Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

It is. It reflects an employer successfully meeting demand from consumers, and in doing so providing employment for 2.1M people, tax revenues for the governments where it operates, and business for its suppliers. A good news success story if there ever has been one.

Yes, having a family worth 1/2 Trillion dollars, while 10K+ of their employees are on Medicaid and/or SNAP is a fantastic success story. I’m sure if you were born a few years earlier, you’d be singing the praises of indentured servitude and slavers.

The thing about this country and the free market is that nobody is keeping you from building the next Wal-Mart for yourself. If you lack the necessary ambition, work ethic, and skills, that's a you problem, not something the government should remedy for you. Feel free to start your own company, and pay whatever wages you like to your employees. You may be more constrained than you imagine, though, if you'd like to make a profit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

It is. It reflects an employer successfully meeting demand from consumers, and in doing so providing employment for 2.1M people, tax revenues for the governments where it operates, and business for its suppliers. A good news success story if there ever has been one.

WalMart can't remain the #1 employer in this environment. They rely on their workers qualifying for food stamps and Medicaid instead of employer benefits.

Well, quick research with Indeed suggests WM generally pays employees between $30K and $500K/yr, and their employees are neither slaves nor in indentured servitude, unable to work elsewhere if they want to. They presumably pay prevailing market wages and provide prevailing market benefits for the types of work and work locations involved. Want to make more money or have better benefits? Nobody's stopping you from moving on to a different employer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

lol no.

I worked on both sides of the aisle and I agree completely with pp. The contractors did an amazing amount of work quickly and with fewer employees. When I worked for the govt, we worked our contractors to death. They did the vast majority of the work related to y2k and any big transitions we needed.

Y2K
How old are you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

This is what I’ve seen first hand over the last 8 years I’ve been working as a GS. I would not be interested in the grind of being a contractor if I end up leaving or getting let go.

Nice troll post!

Np. I've seen this happen. The feds in these cases weren't lazy, as they oversaw the work, but generally couldn't do the work themselves. Their contributions were often nil, even if they thought it was important.

This badly misunderstands the role. The fed in question is not supposed to be able to do the work, they are supposed to be the legally mandated government oversight. Their role is necessary for compliance and to avoid certain risks.

The government could have hired people able to do the work in-house (which would have been cheaper overall, in part because that oversight role would not be required) but instead hired contractors. So while it's true there were not feds able to do the work, that was by design. If there had been, that would have been duplication.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

This is what I’ve seen first hand over the last 8 years I’ve been working as a GS. I would not be interested in the grind of being a contractor if I end up leaving or getting let go.

Nice troll post!

Np. I've seen this happen. The feds in these cases weren't lazy, as they oversaw the work, but generally couldn't do the work themselves. Their contributions were often nil, even if they thought it was important.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

This is what I’ve seen first hand over the last 8 years I’ve been working as a GS. I would not be interested in the grind of being a contractor if I end up leaving or getting let go.

Nice troll post!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

It is. It reflects an employer successfully meeting demand from consumers, and in doing so providing employment for 2.1M people, tax revenues for the governments where it operates, and business for its suppliers. A good news success story if there ever has been one.

Yes, having a family worth 1/2 Trillion dollars, while 10K+ of their employees are on Medicaid and/or SNAP is a fantastic success story. I’m sure if you were born a few years earlier, you’d be singing the praises of indentured servitude and slavers.

Anonymous wrote:This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

This is what I’ve seen first hand over the last 8 years I’ve been working as a GS. I would not be interested in the grind of being a contractor if I end up leaving or getting let go.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This to me is a joke. This is not at all what I'm seeing. Contractors handle way more of the work load at my agency than the feds. And I agree with a PP here they're not treated well at all. They are each currently taking the burden of 3-4 fed employees that they already let go. They keep dumping more and more work onto the contractors.

lol no.

I worked on both sides of the aisle and I agree completely with pp. The contractors did an amazing amount of work quickly and with fewer employees. When I worked for the govt, we worked our contractors to death. They did the vast majority of the work related to y2k and any big transitions we needed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

It is. It reflects an employer successfully meeting demand from consumers, and in doing so providing employment for 2.1M people, tax revenues for the governments where it operates, and business for its suppliers. A good news success story if there ever has been one.

The government also does all of those things. It buys and sells, it has paying customers, its employees spend money and pay taxes.

Critically, some of the services government provides, like highway funds and ports and truck regulation, make it possible for Walmart to operate. Which is fine, that's part of the purpose of government - but you cannot pretend that only one of the two is a sustainable model. They are an inseparable ecosystem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

It is. It reflects an employer successfully meeting demand from consumers, and in doing so providing employment for 2.1M people, tax revenues for the governments where it operates, and business for its suppliers. A good news success story if there ever has been one.

WalMart can't remain the #1 employer in this environment. They rely on their workers qualifying for food stamps and Medicaid instead of employer benefits.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

It is. It reflects an employer successfully meeting demand from consumers, and in doing so providing employment for 2.1M people, tax revenues for the governments where it operates, and business for its suppliers. A good news success story if there ever has been one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is sucking balls.

Do you think it’s fiscally healthy to have the USG as the nation’s largest employer? It’s not sustainable.

Yeah. Having WalMart as our largest employer is a much better indicator of a healthy society and good priorities!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1 contractor I know at State was laid off a month or two ago.

Yes, typically direct hire employees are cheaper in total cost than contractors, but they are getting rid of those too.

How is that possible with benefits, retirement, etc.?

The salaries tend to be lower.

Also, Feds hired after about 1985/1986 do NOT get the cushy CSRS pension. They are on FERS instead, which is mostly like a private sector 401(k). There is a small pension piece, too small to live on, but they now have payroll deductions that pay for that pension. Those deductions keep increasing.

By contrast, VA state employees, which includes local government employees and public schools, still have quite the cushy pension setup. A person who is working at GMU will do much better there than s/he would as a Fed. I imagine this also is true for Maryland and UMCP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am working as a contractor at a Federal agency (FINREG), and my employer is hiring A LOT of IT people. I was hired three months ago and the salary is 220K/yr.

What pay scale is this? Feds don’t make this much.

Working "as a contractor." Not a fed.