In a time of high unemployment and massive private job losses the answer is no.
Federal government becomes the last refuge of those who can’t find work in the private sector, either through federal work or federal assistance.
Think of the census workers. These people are encountering a very hostile public. Why then do it? They do it because its the only thing they can get and when it ends these people are back to square 1.
There are firms advertising jobs in the country who now openly advertise that they’ll only consider those already employed and informally that is practiced among many other companies. In an economic climate like this that is catastrophic.
I believe in small government and I’m anti-taxes. However, the time to cut the federal payroll and begin seriously taking on entitlements and the deficit was in the 1980s and 1990s because the only time an economy can absorb a cut in the public expenditures and not see it be a net negative and not a positive is when the economy is in boom because then the private economy easily absorbs those coming out of the public sector.
If you ended unemployment and laid off 15% of federal workers today all you would do is further harm consumer demand and make an already bad situation 5 times worse.
There is no magic panacea. There is no magic bullet. All the choices we’re faced with are bad. The easiest and most effective could very well end up being WWIII.
This is a perfect illustration of the dilemma concerning all economic and financial decisions that must be made. We have successfully been maneuvered into a damned if you do and damned if you don't position mainly by incompetence and inaction over the last 30 years.
I respectfully disagree.
Government workers make twice what private sectoir workers make.
And the benefits and pensions are astronomical.
By cutting entitlements, the federal budget and eliminating whole departments and programs altogether and reducing the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy and channeling the savings into more productive areas would boost the economy, not threaten it.