Posted on 04/01/2017 5:29:23 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
While many of the targeted federal agencies have offices outside Washington, Trump's dream budget would hit the region disproportionately, with tens of thousands of jobs at risk. The cuts would be felt throughout the city, with fewer people riding the already-beleaguered Metro subway or eating at restaurants. It would also hurt Washington's already-shaky market for office space.
Economist Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, who has studied the regional economy for decades, estimated 20,000-24,000 federal employees and 10,000 federal contractors would lose their jobs under Trump's proposal. That equates to 5 percent of federal workers in the region.
With those workers earning an average salary of $111,000, the job losses would mean more than $2.2 billion in lost wages, Fuller said. That would reverberate around the city.
"These are basically shutting agencies down whose principal contribution to the Washington economy is jobs," Fuller said. "These are really good jobs. The average job in a restaurant (pays) $28,000. You've got to create a lot of restaurant jobs to replace one of these."
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
I’m surprised they didn’t point out how hard hit all the muggers and burglars and drug dealers will be by the decrease in highly paid idiots that make up their natural prey.
Oh, absolutely ! They have sacrificed enough by giving themselves to the public sector at below market wages for decades of their prime earning years ! Now they can go into the private sector and make some REAL money ! /s
Good. I hope the WDC area plunges into a major depression (economically too).
It would certainly be nice to see DC lose population, and real estate prices drop so far the owners are underwater on their mortgages. I’m not kidding.
Let these turds experience what the rest of the country did eight years ago while they went merrily along with their taxpayer funded lives.
The only way to ultimately burst the beltway Bubble is to decentralize the federal government offices out across rural parts of the country so a (much smaller) federal workforce doesn’t lose touch with real America ever again.
Not entire Departments. The employees would be a large enough group to create their own new economic bubble and price out the locals from the best neighborhoods.
Open hundreds of small offices spread across the country and never more than 50 workers per office. In such small numbers, they will have to “assimilate” back into the real American population. Put those offices in the worst parts of the most rundown cities and towns where rents are lowest so the workers have nice long commutes from their posh neighborhoods.
Depends on whether you classify lobbyists as “private”. I suspect most of that building was done for Beltway Bandits of one stripe or another.
DC metropolitan area is an economic aberration. Fairly recession proof at taxpayers expense. I spent my High school years there and NEVER lacked for a good job. My friends who remained there for decades all had good paying work and none of them held government positions. There are 6 figure goods and services work all over that area. And it is the literal economic bubble that most large metro area cannot enjoy because the Federal Government doesn’t live there.
What’s interesting is how modest the DC area was in the 60’s and how economically grandiose it has become over the last 60 years. Very telling indeed.
Sounds like a plan ...
A few years ago someone polled Americans about what they would do if Washington, DC was hit by a nuclear attack. They expected patriotic answers like they got from people after 9/11.
They were actually surprised when many people answered “Applaud !”
Dimms claimed Food Stamps were “stimulus spending” and therefor increases in Food Stamps spending was a GOOD thing !
The 2016 election was a hostile takeover of the Beltway.
For which I voted!
As someone is fond of saying, the Federal jobs are merely welfare with dignity. They go to work everyday and produce nothing of import.
Ask Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader until he got primaried by Dave Brat. First time ever for a House Majority Leader.
I doubt the futures of the office drones being downsized by Trump are quite as rosy as Cantor.
Thanks for the article link. It is amusing to hear Cantor sound so confident Trump was going to lose. He supported Jeb, consider Biden a good friend, and his in-laws’ entire family are Democrats. Yet he thinks of himself as a “conservative”. Delusional.
“Ronaldus Magnus pointed out that we should note that a drunken sailor is spending his OWN money.”
How absolutely true.
It would be truly scary to tally the sum of money spent by bureacrats across the country on government-funded,
crony-destined “programs” that “advance the middle class”.
(millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions?)
IMHO
They are due a Full Blown Depression!
I’d bake a cake.
I have said before and will say again, one of the best measures of Trump’s success at getting the bureaucracy under control is if housing prices in the DC area plummet over the next few years. Not even Reagan was able to accomplish that.
Boo. Hoo.
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