Orange Skidmark Offers to Buy Out All Federal Employees

Don’t take this the wrong way, but your intellect will find a way to retool, adapt, and put food on the table. My only point is that the “burn it down” folks on THfSG are on balance atop a pyramid that has lots of upper class safety nets.

 

Good post.
I’ll give you that. You covered a lot so I suppose I don’t hate it and appreciate the time you spent to share.
Of course my previous post about govt was pointed at its roots.
But yes there are actually wonderful govt people and govt does a lot of good.
Thanks for not being condescending like many of the boards resident democrats.
Hope you stick around.

 

I am less worried about myself than my children and others I care about. Perhaps that is my problem. the whole thing could spiral out of control with social unrest and djt wanting to deploy the military to shoot a few in the legs

 

For the record, I’m a non-party affiliated voter. It drives me nuts that in today’s society everyone is a racist or a snowflake depending on what side of the aisle someone stands on in their beliefs. Trump’s attack on federal employees is unprecedented and foolhardy. One would only have to scroll through USAJOBS.gov to see that the vast majority of those being attacked are highly skilled, educated, and experienced workers. Crushing the numbers to the point that the agencies cannot complete their Congressional mandates is trying to willfully break what isn’t broken. While there are typical red tape issues that could be addressed, burning it to the ground without using data is just trying to make a point at the expense of the taxpayers. There are actually branches of the government that save more money than they cost. By reducing those worker numbers, you inadvertently increase the cost to the public. I know for a fact that my current division is actually cost saving and has been for decades. We’ve worked from home full-time since the pandemic. We were partially telework before COVID-19. The data collected during the pandemic showed our productivity went up as callouts decreased and leave usage decreased across the board. Employees were logged in more hours every year and more efficient per hour. Why the second metric appeared was still being researched. Are their people that abuse the privilege? Sure, and we already track keystrokes and VPNs to address those problems. You simply cannot apply a one size fits all when dealing with a government large enough to serve 1/3 billion people and the most powerful GDP on the planet.

 

Yup. And they'll cling to their absurd "weaponized DOJ" narrative.

We're in Idiocracy

 

And they'll literally pickup all the oppositions narratives when they find themselves in the opposition. Like I've said before, these people tongue-kiss hypocrisy on a daily basis.

 

And the other crazy part of this: full-time work from home will likely be one of the most efficient ways of addressing housing costs. If everybody has to live within 1 hour or so of a building, and that building is clustered with a ton of other such buildings, as we see in cities like DC, that causes housing prices to rise as demand for housing in that area increases. If you let people work from home, they can go to cheaper locations and housing prices begin to even out a bit. In addition, in cities, some of the excess commercial property can be turned into housing.

Ironically, this would be an issue for cities, especially in Democratic-leaning areas, who rely on high real estate prices, and would be a huge boon to more rural, Republican-leaning areas, who often have very cheap housing with limited job opportunities. And yet, because none of this is driven by cognitive considerations but by emotion, most notably, resentment in general and jealousy towards people who have jobs that can be done at home (and also notably, because we have a president that owns commercial property), we get this nonsense.

 

All of that without addressing transit subsidies, mileage reimbursement, relocation costs, building materials and maintenance (think million$). Some of the larger complexes costs will increase significantly over empty space. GSA could also lease to private industry and small companies to both make profit outside of taxes and help push pure capitalism in that small companies can get a foothold in major markets.

 

Agree with this for the most part. Having spent the last 8 1/2 years in govt after 28 years in private consulting I saw lots of inefficiency in the public sector that wouldn’t be accepted in the private sector. My plan was to spend the last ten years of my career in govt but had to get outta there and I retired a bit early because I was frustrated with so many decisions that I saw made and so much wastefulness. On the other hand, there are some very dedicated and competent govt employees still where I was doing their damnedest to make a positive difference.

 

I seriously hope know one believes that they will actually receive a payout. Trump has been in and out of court his whole adult life due to not paying people.

 

That isn’t what we have now?

 

facts vs sound clips

MAGA prefers TikTok to facts

 

No. We have people with multi-decade careers spanning several administrations, some R and some D. We're now going back to the Pre-Rutherford B Hayes era.

Yea.

 

I’ve generally observed both sides of the aisle on the tip of the wings prefer YouTube, TikTok, X, Insta, etc. to rational discussion and facts. Currently MAGA is just screaming it louder.

Right wing extremists scream the government is evil and run by corrupt billionaires and then votes one into power. The extreme left wing screams the government is evil and orchestrated 9/11. Then they go to social media sites that have no fact checking to spew falsehoods.

Schools used to teach critical thinking skills, but have replaced this with standards testing and memorization of facts. Clearly this has created a gross deficit in those that find safe harbor in facts somewhere in the middle. All of this has lead from decent individuals like Carter, Reagan, and Lincoln holding office to either side pushing extremism is policy. The biggest government waste comes not from the left or right, but the policies swinging from side to side from EOs instead of being pushed through Congress and the W.H. and eventually tested in court. If the public would come in from the wing tips and elect leaders to lead as intended, we could reduce a massive amount of government waste doing new actions while undoing previous actions every four years.

 

Cost of cleaning up after Dems and RINO's. Reagan had to do the same thing. Might as well take our medicine now. Inflation is mostly a money supply problem. Hopefully the FED will do what needs to be done

 

Perhaps. Maybe at least some of those long term employees are where they are as a result of federal employee union protections, ~$200k salaries, and simple inertia knowing that they can’t coast outside in the real world and make the same money with similar job security.

I worked in municipal govt after twice being recruited out of the private sector by a municipal department head. I took a five figure salary cut but was willing to do so in the latter part of my career because I was financially able to do so and wanted to help make my community better (and govt benefits came close to making the salary drop a wash). I was aggravated when I did a little research and found the federal employees in similar positions make more than state employees and much more than municipal employees, so I am a bit biased against feds. Perhaps those fed employees are overpaid. Did working from home like about half of fed employees are doing now come with pay reductions to offset travel, meal, clothing, and other savings? I have a real tough time believing anyone puts in a full productive eight hours a day better at home than in an office. I could be wrong, but I know that I don’t have that level of willpower.

 

I would like to address some falsehoods in your statements with facts. Of the roughly 2M federal civil and military workers, only 218,000 are fully remote. The other 90% have an office that they regularly enter every week, usually 3-4 days per week in a hybrid position. Those that do not enter an office have positions that regularly meet via TEAMs software and are not public facing positions. They are advisory or production based in a quality component.

The vast majority of federal government employees do not make anywhere near $200K sans executives who are on par with responsibilities and staffing numbers as Fortune 500 companies and those CEOs make easy ten times what their government counterparts make. The only other staff that make numbers that approach or exceed 200 are employees or contractors who are doctors or private companies contractors. They also make less than their private practice counterparts. The highest locality pay in the Federal service is New York. For reference I will attach a link to the pay scale. In order to reach $195K, you would need to hold a position as Director or a Senior Justice for a minimum of six years. Those individuals may manage up to a thousand staff. Most don’t reach GS-15 with less than 20 years of experience. The government generally initially employs individuals between pay scales 1-11. GS-11 usually requires a decade of experience or an advanced degree with experience. I served as a state of Florida employee for 14 years under two different departments before coming to federal service. You will find that municipalities in major metropolitan areas pay roughly what federal employees earn. The reason it seems federal is paid at an elevated rate is because people only discuss the pay in major metropolitan areas. Those locations like NYC, SF, Chicago, Dallas, etc. are expensive to live and you can’t recruit people to work where they will be impoverished. Especially not educated and experienced workers. Also, FL for instance has programs that are fully funded at the federal rate, but return payroll funding because their own laws prevent them from giving the full wage to the employee. That’s on the state and FL is one. Federal employees only have union representation as GS-12 and below. After that you are essentially at will.

In order to back up my statements, here is the NY pay scale: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2025/NY (LEO).pdf

and what federal workers make in rural areas: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2025/RUS.pdf.

Again, the vast majority of federal workers never make management level of a 13. The only truly $200K salaries are going to political appointees at the executive level.

For comparison purposes, here is the website with the NYC pay scales. Many top out in the high 100k range just as federal scales do.
https://oer.ny.gov/salary-schedules

 

I’ll take your word for it. Still think the the fed govt needs to be downsized. 2.1 M fed employees is too many. 1.3M+ active duty military makes good sense, might even be a bit light. 2.1 Bureaucrats is excessive to me.

 

Most aren’t bureaucrats and have little to do with policy/procedure. The vast majority are anything but bureaucratic. Many in fact are in positions that support the U.S. military such as doctors/nurse/clerks through the VA system, teachers and service providers for on base, etc. While the number sounds large, when placed in context you have one federal worker for every 159 citizens. When you take into account that it includes everything from space exploration and state depart offices around the globe to teachers and border security, the number is relatively small. Florida, a state which boasts how small it has made its government under Scott and DeSantis has a population to worker ratio of 1:137. The Feds do far more than the state and with a lot smaller ratio. The postal service accounts for 525,000 of those federal employees. Get rid of the mail system and the ratio for the feds drops to 1:209. While the feds are the biggest, they certainly aren’t bloated as is made out to be. Social Security is at a historic low in staffing since its inception.

 

is SSA included in this?