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..
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'm including state taxes, SS, and Medicare.
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."
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.
40%? really now?
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."
Gosh. I consider Zac and me incredibly lucky. Besides the value of our house we were mostly unaffected by the economy.
Due to the economy and being laid off, I'm now making 35% less than I did before.
i thought they were referring to taxes, not lowered income