As a former state employee, I agree that they’re not all bad. But I certainly saw a bunch!!!
read my tagline
Well, he is right about federal employes in general. The problem is that there are too many of them. Virtually every office is stuffed with too many employees.
The issue is not so much government employees, as it is unionized government employees, or in fact unionized employees of any sort. Unions take away the incentive to work because they make it impossible to fire unproductive employees.
If Ben is saying that government employees have the same output as private enterprises, he is nuts. It is not about the people, it is about the system and the systematic incentives to perform at optimum levels of efficiency. Government simply does not have the capability to operate as efficiently over time as a private organization built on profit generation.
I’ve worked for the Federal government most of my adult life - first as an Army officer, then as a Federal law enforcement officer, and now in the civil service.
I also worked in the private sector for a few years, so I’ve got experience in both sides.
There’s just as many lazy people in the private sector as in the government.
The difference is private sector workers get fired from one job and then simply move to another private sector job. They never leave the private sector or start their own businesses. It’s harder (but certainly not impossible) to fire a lazy government worker. Typically, they just get transferred to where they can do the least amount of damage.
Oh, since you’re a fed, you look the other way, huh?
It must be terribly hard on you, what with the media and the party in control CONSTANTLY demonizing you? And the lifelong beneifits have got to be a grind too.
And learn to excerpt, liberal.
No doubt there a some good people working in the government but I find government all too often the preferred employer of activist liberal socialist control freaks who delight in saying "I'm only doing my job " as they hassle hard-working American citizens while ignoring the illegals and real terrorists who will fight back.
From personal experience, I can tell you nobody wastes money and talent as well as government does.
There are good people in government. Most of them can’t do good work for one reason or another. Bureaucracy rules are usually it, or funding to their particular area only covers people, not equipment.
But government has become its own stumbling block. It’s just a leviathan and it needs to be pared down. Processes and procedures are not optimized and people wind up being very inefficient and doing “work” for the sake of doing work. Can’t do real work, have too much busywork to do.
And people get conditioned to think this is just how things are in government, and they get used to it as how ‘normal’ government operates.
Curious statement.
I would never consider a FIREMAN a “Bureaucrat”
I would never consider a POLICEMAN a “Bureaucrat”
I would never consider a PROSECUTOR or PRISON GUARD a “Bureaucrat”
I would never consider a DOCTOR or a NURSE at a VA hospital a “Bureaucrat”
Keep trying Ben.
And learn to not get confused on your words in the future.
CBS news, yawn. Oh, the poor babies with taxpayer-paid salaries and benefits.
Don't know anyone who confuses a CIA field officer or a fire fighter with a bureaucrat.
What do you produce, create or make?
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.
While I agree he’s right to not paint all Fed employees with the same brush, there is without a doubt validity to the statement that the government is bloated.
Too many people doing absolutely nothing.
Uh, right.
The fact is, the size of the bureaucracy is ridiculous. The monster needs to be shrunk.
I have a dear relative who used to be a bureaucrat. She was, like you I am sure, one who wisely used the taxpayer’s dollars.
But she agrees: the waste and fraud were rampant.
We can’t say EVERY SINGLE fed employee is a leech. But too many are—and enough that we need to cut back on their numbers.
I could not find any recent comparable numbers for the US but these seem to tell a tale:
“Staff working in the private sector took an average of 6.4 days off last year, down from 7.2 days the previous year, while absence rates among public workers only fell marginally, from 9.8 to 9.7 days.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5863545/Private-sector-workers-taking-fewer-sick-days.html
And there was another blow for public sector workers when it was revealed the average civil servant takes 11 sick days a year — almost double the rate of absence in the private sector.
The ones that I used to supervise were mostly lazy and stuck in molasses. Deadlines were constantly being shifted downstream. One or two diligent ones picked up the slack to make the place barely function.