GAY RELUBRICANTS Where are you now? lulz

plz explain. unless you're making 372k+ you're not in the top bracket. gas taxes, property taxes and all that other bullshit are the result of choosing to participate in the things that require those taxes, not things that come out of your paycheck.

edit: or are we not talking about taxes?
 
great, so the guys making 24k a year are now making 12? that's a brilliant solution when the problem is at the higher levels. more importantly, how the hell do you expect any quality people to work for the government when the pay is shit and they can make more in the private sector? the last thing we need is to scrape the bottom of the barrel in hiring the people that run the government

naturally you would extend this to the military, correct?


but 84 billion. out of three trillion. keep trying. nothing you say means jack shit until you've addressed how to fix social security, medicare and defense spending

Why should the Federal employees give up half their salary? I don't see you giving up shit..

outside of the defense sector, there are a lot of extremely overpaid fed employees who probably couldn't even get a job in the private sector. it's a relatively small percentage where the government goes after the top recruits and need real brain power, the rest gets subbed out to experts in the private sector, overseen by other experts in the private sector. not to mention there are a shitton of federal level positions which simply aren't needed... at least, that's been my experience in dealing with uncle sam on government projects.

if i ran a construction company like the government runs its construction projects, holy shit... i'd need like a $56 million bailout after building a kwik-e-mart. i've never seen so many redundant positions, levels of management, etc. in any one place. nobody except congress even has the authority to make a final decision on anything, down to the simple things like "what color should we paint this wall?".


the answer is usually something like:
"hang on, i'll commission a team to find out if the government has a standard paint color for interior office walls on single story buildings facing east under 10 feet in length. in the meantime we're stopping the project until we get a definitive answer. you'll be paid a retainer until we get this resolved so send us the change order in the morning. oh yea, since this is the government we're required to pay union scale which is currently $42.50/hr (it may have gone up, google it if you're really curious) or something so we'll be paying you 10k to sit around and do nothing while we figure this shit out."
 
I've talked with my counterparts that work for various places in the .gov, and they've mentioned that if they have excess capacity on equipment for one project, they can't use it for another - it has to be separately funded and once it's funded that's it, no more can be had, so they have to ask for the moon each time. And then that number gets padded yet again.
 
I've talked with my counterparts that work for various places in the .gov, and they've mentioned that if they have excess capacity on equipment for one project, they can't use it for another - it has to be separately funded and once it's funded that's it, no more can be had, so they have to ask for the moon each time. And then that number gets padded yet again.

this goes back to what i've stated over and over again, the government spends $10 to make sure someone doesn't screw them out of $1.

if they used it on another project the government is afraid they'll pad one and use excess material on projects that otherwise would have never been approved if it wasn't for such a low number doing to everything being covered in some other project in a different scope. not only do they shoot for the moon, they make sure they spend it all because there's zero incentive to save money... instead there's all the incentive in the world to come in right on budget (since if they come in under budget, next time they won't be given such a large budget...).

turning something over to a for profit privatized company seems like a ridiculous solution, but in the end it'll be a lot cheaper than doing it using the fed's f'd up policies and procedures.
 
I'm including state taxes, SS, and Medicare.

that still wouldn't hit 40% unless you live in a state with some ridiculously high tax rate, not to mention the standard deduction does take a few %s off.

i know that income can be a personal subject but does anyone care to provide their actual numbers so we can see what math has been done to calculate a 40% rate for someone that's not in the top bracket?
 
outside of the defense sector, there are a lot of extremely overpaid fed employees who probably couldn't even get a job in the private sector. it's a relatively small percentage where the government goes after the top recruits and need real brain power, the rest gets subbed out to experts in the private sector, overseen by other experts in the private sector. not to mention there are a shitton of federal level positions which simply aren't needed... at least, that's been my experience in dealing with uncle sam on government projects.

if i ran a construction company like the government runs its construction projects, holy shit... i'd need like a $56 million bailout after building a kwik-e-mart. i've never seen so many redundant positions, levels of management, etc. in any one place. nobody except congress even has the authority to make a final decision on anything, down to the simple things like "what color should we paint this wall?".


the answer is usually something like:
"hang on, i'll commission a team to find out if the government has a standard paint color for interior office walls on single story buildings facing east under 10 feet in length. in the meantime we're stopping the project until we get a definitive answer. you'll be paid a retainer until we get this resolved so send us the change order in the morning. oh yea, since this is the government we're required to pay union scale which is currently $42.50/hr (it may have gone up, google it if you're really curious) or something so we'll be paying you 10k to sit around and do nothing while we figure this shit out."

I get that and putting some rational thought behind federal pay scales should not be ignored, especially for that sect of employees that are fucking wastes of space in the first place.

The problem I see is simply cutting the wages across the board without any consideration to the consequences. There are plenty of government jobs that pay $10 an hour, dropping that to below minimum wage is not going to fix our budget woes.
 
this goes back to what i've stated over and over again, the government spends $10 to make sure someone doesn't screw them out of $1.

if they used it on another project the government is afraid they'll pad one and use excess material on projects that otherwise would have never been approved if it wasn't for such a low number doing to everything being covered in some other project in a different scope. not only do they shoot for the moon, they make sure they spend it all because there's zero incentive to save money... instead there's all the incentive in the world to come in right on budget (since if they come in under budget, next time they won't be given such a large budget...).

turning something over to a for profit privatized company seems like a ridiculous solution, but in the end it'll be a lot cheaper than doing it using the fed's f'd up policies and procedures.

the project that I worked on for the DOD which runs the largest intranet in the world is handled primarily by HP. some of the problems you mentioned are due to the government's requirements but plenty are the fault of the contractor itself. HP is making a profit off this but in no way is it making it cheaper or better.
 
i agree, the whole thing needs to be looked at instead of an arbitrary slashing. point is, there's a ton of positions that could be eliminated and a lot of wages which could be slashed. probably some that should be raised some too.
 
on the construction side we're seeing a lot more build to requirements projects being done for the government. ie: instead of having government employees oversee and run the project, they tell a property manager what they need. the prop manager in turn hires a GC to build a building to set specifications, and when it's 100% done the government comes in and buys the building at fair market value.

a lot of companies build in extra margin dollars to deal with the government too because it's a giant headache.



seriously, i bet if HP did that exact same project for us, we'd get charged a helluva lot less, and a helluva lot less of our time and resources would be spent monitoring and executing it.
 
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outside of the defense sector, there are a lot of extremely overpaid fed employees who probably couldn't even get a job in the private sector. it's a relatively small percentage where the government goes after the top recruits and need real brain power, the rest gets subbed out to experts in the private sector, overseen by other experts in the private sector. not to mention there are a shitton of federal level positions which simply aren't needed... at least, that's been my experience in dealing with uncle sam on government projects.

if i ran a construction company like the government runs its construction projects, holy shit... i'd need like a $56 million bailout after building a kwik-e-mart. i've never seen so many redundant positions, levels of management, etc. in any one place. nobody except congress even has the authority to make a final decision on anything, down to the simple things like "what color should we paint this wall?".


the answer is usually something like:
"hang on, i'll commission a team to find out if the government has a standard paint color for interior office walls on single story buildings facing east under 10 feet in length. in the meantime we're stopping the project until we get a definitive answer. you'll be paid a retainer until we get this resolved so send us the change order in the morning. oh yea, since this is the government we're required to pay union scale which is currently $42.50/hr (it may have gone up, google it if you're really curious) or something so we'll be paying you 10k to sit around and do nothing while we figure this shit out."

Seems like you are saying, "let someone else, not me, give up what they have in order to fix the problem everyone is facing". You saying fed employees are overpaid, but that's really a tiny like percentage and would hardly make a dent in the overall scheme of things. Cutting salaries is a pathetic bullshit way to deal with this budget issue.
 
Gosh. I consider Zac and me incredibly lucky. Besides the value of our house we were mostly unaffected by the economy. :hs:
 
:iono:

I guess my salary dropped around that much when our government contracts dried up :lol:





they didn't really dry up, we have contracts but the companies that lost the bidding complained about impropriety so there had to be an investigation that resoundly cleared our name but it means the process had to start all over yet we still had people working the contract purely on an intent letter
 
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