Last week I talked about the relative economic effects of the Great Government Purge of 2025-2026. Unlike Stalin’s Purge, the winners don’t get a bullet, instead they get a severance check and unemployment. Regardless, that’s not fun for the people involved, especially good people who are doing useful work for the Republic.
But it might be necessary.
Good people doing useful work - that's a short list.
ReplyDeleteIf democrats would do this cleanup, they'd select only those who are unqualified to be KEPT.
ReplyDeleteI feel for anyone that gets terminated but it's a necessary step... Government is bloated, 10 to 29 people to do what should be a 1 to 2 person job.. It's not sustainable to continue the this way ..
ReplyDeleteJD
Full disclosure: I'm a contractor working for the government. I expect DOGE to cost me my job.
ReplyDeleteWill there be a lot of highly talented, government workers laid-off? Yes. But, just because the individual has great talent, and uses those talents effectively to do the job assigned, doesn't mean that the job assigned is of value to the American people. Just because they show up to work everyday, give it 110%, doesn't mean that what they're doing is of value. This is not just the fault of their manager. It is the fault of everyone up the food chain.
At one site that I was privy to, there was data coming out of one computer system that had to be fed into a different computer system. The first system would create a printout. "Joe" would pick up the printout, type in the values into the second system. Joe had active tasking for maybe 4 to 8 hours a week. Someone asked why we didn't just automate that tasking. The answer was, "Then what would Joe do?"
I have witnessed the $513 surge protector -- you know, the one Radio Shack sold for $13 (probably $5 from Walmart now). The bulk of the cost was trying to make sure that no-one was stealing $13 from petty cash.
I needed a keyboard at one point. I gave my government customer a link to one for $23 that would meet my needs. He blew a gasket. Told me the procurement process was going to cost him well over a $1000, and by god, if he was going to spend over a thousand dollars, he was going to get a keyboard worth more than twenty-three.
And all of this is in the noise level. DOGE is concerned with big ticket items. What relics of the past should we stop supporting? If it doesn't cost at least a billion dollars, it doesn't cost enough to be on DOGE's radar.
Sure, layoff all the teleworkers -- acknowledging that some are highly productive, highly effective employees. Consolidate the under utilized buildings. Close all the empty, or nearly empty buildings. Fire every manager with less than 10 reports. Shut down entire programs. Stop giving billions of dollars to Microsoft for Windows and Office when open source variants are available.
Been there, saw that, and have many similar tales of my own. If it's a necessary job, for the most part, the private sector should be doing it. Not that that those companies living off govt contracts don't need purging themselves. Much of what the govt does or has done doesn't need to be done by anybody.
DeleteThe sad thing is that in most cases, if a department is asked to reduce staff by 50%, it won't be the dead wood that is let go. It will be the 'friends' of management that keep their jobs regardless of their skills at their job.
ReplyDeleteI saw a cartoon recently. A man sitting behind a desk speaks into a phone: "A billion is a thousand million? Why wasn't I told!"
ReplyDeleteThe fact is we can't keep going into debt at $10 BILLION A DAY and not turn into Weimar Germany.
In April 2012, the public debt was a little over 15 Trillion.
DeleteUnion rules apply, last in, first out. Whether that hits the useful or the useless cannot be controlled. But one thing it will hit are EEO checkboxes. I was a Fed contractor years back, I couldn't be an employee because I didn't have either a PhD, or a wheelchair. That's the only way a white guy gets qualified these days.
ReplyDeleteReagan showed unions could be dumped. Hopefully Trump can do the same. I hate unions almost as much as Democrats.
DeletePurge? lol
ReplyDeleteWhat they are doing is not a purge. One of the last big projects I was in charge of before retiring I had 50 guys working for me. A few months in I am looking at the numbers, do a little math. Not gonna make it. What to do.
Walked across the bridge and called every swinging dick that was not hustling. By the time I walked across the deck, then climbed down and walked back across the work platform and picked out 12 guys. Had them grab their gear, get on the bus and drove them back down to the yard.
Buh bye.
Cut payroll drastically in one fell swoop AND the 38 left picked up the pace in a noticable fashion. We finished on time and under budget.
It is not that difficult a thing to do if you want to be productive and profitable. I know it's govt, but they can still be productive.
Recently strongly recommended that one of my employees retire. She was going to anyway and I had grown very weary of her hijinks. Been paying the rest of the staff a bit extra to compensate. Things are much quieter, more peaceful, and productive.
ReplyDeleteOld Chinese proverb “Kill a chicken to scare the monkeys”
Good people go not work for the government.
ReplyDeleteThat is both a simplistic and ignorant view. Personal observation is about 40 percent of the government employees are competent, but are afraid of the ups and downs of commercial employment. 40 percent are incompetent. 10 percent are competent and want to work in a geographic area that requires government employment. The remaining 10 percent are the evil bastards that joined the government to control other people's lives. My uncle was one of those. His favorite thing to do was go to Capitol Hill and testify before congress. Total hypocrit. Satan called home a trusted minion the day my uncle died.
DeleteNow that was a lot of words to not refute his point.
DeleteGonna leave the 'ignorant' part alone.....
The large corporation I worked for, (retired now 27 years) was downsizing data centers, except for the one I worked at. They were laying off 20% using appraisals rather than the usual seniority, nepotism, and sexual availability. I called a friend in one of the affected data centers and asked how it was going. He said that the 20% were doing 5% of the work and now they didn't have anyone to do the 5%.
ReplyDelete