I know a fair number of people that are employed by the govt(defense industry) with more being hired daily. Based on discussions with them, it doesn't seem that their work often makes it to production. I'm wondering if this is just a form of employment welfare: providing jobs for the sake of jobs. I'm also wondering if these types of positions are candidates for eventual austerity measures under the guise of reducing government spending. Thoughts?
I haven't a clue but.... I know a state worker who worked on a project for 20 years and nothing became of it. Imagine that. On the flip side there is a federal cleanup project that closed down a business with 100's of employee's with good paying jobs. 30 years later they are still moving dirt around this couple acre site.
Yes, when there's no profit motive or bottom line to meet, this kind of thing can (and does) go on indefinitely. There's no telling how many tax dollars are wasted on it. Some of these employees actually try to get things done to no avail. Others realize it's all a game and do little or nothing. I have a friend who is in a gov't IT position. On a good day he does about an hour of "work" (usually online meetings he sleeps through). And he gets a special bonus for his "skills." What a country.
Funny how the resident Obamunists won't touch this thread. The scary thing is there are whole departments and agencies full of these people. Imagine the windfall if we quit funding them overnight...
I've read somewhere that 70 - 80% of gov't defense contracts are overbudget on a per unit delivered basis. Obviously, for the defense contractors to make a profit, the gov't has to give them this cost overrun money whenever they demand it. So, I don't see any end in sight. I've seen examples of defense contracts going overbudget by 500% or more on a per unit delivered basis and the govt just dumps the money in, no questions asked. Also, social Security and Medicare have both run surpluses over the course of their history. So, 0$ of current gov't debt we have is due to S.Sec. or medicare. So, take a guess where the lions share of the $13T went...
It's not just the defense industry, we just reached the highest ratio of income coming from govt. jobs vs. the private sector of any time in recent history. I see more and more people working for the govt, just wondering with the consequences of this will be. These people are making good money too: 75-110k/yr....
Well, about one-third of Greece's workers are employed by their gov't. That doesn't exactly bode well for the gov't job vs. private sector job trend in the U.S.
I totally agree, but you can tell from my post history i'm not in the black-helicopter crowd. Just trying to figure out what the ramifications of this are.
No black helicopters necessary. Unless you believe in fairy tale economics (massive deficit spending + increased handouts + big surge in public sector vs. private employment = economic prosperity), the conclusion isn't hard to draw. Maybe we can change our course (I certainly hope so), but that's the way we're rolling now.
I worked as a contractor at similar places several times. Decent money, very little real work done, lots of politics and paper work to keep busy. Welfare benefits cost less!