Subject: Re: Vivek: Mass Layoffs Needed
So, whatcha' think? Ignoring the viability of him making mass layoffs on Day One, do you agree with Ramaswamy and support the elimination of 75% of the federal workforce?

I spent many years working in the private sector but also over 2 decades working for the federal government.

Yes, there are problems of efficiency and productivity in the government and ALSO in most large organizations, including large corporations. My experience was that the lower echelons in the agency I worked for were mostly full of highly motivated and hard working individuals. But bureaucracies tend to grow top heavy and bloated. The closer to the source of funds the easier it is to justify increased pay and expanded staffing to do work YOU should be doing.

But the idea that you could eliminate 75% of the federal workforce? Insane. You cannot have a modern society without adequate government. This is just stupid. Can you make it more efficient? Yes.

Do you remember the Clinton/Gore initiative to improve government efficiency: Reinventing government? I was working for the feds at that time and this program was actually making a difference. They started trimming a lot of the middle management fat. I found this very encouraging. Get rid of some of those office drones who do very little for the taxpayers. But I also worried that this would get undone because bureaucracy is so hard to change. And sure enough, some years later all the bloat was back.

As a supervisor I found that firing someone for lack of performance was VERY difficult in the federal government. It was much easier to fire someone for conduct issues. On the one hand this meant that it was harder for bad bosses to fire people for the wrong reasons, but it really was harder than it should have been to fire someone for poor performance. This is a problem.

The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) was a U.S. government reform initiative launched in 1993 by Vice President Al Gore. Its goal was to make the federal government "work better, cost less, and get results Americans care about".

One thing you can be sure of, with a right wing government we'll get more cronyism and corruption. Trump would be horrible in this regard. And you would see people getting fired because they held the wrong political beliefs.