Yes! As I said, I have a vision of a government worker in their pj's cruising the net. Is that the job?
We could hire high school kids to do the job. Exactly what is the government doing?
I've had the honour to work directly with personnel from a number of US government agencies. I've also spent the last ~15 years training recent university graduates in a number of professional roles.
Yes, you could hire high school kids to do their job. But, as someone who has been a teacher and seen US government employees at work, you'd better be prepared for a melt-down of catastrophic proportions of whatever organisation they've been hired at.
On a personal note, a little over 10 years ago I got to play a peripheral role in a multi-billion dollar commerical deal that was being negotiated with US government support. The US government representatives maneuvered through the deal with an incredible amount of knowledge, initative and hard work. This was a deal that involved negotiations in five different languages, legal approvals in five different countries and securing international debt financing from more than 30 commercial banks. They got that all done in under five weeks - only to see the whole thing get blown up becuase of a domestic political snit.
Do these pampered and overpaid public servants actually have any work to do while they are tuning into their favorite, government subscription entertainment channels?
Do we pay them to read Politico? Reuters?
Do you want bureaucrats and decision makers who are well informed and have an understanding of the world? Then yes, you SHOULD pay them to read Politico and Reuters.
I'm lucky. Part of my job is to read and synthesis as much news and information about my particular subject area as possible. I literally get paid to read the news (among other things).
However, Politico Pro (the subscription service the government is paying for) comes with more than just news. It also comes with a bunch of other features - everything from personnel databases and calendars to legislative summaries, vote tracking and network mapping.
And your company cost the US how much for those 98 government contractts? $8,9 million?
And exactly what does your company do for the government, aye?
It provides news and analysis for some transportation related sectors. Along with this are a suite of data and specalist information products, including some highly specalised databases that have taken ~15 years to develop and are unique to our company.
This is exactly the problem. The average US income is $38,585 per year. The average #SS is $1,986 a month.
People want government cut. Your company possibly does something to justify house down payments of $200,000.
Maybe, it does something I really need done, perhaps but reading Politico is not a job description nor is it a definition of "work" in the average Americans playbook.
Part of what bureaucrats do is learn about the workings and goings on of government and being informed on their subject matter areas. Reading Politico (or The Hill, or Axios, or Morning Consult, or the WSJ, or Bloomberg, or NYT or The Seattle Times or any one of thousands of other papers) is fundamental to that part of the job.
Just because an average Amercian doesn't think it's not work, doesn't mean it isn't. To borrow a phrase: People aren't down with things they're not up with.
This is what is going to swat the government in the face. America is not rich.
America is rich. Its population has the highest disposable income on earth. America also has the highest wealth inequality of any Western, developed nation.
So, while it is wealthy and while it's people are very rich compared to most of the rest of the world, it's weath is HIGHLY concentrated. And, increasingly so - income inequality has been getting progressively worse since the end of the Carter administration.
thedispatch.com
