[kbz1960]

I hear you, sandman, and I get your meaning.
I was simply trying to dispel the notion that all federal employees are retired in place from the moment they're hired. I landed my first job at an Air Force Base straight out of UCLA for what I thought was an interim to pay off debts accumulated while in school and found myself falling in love with the idea of serving the country. In what way I could.
I've since moved to DC and I work in an agency whose mission is security and defence of the American people. And I can tell you my staff and everyone around me is keenly aware of the importance of achieving our mission. Our tasks and concerns are deeply engaged in protecting our people who are in the field. In whatever the task may be.
Which, I suppose, would explain my obsession with security.

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Thank you for helping to protect our service men/women who protect us. A very big THANK YOU!

[qbnkelt]

Oh, thank you.
I wasn't trying for attention for myself. My job is simply support of the mission. I'm nobody.
My agency, my Director, my staff all have the same goal - doing our part to support. We're safely tucked away, completely protected, and we have people in peril. Whether it's equipment, IT systems integration, whatever....our piece is support.

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[kbz1960]

I didn't think you were. It takes every piece working to make it happen and keep the ones in peril safe.

[grover5]

I think I may have failed to express myself properly, or may have been misunderstood. I realize we need some government agencies. It sounds like you work in one of the useful agencies dealing with national defense, a concept which I strongly recognize the need for.

The truth is, however, there are far too many government agencies which do essentially nothing useful (and with no Constitutional mandate) and simply add needless buearocracy for citizens and businesses alike to have to deal with. These are the agencies which need to be slashed immediately.

My comment was simply that if the unnecessary agencies were slashed, the good, ambitious former government employees would not struggle at all finding good jobs in the private sector. Those who just show up and do the minimum work possible, however, might be in for a shock.

Whatever with your worship of the private sector. Here is a newsflash sandman, lazy workers exist in all sectors. It was a private sector corporation that charged $100 per bag of laundry done for the troops in Iraq. The same job those awful government workers had been doing at a rate of $5 a bag. The mighty private sector.

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[kbz1960]

Whatever with your worship of the private sector. Here is a newsflash sandman, lazy workers exist in all sectors. It was a private sector corporation that charged $100 per bag of laundry done for the troops in Iraq. The same job those awful government workers had been doing at a rate of $5 a bag. The mighty private sector.

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Wouldn't that be the governments idiocy for accepting the contract? You can't blame the private sector for taking what they can get. Do you also blame the private sector for $500 toilet seats?

But yes there are many lazy people in the private sector too.

[grover5]

Wouldn't that be the governments idiocy for accepting the contract? You can't blame the private sector for taking what they can get. Do you also blame the private sector for $500 toilet seats?

But yes there are many lazy people in the private sector too.

I do not admire the pursuit of profit as a purpose. The national defense dollars are never questioned unfortunately. The only dollars questioned on the public side are for education and infrastructure of our society. Nobody questions the war machine. Back to the mighty private sector though. Why does such a splendid apparatus require so much tax payer subsidy? Doesn't that make them government or public entities as well?

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[kbz1960]

I hear you on that. But if you could sell your car that is worth $500 to someone for $500 or sell it to someone that offered you $1,000 who are you going to sell it to?

I think our government, fed and state needs to cut people and take pay cuts instead of voting themselves raises. They all ready barely have to spend any of the money they make because the tax payers pay for most everything they do.

[grover5]

I hear you on that. But if you could sell your car that is worth $500 to someone for $500 or sell it to someone that offered you $1,000 who are you going to sell it to?

I think our government, fed and state needs to cut people and take pay cuts instead of voting themselves raises. They all ready barely have to spend any of the money they make because the tax payers pay for most everything they do.

I agree with your analogy and yes I would prefer to sell it for $1000. I would also agree with the pay cuts for the politicians but most public workers earn less than their private sector counterparts. Public workers pay taxes just like private sector workers and they provide support for our society. I'll never understand the current hostility toward the public employees. It reminds me of a good joke. A CEO, a tea partier and a union worker are sitting at a table with a plate of 12 cookies. The CEO reaches over and takes 11 of the cookies. He turns to the tea partier and says, while pointing at the union worker, watch out...I think that guy wants your cookie.

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[kbz1960]

Oh I agree with you on the public sector workers. They are not the problem. Now the government that's another story, talk about waste!

[the_sandman_454]

I agree with your analogy and yes I would prefer to sell it for $1000. I would also agree with the pay cuts for the politicians but most public workers earn less than their private sector counterparts. Public workers pay taxes just like private sector workers and they provide support for our society. I'll never understand the current hostility toward the public employees. It reminds me of a good joke. A CEO, a tea partier and a union worker are sitting at a table with a plate of 12 cookies. The CEO reaches over and takes 11 of the cookies. He turns to the tea partier and says, while pointing at the union worker, watch out...I think that guy wants your cookie.

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Public workers do pay taxes, I'll give them that. My problem is partially the idea of public unions. Unions in the private sector bargain against who? Companies/corporations. Unions in the public sector bargain against who? You, me, that guy down the street. They then get all chummy with the politicians, and this helps both the union workers, union big wigs, and the politicians at the expense of the future of the country.

Look how many municipalities, cities, states are currently in danger of going bankrupt in the next dacade or so. Look how many public employee pensions are currently underfunded. I do not want my taxes to go up to pay for an unsustainable wage/benefit system. Nobody is forcing people to work in the public sector. if they don't like the wages/benefits offered, they can do something else. It is easy for the politicians to make lofty promises to people and let others down the road figure out how to pay for it.

I prefer to rein in governmment spending to a sustainable level which provides a basic set of services (national defense, enforcing contracts, interstate commerce, a common currency) and which also includes allowing us all to keep as much of the money we earn as we possibly can. The smaller the government, the better off we all are.

With your laundry example, the problem was the government and the way the actual costs to the tax payer aren't calculated into the cost of a batch of laundry, not the private sector company.

I'm sorry, but there are "hidden" costs of the government doing anything, such as the wages for the government employees who did the work, the ones who managed them, department heads, equipment, and probably a retirement which all get paid behind the scenes via taxes. This could add up to make the $100 the private company was charging look like a bargain when properly put into perspective.

Government services do not come nearly as cheaply as people seem to think, and often come with a much larger/more inefficient structure than a private corporation providing a similar service would because the private corporation cannot afford the inefficiency or the impact it has on the profit margin. The government, however, seems to feel that it has every right to be inefficient because it has all the money in the world: ours.

These are generalities, and I'm sure you can provide an example of an inefficient corporation and an efficient/useful government agency.

[the_sandman_454]

I agree with your analogy and yes I would prefer to sell it for $1000. I would also agree with the pay cuts for the politicians but most public workers earn less than their private sector counterparts. Public workers pay taxes just like private sector workers and they provide support for our society. I'll never understand the current hostility toward the public employees. It reminds me of a good joke. A CEO, a tea partier and a union worker are sitting at a table with a plate of 12 cookies. The CEO reaches over and takes 11 of the cookies. He turns to the tea partier and says, while pointing at the union worker, watch out...I think that guy wants your cookie.

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The problem with public employees is simply that there are too many of them and their wages/retirements aren't really sustainable in many cases without raising taxes, which can hurt the local/state/national economy when people/companies choose to move to places with lower taxes.

Think what you like, but all government jobs cost the tax payers money. All services received from the government are subsidized by tax payers. The more services offered, the more money gets drained from individuals and corporations. Money that could have otherwise been used to save, invest, or spend on goods thereby helping the economy along.

Higher taxes stifle saving, investing, spending, and ultimately the economy in general. Higher taxes are going to become necessary to pay for un or under funded retirement/pension plans politicians have decided that public employees deserve. I didn't make those promises to public employees, why should I be on the hook to pay for it. If anyone is to take the blame it has to be the politicians and unions for bargaining benefits that weren't sustainable.

You mentioned subsidies in one of your posts and I agree. Subsidies need to go away and let businesses succeed or fail on their own.

I don't seek to receive benefits I haven't earned or deserve. What we need is for the government to go back to the basics and stop trying to play Robin Hood by stealing from some to give to others. This goes for subsidies, welfare, and so forth. The idea of taking from some to prop up others seems to be socialist, communist, fascist, depending on how you do it. None of these idealogies has a place in my United States of America.

[the_sandman_454]

I do not admire the pursuit of profit as a purpose. The national defense dollars are never questioned unfortunately. The only dollars questioned on the public side are for education and infrastructure of our society. Nobody questions the war machine. Back to the mighty private sector though. Why does such a splendid apparatus require so much tax payer subsidy? Doesn't that make them government or public entities as well?

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What other purpose do you admire and try to achieve? The pursuit of profit is the only human motive. Profit doesn't have to be financial, it could be emotional, physical, or anything else that conceivably benefits you in any way.

You will never, ever hear me in favor of using tax payer money to subsidize a business.

You will never, ever hear me in favor of handing out foreign aid at all or having our military act in any way other than in our national interest. I don't want to see our military involved in conflicts that don't involve keeping us safe from invasion/terrorism, protecting our shipping routes, or natural resources.

Government money isn't free, it is stolen from you, me, businesses, and so forth. I prefer the smallest government possible with the most basic of services possible. This way, we can minimize taxes and maximize peoples' earnings. If I can choose between paying for more services I don't need versus keeping more of my money which I've earned by trading portion of my life and my productivity to my employer, I will choose to keep more of what I've earned.

[the_sandman_454]

Oh, thank you.
I wasn't trying for attention for myself. My job is simply support of the mission. I'm nobody.
My agency, my Director, my staff all have the same goal - doing our part to support. We're safely tucked away, completely protected, and we have people in peril. Whether it's equipment, IT systems integration, whatever....our piece is support.

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Thank you for doing your job well and thanks to everyone else out there doing theirs. The system doesn't work without everybody in the system contributing.

[Rootbrian]

I was slacking off for way tooooooo long, looking for work being hard as ****. ugh. But at least I get by via biking around, nightly most (NightRider ), vlogging, etc. Boredom just drives me nuts sometimes.