Comment by fivestar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fivestar | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The problem with privatization is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation--look at Russia after the USSR caved in and how oligarchs came to own factories and all kinds of infrastructure simply because of the gold rush moment where they could get away with it. Privatization in the US works the same way--the insiders get the deals, the rest of us get nothing. If there was a way to randomize it, we might be able to make it work.

I don't like the current situation in DC where there is a permanent government workforce that is mostly unionized. It is bloated and out of touch and that's where the calls for accountability are coming from. Right-size that government workforce, make the employees actually work (I know many do, so don't downvote me--I was a state employee for awhile once upon a time, I damn well know how many people worked and how many read newspapers and napped all day).

I bet if we were to perform some simple reforms of the federal workforce that the calls for privatization would cease. It's about creating better outcomes, and the last Administration was more about creating a huge dependent class everywhere possible of people who would reliably vote their interests.

"I bet if we were to perform some simple reforms of the federal workforce that the calls for privatization would cease."

They would not. The calls certainly use any dissatisfaction with government services, but they originate from a desire to profit off the resulting privatisation. If there was no dissatisfaction, the calls would be coached in ideological grounds ("government should not be picking winners and losers"..), or the relevant departments would get underfunded until dissatisfaction reappears ("get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.").

Note how rarely, when a market fails (telecoms, banks...), are calls for nationalisation heeded, while the opposite does not hold.

I can recommend "The Oligarchs" by David E. Hoffman - it makes even the wildest stories of Silicon Valley sound very tame indeed.

A lot of them work hard, but there is nothing to ensure that they are working on useful things and governments are veeery slow to shift workforces around.

I'm a lobbyist in Washington DC and it is appalling The work ethic of federal employees. The governments hands are tied, they can't fire anyone, and if there's no work, they just sit around and do whatever they want. The federal bureaucracy is absolutely bloated, and there's really nothing anyone can do about it. They get amazing pay, amazing benefits, amazing retirement, and if they screw up, there is really nothing you can do to them.

A good starting point would be if the political "leaders" would start to lead government instead of fighting each other all the time. When I lived in DC I knew some government workers and they all told me that their agency's top leadership doesn't seem to be interested in managing the agency but just wants to score political points and hand out contracts to preferred providers. Priorities change every few years when a new president comes in.

In the end I think Americans need to stop talking about "government" as something that's separate from them but instead work on the institutions to make them better. You can't expect good performance without good leadership.

> They get amazing pay

Who gets amazing pay? How much are we talking about? I don't know about the USA, but usually public employees don't earn that much (in exchange for high job security).

Fair point, the pay you can get elsewhere might be higher. I tend to think anything over $60k a year to be pretty good, which a GSA scale employee can get to in just a few years. Pay raises are almost guaranteed unless there is a budget issue, but even then you get it all eventually. They do max out at about $140k, though. The magic is to retire after 20 years, get the pension, and then get another job in the private sector and double dip. That's the real brass ring.

In DC/NOVA area $60k a year qualifies you for rent subsidy and other welfare benefits. That said $60k is not what federal employees in the DC area start at, nor is $140k what they normally end at. It's more around $80k - $155k ($180k-$190k if you hit management).

I'm in the NoVA area. Really? I've got to look into this. Thank you! I will report back with what I find.

And 140k is a lot of money if you factor in a guaranteed pension. You have to make a lot of money to finance this yourself.

The pension has been slowly getting worse and worse though. With the newest version of FERS we are at 1% per year at service annuity partially financed with a 4.8% employee paycheck deduction.

>And if you work in Congress you often get an accelerated schedule so one year there counts for several years toward your pension.

That's true, but the only real people who benefit is the Member and maybe their CoS. Congress staffers make joke salaries in general. The reason people take those jobs is either a sense of duty or as the requisite training program to become a lobbyist.

There are two types of staffers. Some of them make very good money (way above 100k) and others do it for the idealism.

That's possible but it's still a great deal compared to saving for retirement yourself. And if you work in Congress you often get an accelerated schedule so one year there counts for several years toward your pension.

Employees of the big agencies in DC make very good money from what I know.

The absolute highest paid government workers make on par with what is typically claimed on HN to be average for an entry-level developer in SV. A typical mid-level government employee makes much, much less.

SV is an outlier. For everybody else the goverment salary with defined pension, health care and job security is a very good deal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com