Federal exodus
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Anonymous
Nice deflection attempt. |
Anonymous
The best way to kill trolls is to not feed them. |
Anonymous
I'm sure the previous poster was being facetious, but your response highlights some misconceptions about the federal workforce and contracting. One is that taxpayers and consumers aren't the same thing. Taxpayers are consumers. They might not like paying for things that appear to benefit other people, but federal money just eases burden. Less federal spending just shifts burden elsewhere - to your state or local governments, to charities and volunteers, but more often it shifts to your household. You may think education policy doesn't affect you if you don't have children, but poor education limits the workforce, which limits consumption of private goods and services, and raises reliance on whatever the government provides. You may think the government should provide less, but no one wants to sit around and wait for Congress to hash it out when disease and disaster hits. Another misconception is that outsourcing covers what government employees don't want to do. What it's actually covering is what government can't provide, usually because the budget and funding process moves too slowly for urgent need and can't keep up with innovations nor the training required to use them. In steps the private sector, which does a better job at performing some tasks, but not without cost - everything is at an outrageous mark-up - and certainly not without waste, fraud and abuse. Then there's safety and security. Edward Snowden worked for a private contractor. Likely so do the people handling your baggage at the airport. A misconception you haven't mentioned but remains widely held, lessening the government workforce will save taxpayers money. But federal workers also pay taxes and consume from private business. Republicans shut down the government and then ran to the news cameras to complain about closed monuments on the national mall. They had no concern for private businesses large and small (and their workers) that also shut down because there was no one to inspect the meat that was supposed to be shipped to the market that had orders to fill at eating establishments that had no money to pay for said meat because the customers they relied on (tourists and federal workers) stayed home. Federal workers also buy cars and homes, food, health care, childcare and college tuition. They pay local and state taxes and make investments to public and private funds. Limit the workforce and all that consumption drops. The answer from the right is that those jobs can be moved to the private sector and consumption/investment will go on, but the private sector has a commitment to raising profit at the top, while keeping costs as low as possible. Those costs include payroll and benefits for workers, which have been suppressed and/or eliminated. Don't expect them to level off or rise with profits. The script then flips to lower wages with fewer benefits means more workers can be hired . . . in some other developing economy. |
Anonymous
No, you seriously responded to the wrong post. I think you meant the one above it. If not, then I can't see what your point is. But I'm done trying to explain this to you. I don't think we actually disagree. You're just taking it out on the wrong person. |
Anonymous
Exactly. |
Anonymous
| No one in my agency is leaving, with the exception of people who have their time in and will be leaving to go move with family because they miss their wife or kids. There are a couple women I know who live here and their families are in other places like New Hampshire or Buffalo. They were going to retire regardless, so this mass exodus thing isn't happening, it's FUD |
Anonymous
Weird. |
Anonymous
| No mass exodus. Feds are a very risk averse bunch. Kind of vaguely spectrum-y in the main. A hiring freeze with the aforementioned exceptions is fine. |
Anonymous
Some agencies were already there. USAF is only hiring internal candidates and so is my agency now. The last four positions were internal only. |
Anonymous
Do you really not know that that is part of what the public health people did? Educate the community about disease transmission and provide condoms? |
Anonymous
| I roll my eyes when I hear people talk about "fed bloat" - in my office there are many major national programs that are run by just one or two feds. We've lost a lot of people already who have not been and can not be replaced because of hiring limits. We are all spread extremely thin. |
Anonymous
Oh for Pete's sake. How many food recalls have there been this past year that saved people from getting ill? How many of those who got ill with flu were vaccinated? How many illnessses and deaths have flu vaccines saved? And the Flint water crisis was caused by the same sort of Republican cost saving mentality that you're espousing. In the long run it costs more to clean up the mess that sort of mentality leaves behind. |
Anonymous
It would be much worse without the feds, and with regard to Flint, the state was the primacy agency with primary responsibility. It was actually a fed who exposed it. Without the fed blowing the whistle it could have gone on for years. |
Anonymous
Well, there was ONE good apple. |
Anonymous
Right. And NIAID had to fight for funding to do the necessary research and public outreach around the AIDS crises. The Reagan admin and the Congress considered AIDS not a new and deadly infectious disease, but a side effect of an immoral lifestyle. Fauci and his team chose to interact with his patients and activists to change the course of the Reagan Admin gut job. |