Doubt it... You'd be a fool to think you'd actually get the money
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I don't know why you keep repeating this everywhere. It is not a sure thing. And legality has no bearing anymore.
20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
61–70 of 579 posts
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#62It's interesting that annual attrition rate is 6% according to the article. I hadn't considered that before. The buyouts could end up costing more than they save if the only people who take it were the ones already planning on leaving. But maybe the argument is if enough people take it before the March budget deadline, then each departments budget can be proportionately reduced in the next cycle. Does anyone know the…
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.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it depends on what goals Trump and Musk consider worthwhile. Just hypothetically, if they dont consider healthcare for all a worthwhile goal - possibly every dollar spent on Obamacare is waste from their perspective. I think they will find a lot of waste - question is if people in the USA will agree.
Well that's what I mean, "efficiency" is a term that doesn't mean anything in isolation, and because of that they can define it to mean whatever they want it to mean and declare victory as a result. I also think there might be some shady math going on; they're counting every canceled thing as "savings", but I don't think they're going to count the cost of rehiring the lost workers and redoing these contracts.
> Well that's what I mean, "efficiency" is a term that doesn't mean anything in isolation, and because of that they can define it to mean whatever they want it to mean and declare victory as a result.
Efficiency does have a sensible definition in isolation: an efficient system is one in which there are no more Pareto improvements. From the government perspective, you could consider this in terms of the cost/service frontier, and actions which move the government towards that frontier improve efficiency.
However, I do agree with your practical concern that 'efficiency' is being used without regard at all for the services being delivered. This seems particularly likely since the government is attempting to eliminate whole departments or agencies by executive order, implying it gives no value to said services.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they were not paid because they were on "admin leave", does that look bad for Trump, or does that look bad for Congress? And who in a Republican Congress will want to do that anyway? They're mostly on board for this bullshit aren't they?
Nothing looks bad to them, so it doesn't matter. Looking bad isn't a deterrent any more.
I don't think that's ever really been a problem for Trump. Everyone I talk to who supports him expects him to be a hail-mary grenade thrown into DC—a big middle finger to the powers that be. They feel completely disenfranchised and want a shake-up.
Amazingly, so far, it hasn't hurt his approval numbers.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#65> The buyout offer entitles federal employees to stop working more or less immediately and continue to be paid through Sept. 30. > The federal workforce's normal attrition rate is about 6% a year, meaning some of those who've taken the buyout may have been planning to leave government service anyway. Wow, talk about an amazing deal if you already happened to be planning on leaving...
When you put it that way it does seem like a win win for both sides. The Trump haters get almost a year of paid vacation and the administration gets less internal drama.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's what I mean, "efficiency" is a term that doesn't mean anything in isolation, and because of that they can define it to mean whatever they want it to mean and declare victory as a result. I also think there might be some shady math going on; they're counting every canceled thing as "savings", but I don't think they're going to count the cost of rehiring the lost workers and redoing these contracts.
> Well that's what I mean, "efficiency" is a term that doesn't mean anything in isolation, and because of that they can define it to mean whatever they want it to mean and declare victory as a result. Efficiency does have a sensible definition in isolation: an efficient system is one in which there are no more Pareto improvements. From the government perspective, you could consider this in terms of the cost/service f…
> Efficiency does have a sensible definition in isolation: an efficient system is one in which there are no more Pareto improvements. From the government perspective, you could consider this in terms of the cost/service frontier, and actions which move the government towards that frontier improve efficiency.
I had to look up Pareto improvement, and I don't think that many systems exist where improvements are better in "every way" like the definition suggests.
For example, most big tech companies will use something like Kubernetes (or an equivalent) to deploy multiple instances of a service and then load balance between them, even when none of them have reached full capacity.
In one sense, this is "inefficient", in that we have computers sitting idle that could be doing work, but it's also efficient in another sense, which is to minimize downtime; if one of the computers or service crash, you won't experience much (or any) downtime because one of the replicas will handle requests.
Someone could get rid of all the replicas and then claim victory in that they made things "more efficient" by reducing the cost, but that will come at the expense of possible downtime.
Every system is different, and figuring out where on the spectrum you draw that line is rarely clear-cut, and there is almost always tradeoffs no matter what decision you make. Sometimes you can live with more downtime and it's better to cut the costs of the extra computers, sometimes downtime is not an option and you need a ton of redundancy.
Humans are not computers, so it's not the best analogy in the world, but I think it still mostly holds; it looks like in a hand-wavey way they're just defining efficiency as "spending less money", but that really doesn't make any sense unless you can show that you're getting comparable results while spending less cash.
I'm not saying that the government is perfect with spending money, obviously, and it's entirely possible that DOGE will find something that really should be eliminated. I'm just saying that it's rarely cut and dry, and it's very rare that cutting something is just a universal net improvement.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#67I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations. It would be an i…
》 So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations.
I do not see your arguments
US has worker protections, even if US government goes bancrupt, it has to pay its obligations. And if government refuses to pay, no worker, even if employed, is getting anything!
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#68Doubt it... You'd be a fool to think you'd actually get the money
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?
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it a given there would be a budget impasse, if all institutions of power are held by Republicans? Non-American here with only a Mickey Mouse understanding of US mechanics of power.
> Is it a given there would be a budget impasse, if all institutions of power are held by Republicans? I’m not an expert on this topic, so please take these comments with a grain of salt: 1. The simplest way a budget impasse could start is with internal feuding within the Republican Party. Some Republicans are very aggressive deficit hawks all the time. Some Republicans are only “deficit hawks” when a Democrat is pre…
Also, the last House was wracked with all sorts of deadlock because the Republican majority was only 5 representatives, and having 5 splinter off was incredibly easy.
The current House has an even smaller majority of 2 currently, so it's now infinitely more possible for a deadlock to happen.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#70I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations. It would be an i…
Well it is a good thing Trump and co are so well known for paying what they owe. These people are dumb if they take the offer. Job market has been cooked for 3 years already, these people will not fair well.
Correct. Donald Trump has had a reputation for stiffing people for close to 50 years now.
These workers will resign, and won't get paid what they were told they'd get paid.
This is a man who is so cheap, so petty, he held up billions of dollars worth of economic relief during COVID just so he could have his signature on a bunch of stimulus checks.