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The TSA is a jobs program with a bit of "throw government contracts to your buddies" mixed in. Same with the military to an extent. A TSA Screener job is about

The TSA is a jobs program with a bit of "throw government contracts to your buddies" mixed in. Same with the military to an extent. A TSA Screener job is about the closest we'll get to Basic Income: stand around in an airport occasionally groping people for $13-18/hr, plus awesome Federal benefits. Qualifications: essentially none.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> The TSA is a jobs program with a bit of "throw government contracts to your buddies" mixed in. The TSA is not a jobs program, especially for screening, etc.; those jobs directly replaced private sector jobs. The function was nationalized to move potential liability from the airlines (who contracted with the organizations operating airports, who contracted with private security firms) when they complained about the potential liability for security failure in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
- Domenic_S 10y ago
  I didn't read the sources in depth, but it looks like the TSA is bigger than the jobs it replaced: > TSA is a major part of DHS, having a workforce of about 62,000 people. TSA became a large organization very quickly after 2001, when it replaced 16,500 private airport screeners with more than 40,000 federal screeners. http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/homeland-security/tsa http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/homeland-security/tsa
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Sure, but the increased security requirements and the nationalization in the TSA were two different things that were done together; the former could have been done separately -- permanently increased security requirements were adopted after the hijacking sprees of the 1960s and 1970s, and again -- along with some additional temporary measures that were later lifted -- at the beginning of the 1990s justified by perceived threat from Iraq in the run-up to and during the 1991 Iraq War; those were politically likely to be done after a major successful terrorist attack in the US whether or not the functional was nationalized. And, as the ones which went previously, it would have created more security jobs. The nationalization of the function in the TSA, though, had nothing to do with jobs, and everything to do with liability.
- sgnelson 10y ago
  Sure it is. Do you remember post 9/11. Nobody traveled by air. The Airlines were all talking about having to declare bankruptcy. Then the government stepped in. If nothing else, the government helped subsidize and protect the airline industry (in the case of the TSA, in only a "relatively" small way) by paying for jobs that airports and airlines used to pay for. So the government paid for security so that the airlines and airports didn't have too. The liability argument is a farce that was taken care of almost immediately afterwards, and regardless, it's still a jobs program. If you kill two birds with one stone, all the better. So if the TSA is not a jobs program, I don't know what is.
pc86 10y ago
Based on my numerous but infrequent interactions with front-line TSA staff, the qualifications seem to include "passing familiarity with the English language" and "a confusing mix of hostility and apathy."

dragonwriter 10y ago

> The TSA is a jobs program with a bit of "throw government contracts to your buddies" mixed in. The TSA is not a jobs program, especially for screening, etc.; those jobs directly replaced private sector jobs. The function was nationalized to move potential liability from the airlines (who contracted with the organizations operating airports, who contracted with private security firms) when they complained about the potential liability for security failure in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Domenic_S 10y ago
I didn't read the sources in depth, but it looks like the TSA is bigger than the jobs it replaced: > TSA is a major part of DHS, having a workforce of about 62,000 people. TSA became a large organization very quickly after 2001, when it replaced 16,500 private airport screeners with more than 40,000 federal screeners. http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/homeland-security/tsa http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/homeland-security/tsa
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Sure, but the increased security requirements and the nationalization in the TSA were two different things that were done together; the former could have been done separately -- permanently increased security requirements were adopted after the hijacking sprees of the 1960s and 1970s, and again -- along with some additional temporary measures that were later lifted -- at the beginning of the 1990s justified by perceived threat from Iraq in the run-up to and during the 1991 Iraq War; those were politically likely to be done after a major successful terrorist attack in the US whether or not the functional was nationalized. And, as the ones which went previously, it would have created more security jobs. The nationalization of the function in the TSA, though, had nothing to do with jobs, and everything to do with liability.
sgnelson 10y ago
Sure it is. Do you remember post 9/11. Nobody traveled by air. The Airlines were all talking about having to declare bankruptcy. Then the government stepped in. If nothing else, the government helped subsidize and protect the airline industry (in the case of the TSA, in only a "relatively" small way) by paying for jobs that airports and airlines used to pay for. So the government paid for security so that the airlines and airports didn't have too. The liability argument is a farce that was taken care of almost immediately afterwards, and regardless, it's still a jobs program. If you kill two birds with one stone, all the better. So if the TSA is not a jobs program, I don't know what is.

pc86 10y ago

Based on my numerous but infrequent interactions with front-line TSA staff, the qualifications seem to include "passing familiarity with the English language" and "a confusing mix of hostility and apathy."