personnel overseeing contracts often don't have qualified people overseeing them, plus government has so much bureaucracy and red tape even within that they follow, which all leads to higher costs and longer times for contracted work to be completed. Also, if a contractor receives shite input from the government for what is needed, they can only make something shitty from it.
The government is absolutely to blame for why it's respective contract work costs more and is shittier than for private companies.
Posted on 2/28/25 at 10:21 pm to UltimaParadox
quote:
I came up with around 7x base salary for total cost
Can you share how you came up with this number? After this all started, I started looking into the govt benefits etc, and it appears I might be missing something.
You. have to be deep inside the org to do it - I was in that position in a couple of organizations.
1. So you have the basic cost of salary + burden (benefits, OH mgmt costs, etc). For government, that will get you around 2x base salary.
2. Then you have facilities costs and maintenance costs on that facility, plus equipment costs. Government tends to seriously overpay here.
3. It seemed that where I was, very few government workers did not have multiple contractors supporting them in their jobs. In some cases, the contractor actually did the job that the government worker didn't or couldn't do. I've had to teach government engineering staff the basics of their job, even developed multiple versions of a class for different levels of "expertise".
4. Then you have stupid levels of waste. I can't even begin to describe some of the stuff without getting angry. High end CAD/CAE stations that sat idle all day because the government workers either didn't know how to use them or didn't want to. Buying excess crap at the end of the period just to burn all of the budget, then storing it (which cost more $) or selling it surplus.
It's been over 20 years now, I wish I could give you more detail, but so much of it has faded from memory. I just retained the bottom lines.
Posted on 2/28/25 at 10:29 pm to MillerLiteTime
quote:
There are not 23 million federal employees, but I have no doubt there are at least 23 million people whose jobs directly or indirectly depend on federal contracts, funding, and general "normal" operations of the federal government. Multiply that to include their spouses and children and you have 50-75 million people reliant on a large federal government, not including the 100+ million more collecting entitlement checks. Add all that up and you have a 1929 level economic depression in this country that takes everyone down with it if you try to tackle it all at once.
There are orderly ways to tackle the deficit like the bipartisan cooperation of the 1990's and disorderly ways. Trust me, you do not want to see the consequences of a fast and disorderly way. For better or worse, the whole economy is reliant on federal spending. Eisenhower warned us and no one listened.
You're not wrong on some of this, but I believe we have passed the point where orderly cuts could have been made in time to save us from our debt. Fifteen years ago, a high level State Dept employee confided to me "TH, the only way we can fix this is to burn it to the ground and start over". This woman had spent a lot of time in the former Soviet Union after their collapse studying what happened and chasing WMD's, she foresaw the same thing happening here if we didn't get a handle on government corruption, debt, and waste.
I think the process being employed now is more orderly than the perception that both sides are trying to create - for different reasons. Is it orderly enough to prevent the type of problems, if not the magnitude of them, in your post? I don't think either of us knows right now. I am just celebrating that SOMETHING is finally being done.
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