Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

When has austerity ever been anything but disastrous for a country, O student of history?

Answer: never. It is not the answer and not a solution.

I didn’t think my comment was unpleasant. Not sure why we’re slipping in that direction.

Austerity has a time and place. Spending cuts have a lower impact on GDP in relation to tax increases.

Both will hurt the economy but eventually not as much as an ever increasing portion of the budget allocated to interest payments on debt.

Both tax and cut are necessary. Suggesting that we can gov spend our way to an increased GDP that will pay for those programs in increased tax revenue without altering tax policy is no different than the age old Republican fallacy that tax cuts will pay for themselves.

Everyone is going to need to bleed to avoid hoisting our cost of growth on to future generations.

I understand that it’s not particularly palatable to many people who benefit from government programs and their virtuous guardians but empathy on the micro level shouldn’t cloud judgement on the macro level.

The American bottom 10% live a higher quality of life than any nation’s poor in human history save for modern Scandinavia, a bit of an unfair comparison. The rich will feel it less even with heavy tax increases at the top and it stings knowing we’ll still see them choppering to yachts in the med.

The approach and the legality of this administrations playbook aside. I fail to see why a dinosaur federal government that is slow to adopt innovation, is consistently wasteful, and gifts taxpayer dollars to charitable causes outside the nation while in debt isn’t worth curbing. Especially if it’s the will of the (however slim) majority of people who pay those taxes.

I’m assuming you started the austerity thread. I should have put this there. Apologies to those looking for the DC juice.

1) I think everyone can agree that there are parts of the government that could be run more efficiently. Every government employee I know tells me about that one person in the office who has been there forever and does nothing. I am pretty sure that you could get buy-in to terminate that one person in the office (who is in many offices). However, indiscriminately cutting all people who are on their probationary period makes no sense at all. You are terminating the least expensive workers and you are terminating people who are likely in areas of need (hence why they were hired). That seems more likely to lead to both poor performance and inefficiency. Frankly, the biggest problem with the cuts that are being undertaken is that they are performative rather than substantive.

2) I agree completely that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal trajectory. The problem is that cutting federal government workers is INSUFFICIENT to address the problem. The unsustainable fiscal trajectory has two major problems and it is NOT federal worker bloat - (a) the growth of the so-called entitlement programs (e.g., social security, medicare, medicaid) as well as similar growth in Defense Department related entitled programs (e.g., veterans benefits and retirement costs, Tricare) and (b) successive tax cuts by different Republican administrations (see both Bush-era and Trump-era taxes).

(a) is really hard to fix because it's a byproduct of the U.S. being an aging population (who are living longer than the underlying programs were expecting) and a growing Veteran population in the aftermath of long-running wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I am sure that there is some fraud/waste/abuse in the entitlement programs, cutting fraud/waste/abuse is NOT enough to slow down the growth in spending. Did you know that social security was intended to only cover 5 years of living expenses? My own parents and my spouse's parents have been on social security now for 10+ years. I have tried to explain this to both sets of parents and how they are actually getting more in benefits than they paid for, which is going to result in my generation and my kids' generation getting less than we are paying for. Their response is that "We did the right thing and we paid all of our social security taxes over the years." I understand the sentiment but unfortunately the numbers do not lie and they did not actually pay enough.

(b) is something that we could control, except for the fact that every Republican administration feels that it is their God-given obligation to cut taxes. If the Bush-era and Trump-era tax cuts never took place, we likely would have had a balanced budget, along with a surplus in the earlier years. Does anyone remember the late 1990s budget surpluses, which led to the Bush-era tax cuts? Those happened because we had a large number of people in their prime working years and relatively fewer retirees. We currently have the flip in demographics with fewer people in their prime working years and more retirees.

3) On top of (a) and (b), neither political party has any desire to either cut spending or increase taxes. The Republicans claim to care about deficits and debt and then they do a massive tax cut without enough spending cuts (see the proposed House budget plan, which has $4.5 trillion tax cut, paired with a $1.5 trillion spending decrease). That is the great irony about people cheering on DOGE for cutting spending -- it's all going to provide a tax cut, which disproportionately benefits people in the top 1-5% of the income ladder. The Democrats don't claim to care about deficits and debt, but they are far too happy with maintaining the status quo. Instead of suggesting an alternative to Trump's half-baked proposals, they just assail Trump as being crazy and talk about the importance of democracy and maintaining institutions. I do think Biden tried to direct spending to more productive efforts (e.g., Building semiconductor factories and Electric Vehicle infrastructure), which ironically was copying what Asian countries (e.g., China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore) have been doing forever and quite successfully, but which is hard to build a political constituency for in the U.S.

Anonymous wrote:From the New York Times:

An economic slowdown across the metro region is virtually guaranteed in the near term, said Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, in Northern Virginia. Federal workers, and even many private businesses, will probably pull back on spending because of all the uncertainty. But whether this would take the economy from a slowdown into something worse depends largely on how the courts rule in the many lawsuits challenging the administration’s actions.

“If they get a significant portion done of what they say they’re going to do,” he said, “I don’t see any way around the notion that we could fall into a recession this year.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/us/trump-musk-dc-federal-work-force.html

+1 lots of uncertainty ahead for the DC region. Certainly, the local economy is not going to do great over the next four years. But nobody knows whether it will be catastrophic or just meh.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

Almost everyone who took the Fork was retirement eligible or had another job so no part of the unemployment numbers. But the probationary employees are obviously different. It’s not clear to me how many live in DC versus MD, VA or other states.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47716

Look at the figures by congressional district ( the state figures in this report reflect duty locations). DC has an estimated 71,000 federal workers residing in the district. In VA districts 8 and 11 have 73,000 and 62,000 respectively. In MD districts 4 and 8 have 47,000 and 59,000 respectively. You can look up exurbs and other federal employment centers like Baltimore in the report too. None of this accounts for contractors.

On the job boards a number of people mention how they may be considered DC employees because that is their office, yet they don’t live anywhere close to DC.

Just wondering if those people are in these figures or are they looking at actual addresses?

It's based on the American Community Survey, which is a survey of a random sample of residents in each area. So these are estimates and based on self-identification as federal workers by respondents.

From the New York Times:

An economic slowdown across the metro region is virtually guaranteed in the near term, said Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, in Northern Virginia. Federal workers, and even many private businesses, will probably pull back on spending because of all the uncertainty. But whether this would take the economy from a slowdown into something worse depends largely on how the courts rule in the many lawsuits challenging the administration’s actions.

“If they get a significant portion done of what they say they’re going to do,” he said, “I don’t see any way around the notion that we could fall into a recession this year.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/us/trump-musk-dc-federal-work-force.html

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

Almost everyone who took the Fork was retirement eligible or had another job so no part of the unemployment numbers. But the probationary employees are obviously different. It’s not clear to me how many live in DC versus MD, VA or other states.

The probationary people I know who took the Fork were mid 30s to early 40s.
None lived in DC proper.

But - an element that I have not seen discussed at all is how all of this is going to impact local non-profits who connected through the Combined Federal Campaign / United Way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

Almost everyone who took the Fork was retirement eligible or had another job so no part of the unemployment numbers. But the probationary employees are obviously different. It’s not clear to me how many live in DC versus MD, VA or other states.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47716

Look at the figures by congressional district ( the state figures in this report reflect duty locations). DC has an estimated 71,000 federal workers residing in the district. In VA districts 8 and 11 have 73,000 and 62,000 respectively. In MD districts 4 and 8 have 47,000 and 59,000 respectively. You can look up exurbs and other federal employment centers like Baltimore in the report too. None of this accounts for contractors.

On the job boards a number of people mention how they may be considered DC employees because that is their office, yet they don’t live anywhere close to DC.

Just wondering if those people are in these figures or are they looking at actual addresses?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

Almost everyone who took the Fork was retirement eligible or had another job so no part of the unemployment numbers. But the probationary employees are obviously different. It’s not clear to me how many live in DC versus MD, VA or other states.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47716

Look at the figures by congressional district ( the state figures in this report reflect duty locations). DC has an estimated 71,000 federal workers residing in the district. In VA districts 8 and 11 have 73,000 and 62,000 respectively. In MD districts 4 and 8 have 47,000 and 59,000 respectively. You can look up exurbs and other federal employment centers like Baltimore in the report too. None of this accounts for contractors.

However, the RIF is across the entire government, not just the local area. There are roughly 3 million federal employees.

Yes, you are correct, nobody knows how many of these employees have been or will be laid off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

Almost everyone who took the Fork was retirement eligible or had another job so no part of the unemployment numbers. But the probationary employees are obviously different. It’s not clear to me how many live in DC versus MD, VA or other states.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47716

Look at the figures by congressional district ( the state figures in this report reflect duty locations). DC has an estimated 71,000 federal workers residing in the district. In VA districts 8 and 11 have 73,000 and 62,000 respectively. In MD districts 4 and 8 have 47,000 and 59,000 respectively. You can look up exurbs and other federal employment centers like Baltimore in the report too. None of this accounts for contractors.

However, the RIF is across the entire government, not just the local area. There are roughly 3 million federal employees.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

Almost everyone who took the Fork was retirement eligible or had another job so no part of the unemployment numbers. But the probationary employees are obviously different. It’s not clear to me how many live in DC versus MD, VA or other states.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47716

Look at the figures by congressional district ( the state figures in this report reflect duty locations). DC has an estimated 71,000 federal workers residing in the district. In VA districts 8 and 11 have 73,000 and 62,000 respectively. In MD districts 4 and 8 have 47,000 and 59,000 respectively. You can look up exurbs and other federal employment centers like Baltimore in the report too. None of this accounts for contractors.

Anonymous wrote:

When has austerity ever been anything but disastrous for a country, O student of history?

Answer: never. It is not the answer and not a solution.

I didn’t think my comment was unpleasant. Not sure why we’re slipping in that direction.

Austerity has a time and place. Spending cuts have a lower impact on GDP in relation to tax increases.

Both will hurt the economy but eventually not as much as an ever increasing portion of the budget allocated to interest payments on debt.

Both tax and cut are necessary. Suggesting that we can gov spend our way to an increased GDP that will pay for those programs in increased tax revenue without altering tax policy is no different than the age old Republican fallacy that tax cuts will pay for themselves.

Everyone is going to need to bleed to avoid hoisting our cost of growth on to future generations.

I understand that it’s not particularly palatable to many people who benefit from government programs and their virtuous guardians but empathy on the micro level shouldn’t cloud judgement on the macro level.

The American bottom 10% live a higher quality of life than any nation’s poor in human history save for modern Scandinavia, a bit of an unfair comparison. The rich will feel it less even with heavy tax increases at the top and it stings knowing we’ll still see them choppering to yachts in the med.

The approach and the legality of this administrations playbook aside. I fail to see why a dinosaur federal government that is slow to adopt innovation, is consistently wasteful, and gifts taxpayer dollars to charitable causes outside the nation while in debt isn’t worth curbing. Especially if it’s the will of the (however slim) majority of people who pay those taxes.

I’m assuming you started the austerity thread. I should have put this there. Apologies to those looking for the DC juice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s going to amount to that much on a macro level (not downplaying the effect on families). I don’t think dc economy or real estate will end up that impacted.

Well, you're wrong. In December, there were 20,000 people unemployed in the District. So far, 75,000 federal workers have taken the buyout and hundreds of thousands could be laid off because they are probationary. Obviously only a fraction of them live in DC. But it wouldn't take much for the number of unemployed people to reach levels unseen in many decades.

How many of them live or work in DC?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these idiots parroting the line about bloated govt. Look at the trend here, it's basically flat and includes military employees as well. If we account for the population increase govt actually has shrunk significantly.

I don't even work for the govt just sick of hearing uneducated idiots bleating out this never-ending nonsense.

We have supercomputers in our pockets, AI, etc. and can't bother to actually engage our brains and let them be smoothed out by stupid sound bites.

The government has been bloated since FDR. That’s not an uneducated opinion. As recently as the Clinton administration it wasn’t even a partisan one.

The US Military had decreased in size pretty aggressively over the last 15 years, so the flat trend you referenced isn’t the flex you think it is.

The debt/GDP ratio is headed quickly towards a troubling or unknown point. Regardless of your economic viewpoint, it’s not a good thing. Taxes skyrocketing in the future is essentially inevitable and it won’t be the liberal dream of the 1% getting liquidated by the IRS.

While the Doge attack is hasty and mostly for clicks, a significantly smaller government, in scope and expense, is not just a Republican pipe dream, it’s an economic necessity along with an across the board increase in tax revenue.

The statist’s desire for a big government pushing partisan programming is unsustainable, just like the endless increase in unaudited military expenditure from the right.

Calling this perspective uneducated is small minded. You might disagree with the outcome of cutting gov programs aligned with your ideology, but austerity is hardly a wild take.

When has austerity ever been anything but disastrous for a country, O student of history?

Answer: never. It is not the answer and not a solution.

Anonymous wrote:At a minimum, DC needs to get serious about combatting crime. It’s just about the only thing it can control. We can’t afford to play around with restorative justice when the economy is also getting gutted.

That literally has nothing to do with this thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that these layoffs will fundamentally change DC. I think the layoffs will be rescinded within weeks, as lawsuits wind their way through agencies and courts. But I think the shock of Musk taking a wrecking ball to one of the pillars of civil service, job security, will be felt for years to come. He has no idea what he has done and will never know, because soon enough he'll be off to another project, leaving DC behind. Even if he is fined for some of the illegalities he has committed, he'll just pay it and then never think of federal employees again.

This is going to stain the Republican party, too. Have they figured that out yet? Or are they still too petrified of Trump/Musk to think farther ahead than tomorrow?

Why on earth would we want job security to be a pillar of civil service. “Work for the gov! There’s no performance standard!” has been the MO for eternity and resulted in disgusting bloat. Being better, more efficient, and less costly is actively disincentivized. The fed is best portrayed as the guy from Office Space working out of a basement storage room endlessly looking for his stapler.

Says the person who has no idea what he's talking about.

I think that this time Trump and real President Elon will tank the entire U.S. economy. DMV will definitely be a disaster—expect 20% declines in home prices, shuttered businesses, and huge crime increases—but we will also have a national recession coupled with 30% declines in equities and double-digit unemployment. This will be driven by tariffs and massive demand destruction from fed cuts that impact the entire country. At this point we all need to go through the pain to “take the cure” and get rid of Trumpism for good… but it’s going to be a very bad five years.