Someone slip Stein some Kool-aid?
As an ex-federal employee I can sort of agree with Stein, but regardless there are at least 100% more govt employees than the workloading can justify. This means lots of spare time and untasked workers. However if you are talking about rank-and-file employees his comments are acceptable. But he doesn’t address the critical problem with govt “managers”. Govt agencies have become so corrupted that one can say with little doubt that the managerial types are to a man stupid and incompetent with the highest grades, the SESes, being the most corrupt and incompetent of the bunch. Replace govt managers with cardboard cutouts and the situation would automatically improve as the workers wouldn’t be interfered with by morons constantly.
Another issue is internal offices like “quality control” or “program management” or “configurartion management” which are just pointless do nothing areas that serve absolutely no purpose except to provide good paying jobs for people who couldn’t serve french fries.
“there are at least 100% more govt employees than the workloading can justify.”
Exactly. Regardless of whether bureaucrats are “lazy and shiftless” the key is that they don’t face the performance incentives more common in the private sector. The same is true of those working for non-profit organizations. There’s ample empirical studies that compare performance of for-profit companies to their government counterparts and the former generally are more efficient—i.e., can deliver the same service at a lower cost (even after accounting for the profits made and taxes paid!). That’s because incentives matter. If they didn’t there wouldn’t be dime’s worth of difference between government agencies and for-profit firms.