341–350 of 579 posts
The plan seems to be to fire almost all government emoloyees. The only historical parallel I can come up with is the De Baathification program in Iraq 2003.
Completely destroying a government so that contracfors from the US private sector could sweep in and take over? I fail to see the parallels.
Poetic justice
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That sounds illegal
Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" but it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx. EDIT: I'm not making any judgment about whether this particular thing is le…
In the case of taking early retirement, or accepting a pile of money for doing X / nothing, then you better be somewhat certain that it will last long enough.
Now just imagine every future administration does this, and we have more or less returned to the Spoils System through a loophole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
As someone who has been offered similar buy-outs, the one presented here is a poor deal. I would not have taken that one unless I already had a job waiting for me.
In what universe, public or private, is nine months of pay a poor deal for a buyout?
In other words, this universe.
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Move fast and break things mentality over the boring strategy of letting a hiring freeze slowly work. It’s also psychologically challenging the people that stay to “admit” they can’t get a job in the private sector, which helps the Elon narrative. They want to make government employees feel bad. Plus these people are unlikely to ever get paid. This is all operating outside of congress. If the institutions survive at…
The goal is burn down the federal government, it doesn't really matter to them what happens. Expensive lawsuits and settlements, sign me up! It isn't their money.
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Is this where we're at now? Thinking that the new administration will just openly refuse to pay people's salaries as part of a formal deal?
All of that's handled by the treasury department payment systems, so as long as those are left alone, I'm sure it'll be fine.
oh, so we're doing politics on HN now?
The idea that government workers cannot be hired and fired at will is wrong. Government workers should have no more rights than the single mother working at a restaurant or business, or anyone working at any normal business in the US. I other words, they should not have more rights or protections than the people who pay the taxes that pay for their salaries and benefits. One of the most fundamental problems in variou…
You're confusing state and federal employees with your teacher example.
They should be competent at what they do. They should be qualified. And they should not be protected from losing their jobs if they are no longer necessary or are bad at what they do. This permeates many levels of society. The local example is just the tip of the iceberg. You could go up the chain to city, state and federal and find similar problems.
It's one of the most fundamental questions and one that a lot of people do not understand because they have never run a business (or ran something trivial). There are countries where getting rid of unnecessary or incompetent employees is nearly impossible. This leads to businesses not hiring people because they cannot afford the dead weight or risk involved (also leads to illicit job markets). Being able to manage your workforce is one of the most fundamental tasks in a business. It is no different in schools or government.
We cannot optimize for the best people and best outcomes because we cannot get rid of dead weight. We get stuck with the incompetent because they cannot be fired. This is madness. And, judging from the downvotes, the ignorance does not escape some HN readers. I hope one day they are stuck with people who just burn their cash and they get nothing for it. Maybe then they will understand. It is unbelievable to me that such a fundamental understanding is lacking from society. We let idiots burn the cash we send them. There is no such thing as government money, it's our money. And it must be treated with more respect than to burn it on layers of bureaucracy and incompetence.
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Nothing is currently highly regulated.
Yes it is. That regulation is just not currently being enforced. Which is an important difference because at some point down the line retroactive enforcement might occur.