> Do we actually want "I just want a stable job" people being a significant part of the federal governments workforce?
Yes. People looking for a stable job put down roots and grow communities. They gain deep knowledge of the systems and people they work with, and they gain valuable wisdom from experience. I have no idea why you wouldn't want people looking for a stable job at your company. Why would you want an employee who was looking to work at a place where they were likely to be fired for no reason at any moment and couldn't expect any of their co-workers to still be there tomorrow?
The comment I replied to was holding out the federal government as an especially stable employer, as compared to the private sector. Sure, you don't want a reputation for firing people a week after you hired them, but A. that is not what is happening here B. not doing that doesn't mean it is actually desireable for the federal government to be seen as a more stable alternative to the private sector.
Said another way: any company can have the reputation GC claims the federal government does, but most don't. Why is that?
Because most companies don't care about their employees. Many of America's largest private employers like Amazon and Walmart have extremely high turnover, so it's no wonder people are looking for a more stable employer. Government workers are far more likely to be unionized which means they can get better working conditions and actual pensions. Government workers can take far more pride in being public servants than they would peeing in a bottle for amazon. It's no surprise there is less turnover.
Any company could have a reputation for treating employees so well that people want to work there and stick around until they retire, but they usually don't because screwing over their employees makes them more money. Governments are freed from having to prioritize maximizing profits at the cost of everything else.
> Government workers can take far more pride in being public servants than they would peeing in a bottle for amazon. It's no surprise there is less turnover.
See, this is where you're losing me. One the one hand you are arguing that part of what makes working for the government desirable is the job itself / the work being done (which sounds good to me), but then you are immediately conflating that with a reputation for being a "stable employer" (read: not firing people when maybe you should), which is not how I want my tax dollars to be used.
I don't want the federal government to be a jobs program that keeps people on payroll just because it "isn't worried about profits". Profits aren't my concern, spending is, and the federal government should absolutely be worried about spending, because money doesn't grow on trees. I want the federal government to be exactly as big as it needs to be in order to deliver on the democratically decided goals of the American people.
If we can't attract the right talent to run the government, we should either scale back our federal ambitions or we should pay more up front.
> but then you are immediately conflating that with a reputation for being a "stable employer" (read: not firing people when maybe you should), which is not how I want my tax dollars to be used.
You're using an incorrect definition for "stable employer". Employers with low turnover rates are stable employers. The usual reason for low turnover rate is employee satisfaction with the job and their work environment, not a failure to fire people who should be fired. If you know of a government employee who should be fired you can apply political pressure on the people responsible and, if needed, vote them out of office and replace them with someone who will fire that person.
Spending is a legitimate concern, and there are situations where money in government is being wasted, people are bribed, no-bid contracts are awarded, etc. That happens much less than you'd think though and you can run into the same kinds of problems in the private sector too. It's much easier to spot when it happens in government because the books are open records.
> I want the federal government to be exactly as big as it needs to be in order to deliver on the democratically decided goals of the American people.
Consider that governments are capable of proving a service at cost while a private company cannot because on top of the cost they also need to fill their own pockets with taxpayer money. Private companies must make profit, which means that they must charge taxpayers more than necessary.
I'd agree that we want talented government workers, and we often get them, but most of all we want the goods and services we're paying for. We shouldn't have to lower our ambitions, if anything we should be demanding more from our government, and that includes getting more for our money.
>A wealth of academic research since the 1970s has established a clear and consistent inverse relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention. Meta-analyses synthesizing hundreds of individual studies consistently report a moderate to strong negative correlation between the two variables across cultures, industries and occupations (Cotton & Tuttle, 1986; Griffeth et al., 2000; Hom et al., 2017; Tett & Meyer, 1993). In other words, higher levels of satisfaction are linked to lower probabilities employees will contemplate leaving their roles. The strength of this association has remained stable over time despite changes to workplaces and economies.
It's one of those few universal values across time and cultures. A basic query will give you all the citations you want.
> was never proposing privatizing anything.
Just magically finding the lowest number the government can get away with for functioning. Not taking into account the bus factor. Redundancy, natural turnover as people retire, die, or simply change life goals, and a dozen other factors.
And apparently not the idea that when a strained organization needs a big job done but lacks people, they bid a contract to private companies (hence, privatization). We already see the result of this with Defense in how we contract everything to be made. Trillions of dollars of "efficiency" and relatively little knowledge in-house.
This isn't even a government issue. This is basic business. You can't run 100% lean. It's never the most efficient means because a pebble means catastrophic delays.
Hard disagree. My dad worked for the federal government and he was railroaded for pointing out where money just disappeared down some corners. In his case it was untracked doctor reimbursements.
This happens everywhere in government because the taxpayer just doesn't care and spending money itself is largely considered to be the metric of effectiveness -- goodhart's law. The public generally thinks that if we allocate funding to X or Y bleeding heart cause it's magically done and we don't have to think about it anymore; conversely if we delete funds nominally allocated to X or Y it means we don't care about X or Y. By the year 2025 the system of consuming funds without voter accountability has optimized itself to do as little as possible with as high a price as possible, as evidenced by 45 billion dollars for broadband.
1. Make the taxpayer care and properly have them vote in not corrupt people. This can be from awareness campaigns, stronger community identity, or more frequent town halls as a start
2. Establish an ombudsman who can care and root this out of blatant corruption happens. So you don't feel like talking to a wall when trying to expose corrupt.
3. Blame the government as an entirely and shut it down.
So which seems more logical in your eyes?
Here's an optimistic story. Organizations managing 20 billion dollars in funding in Los Angeles had no audit records of how they used the funds. It "disappeared". A judge noticed this and came down extremely hard. Watching their future funding like a hawk
Surprise, they used the money in a proper matter and the homeless situation in LA started to improve for the first time in who knows how long. Enforcement does indeed work if someone takes the time to notify the right authorities on it. But instead we fell for decades of trying to erode authority. This one didn't even involve the voters needing to oust someone.
Some mix of all the solutions depending on how bad it is. At some point the net social benefit becomes negative. When that happens incremental reform is not preferable to tearing it down, exploring alternatives (e.g. 501c(3)s), and rebuilding as government if and only if a reasonable mechanism for accountability can be created without the meddling of the people who messed it up before.
But can we afford to tear it down? The decision sounds just as radical in the private sector as the public sector. You don't just shut down your core product without there being a very swift handover process.
The example here was doctor reimbursement. So, can we afford to just not reimburse doctors as we architect a new solution to solve corruption? That strategy seems to be what people whope to achieve with Social Security. Put it "on maintenance" for a few years to "weed out corruption".
> conversely if we delete funds nominally allocated to X or Y it means we don't care about X or Y
I am saying you can't assume that because money was allocated for something it went to the critical thing you wanted. Like 45 billion for rural broadband.
> The example here was doctor reimbursement.
Yes. If the doctor reimbursement is improper you don't pay it out. It is the hospital's job to get things right when asking for money. If the hospital sent an invoice for a procedure the patient did not actually get (this was a large amount of the waste), you REALLY DO NOT PAY, if you pay then you are signaling to the hospital that it's OK to keep overcharging the VA.
> Government workers are far more likely to be unionized
Isn't this a problem? Government workers are supposed to be working for the people, involvement in a union is a conflict of interest -- this is why FDR banned unionization of federal workers (versus the private sector where there is no obligation and the relationship is generally adversarial).
> Governments are freed from having to prioritize maximizing profits at the cost of everything else
That's a huge problem. The legitimacy of government is predicated on the ability of the voter to yank the money from the government if it's ineffective -- otherwise the government can just vote itself more and more funds for whatever without accountability. Since we're all deficit spending, the burden to repay the debt falls on future generations who can't vote against spending that happened in the past! And spending by printing money hurts the poor the hardest, which I can't imagine you would be in favor of.
> Government workers are supposed to be working for the people, involvement in a union is a conflict of interest
Whats the logic here? Unions protect against employers, not consumers. Where does "the people" come in this relationship?
Securing your ability to not be fired because the new president doesn't like the color of your suit is indeed a benefit to both of us, even if you disagree with that person's views.
>otherwise the government can just vote itself more and more funds for whatever without accountability. Since we're all deficit spending, t
Yeah, it's almost like that's a career Killing move presidents avoid like the plauge. I wonder why. Must be because the people care so little about politics.
Oh, but tarrifs? That's a great strategy.
> Since we're all deficit spending,
I wish the people at large cared even 10% as much about balancing the budget as they love to discuss about during the election season. You'd see from basic research that thr defecit oft rises during republican terms (over guess what? Tax breaks) and not as much over democrats. In fact, the fee times it fell came under democratic administrations.
So the solution? Vote in the republican. One that already set a record for the biggest deficit increase and made a tarriff war that cost Americans billions. Surely he has the solution.
> Isn't this a problem? Government workers are supposed to be working for the people, involvement in a union is a conflict of interest
I don't think so. Government workers have faced the same problems as workers in the private sector (excessive overtime, unpaid wages, pay not keeping up with inflation, workplace safety issues, etc.) and unions are the best way we have to combat those kinds of issues to ensure that workers are treated fairly.
> The legitimacy of government is predicated on the ability of the voter to yank the money from the government if it's ineffective -- otherwise the government can just vote itself more and more funds for whatever without accountability.
We can certainly vote out people who commit fraud and decide democratically what we want the government to spend money on, but we can also decide that some things are worth having even when they don't make money. Governments can even run programs at a loss if we feel that those services are worth having. That doesn't mean printing money.
They are when labor is fungible, and when you're not paid by the public. Lots of crazy effects happen when the second condition is not met, for example prison guards unions advocating for harsher laws so that prisons stay full.
> That doesn't mean printing money
In principle, it does not. In practice you can count the countries that don't deficit finance on one hand.
>prison guards unions advocating for harsher laws so that prisons stay full.
People in America always vote in attorneys who are "hard on crime though". I simply see that as unchecked reflection of the people's will. To double down on it, my state had a recent proposition rejected that would have addressed some prisoners rights regarding treatment and compensation. The bluest state you can imagine and we still can't properly say that prisoners aren't slaves.
The only people America trusts less than authority is their own people, apparently. If they vote in people who want to lock more people up instead of focusing on rehabilitating: well, that's they get what they vote for, huh?
> People in America always vote in attorneys who are "hard on crime though"
They don't. For example chesa boudin in San Francisco (there are others too). Also don't forget that those tough on crime electees get campaign funds from those unions.
Yes. People looking for a stable job put down roots and grow communities. They gain deep knowledge of the systems and people they work with, and they gain valuable wisdom from experience. I have no idea why you wouldn't want people looking for a stable job at your company. Why would you want an employee who was looking to work at a place where they were likely to be fired for no reason at any moment and couldn't expect any of their co-workers to still be there tomorrow?