Explosion of inflation under way - Are you ready Gary Cohn, Mnuchin and Ross?
- Thread starter Nighthawk
- Start date
No one is advocating China type sweat shops anywhere. But a district school board president making $600K a year is too much.
On the otherhand in private sector, CEOs and top management making $20M for six months of work or cashing out at $100M for 3 years at the helm is too much also.
Why does US Army buy $200 hammers per piece while have heard soldiers and families are sometimes relying on food stamps and similar benefits.
There are outright $100B annual savings in US defense budget without cutting personnel or their wages and benefits. Equipment wise US is way ahead in both "quantity and quality" of even immediate adversaries like Russia or China.
You said "Right away Trump should fire 10% of government employees. Then turn around and reduce by 10% "across the board" salary and benefits of the remaining. Possible another 5% might leave as a result. Then try to disburse their jobs onto remaining workers and NOT hire any replacements. "
I pointed out that was a simplistic statement full of unintended consequences. Now you seem to be completely disagreeing with your original statement! Military personnel are "government employees", and in fact make up 35% of all federal employees. So if you're convinced that federal employees are the problem and you need to fire an arbitrary number of them, cut pay for the rest, and increase their workload, then you believe you should be doing this to military personnel as well or you're missing 1/3 of those, according to you, lazy worthless federal employees. And even if you exclude the military, you're still stuck with the stupidity of treating federal employees like crap and then wondering why no quality people want to be federal employees. I'm simply pointing out the absurdity of your entire statement.
I have no idea what your non-sequitur about sweat shops and school board members has to do with any of this, and the myth of the $400 hammer, which allegedly happened in 1984, was in fact a myth (http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/), so it's pretty sad that you're basing your worldview on something that never happened but even if it did was over 30 years ago! You clearly have never worked in military contracting or as a federal employee and know bupkis about either, so I'd recommend you stop pontificating on them.
There are dozens and dozens of ways of cutting costs and fine tuning a business cost structure. The above suggestion was just one casual alternative from the pile of dozens available. Also, make it easy to fire a government employee and average quality of workmanship will immediately rise by 20% over the weekend itself.
I completely agree that it should be easier to fire a federal employee, unlike you I've actually done that. However that is a world away and completely different from arbitrarily firing 10% of all federal employees, as you originally advocated. And arbitrarily increasing their workload and cutting their pay, which you also originally advocated. Good to hear that you now realize that's a bad idea. And that you'll stop using that $400 hammer example because it's ancient and was never true to start with.
We're talking real world problems with real people, "casual alternatives" are naive, unhelpful, and in the case of your suggestions likely to cause more harm than good. I spent years trying to save money in government contracts. It's super hard work that doesn't yield itself to simplistic "those government employees are all idiots" type answers. In most cases, the demands from people like you for "accountability" to avoid these phantom $400 hammers actually requires clauses that makes the contracts twice as expensive and costs the government hundreds of millions a year. You and people like you are in fact the problem, not the idiot lazy government bureaucrats you criticize.
I'm also a successful entrepreneur and have started and run two companies, so I understand the private sector and controlling costs. You're hopelessly naive if you think there is any correlation between running a government agency and running a private corporation. So again, until you have even the faintest clue on what you're talking about stop the rants and criticisms. Remember, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
Hey Sig, it's a public forum and he has 1st amendment rights. I do believe this should be in P&R and not in the trading section so people don't get bent out of shape. You are arguing with an anonymous alias on a message board. It's what people do here. But people say a lot of crazy shit here. There are people that use a straight line ruler to make all their trading decisions. Crazy right? But it's their prerogative. Don't get so bent out of shape. You might be debating a 15 year old school girl after all, who knows.
You're right of course, although my in-person conversations of this type would indicate that it's most probably a 50+ year old white male. It's just fun to point out these things they've held as bedrock beliefs (the $400 hammer) aren't even true. And while using a straight-line ruler doesn't really impact anyone but you, denigrating a whole group of people when you don't know f-all about what they do just feels like it deserves some kind of response. But again, you're right, I stay out of P&R for a reason and as you so rightly pointed out I should just put these guys on ignore!
Poking a little fun at myself from my favorite comic, xkcd:
Dude, I am not interested in knowing how much work you have to done for fed government or could not do despite trying very hard. Please do not flaunt your credentials like stripper with no bra on.
Organizations like US Postal Service, Prison systems, State Budgets etc. etc. are losing money year after year and that alone says a lot about the efficiency of the public enterprises.
Forget about $400 hammers, basic point is there is a lot of wastage in US defense establishments. For political reasons these are not attended to as lobby muscles are very strong.
Lastly, blaming efforts who are seeking efficiency for negating/reducing higher costs of government is outright moronish. If Trumps does not flip flop on his "reducing government" election promise then all the high paid government entities will soon find out how easy was it to reducing government spending.
20 trillion national debt...rising interest rates...and the plan is to cut taxes?
they must smoke good crack over at goldman
they must smoke good crack over at goldman