5 ms·

Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs.

acdha 3y ago
> Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly. The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  Yup. When a VC-backed company goes bankrupt, no one bats an eye. When Solyndra's loans go bad, even though it was a tiny fraction of the government's green energy portfolio, you get headlines and congressional hearings.
  - acdha 3y ago
    And when a big contractor has an 8+ figure write-off, they have a PR team working to prevent accountability and none of the people who were talking about private-sector innovation and efficiency will be asked whether they had a more realistic position now.
  - 486sx33 3y ago
    How many middle class workers were robbed through income tax to pay for the $524million dollars lost on solindra? Government money totally ruins any private business, to the tune of a huge party where everyone takes as much as possible with no accountability
    - acdha 3y ago
      How many orders of magnitude more money is “robbed” by Comcast/Verizon/Charter, the medical industry, manufacturers who hiked prices up during the pandemic, etc.? Large organizations of all persuasion need oversight but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the concept any more than Enron meant we should give up on the stock market or private energy companies.
- ripjaygn 3y ago
  > The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well? Aside from a very small percentage where the hiring culture is exceptional, it's almost universal. This is a problem with governments across at all levels in almost all countries. How many times do we have to match this movie before realizing that just increasing the salaries won't make a difference, and instead will be wasteful.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well? This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true? If your goal is successful projects, what you’re looking for is accountability and managerial discretion. The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either, and without technical staff they won’t have someone they can turn to for advice who doesn’t have a financial conflict of interest.
    - ripjaygn 3y ago
      > This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true Nice strawman. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree? Just look up at-will employment law that doesn't apply to government entities. Looks like you're the one following political dogma and accepting articles of faith and tropes. Otherwise why would ignore that a very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees? > The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either. Where did I say they cannot? Please stop with the strawmen. They just don't have enough incentive because it's very hard to fire them, unlike managers in the private sector.
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  > This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly. It certainly has something to do with it. The market rates for engineers was distorted because FAANG had a lot of money to throw around, so therefore hiring staff at government pay rates is quite difficult and is subject to the General Schedule (https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-finalizes-2024-federal-pay-raise-for-civilian-employees/?readmore=1 https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-fi...). Contractors work from bills and projects, where the money is carved out; I agree it’s terribly inefficient. The other issue is how difficult it is to get into government vs getting in as a contractor. I tried the former many times without success; the latter? Easier than FAANG or finance.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Yes, the GS scale is a problem. My point was that it’s not a problem because we’re trying to save money – if that were the case, someone would notice that raising the cap to allow a $300k civil service job is cheaper than allowing the same job to be performed by a $500k contractor who takes home less and is replaced more frequently. Politics enters the picture because the pay cap is derived from the salaries for politicians rather than what expertise is valued at on the open market: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/maximum-gs-pay-limitations/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
    - nobodyandproud 3y ago
      Yes, but “saving money” is your point and strawman; I never said anything about saving money, nor did I imply it. GS in general cannot grow when the market pay was distorted by both lack of tax funds; and when those driving market pay has a disproportionate amount of wealth to corner the labor market, in order to prevent the hiring of engineers by other industries.
      - acdha 3y ago
        I think you misunderstood: I agree that lack of tax funds is a problem in other areas but in this specific case it isn’t because the same or greater amount of money is already being spent.
- hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
  I think it's more about greasy palms than political ideologies. No proof though.
ocbyc 3y ago
This is a straw man. Even if the top richest people paid an additional 16 billion in taxes that would run the gov for like a day. Our problem is with spending.
- fragmede 3y ago
  I agree. We don't spend enough money on everything, most notably housing.
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    The top earners only need so many houses and places to live, even including corporate housing. The median population doesn’t have the money to spend.
    - ocbyc 3y ago
      Isn't that a problem caused by inflation which is driven (right now) by gov spending.
      - nobodyandproud 3y ago
        No. Artificial inflation where the median wage doesn't adjust is from a handful of key industries and it's rippled across. Focusing on government spending is a distraction.
  - ocbyc 3y ago
    How can we possibly spend more?
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  I’m not sure where that 16 billion figure came from, but what about the top 100 businesses? The ones that have been gaming the tax system for 3 decades?
latency-guy2 3y ago
The single most well funded organization the world has ever seen struggles to pay the market rate, which the government also regulates?
ripjaygn 3y ago
> Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs. Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1]. Meanwhile it's next to impossible to fire a govt employee for bad performance. Maybe the solution is to fill the govt with mediocre H1B employees, not pay govt employees even more without accountability if they don't perform. [1] https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/techie-on-h1b-visa-gets-fired-when-on-vacation-visa-revoked-unable-to-return-to-us-asks-friend-to-sell-his-car-and-belongings-article-97442201 https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/techie-on-h1...
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  > Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1] H1Bs wouldn’t be so easy to fire if the skillset were rare or difficult to fill. Instead, companies are gaming the H1B lottery to create much lower-paid indentured servants while a sliver of the business rakes in 40% to 60% of the spread. And the Federal government employees are paid at the same level or less. I don’t find the H1B abuse defensible, but certainly a useful discussion point on relative salaries.
  - ripjaygn 3y ago
    > H1Bs wouldn’t be so easy to fire if the skillset were rare or difficult to fill. By the same token a good chunk of government employees would be paid higher if their skillset were rare or difficult to fill, and they worked hard. The good ones that work hard switch to the private sector, even if the pay isn't much higher, so that they can get stuff done and not be surrounded by folks just existing while collecting a paycheck.
    - nobodyandproud 3y ago
      Within your disdain for government workers is a small sliver of truth. One problem with the Federal government--and why contractors are preferred--is that Government Schedule pay is decent for some jobs and insufficient for others. For software engineers--and the reason contracting is better--is that government schedule pay is far below market. But you see the same problem even in private industries like Lockheed Martin, where the brightest engineers (with security clearances) are really doubling/moonlighting with other jobs and the managers look the other way. Also: The private sector is extremely inefficient, when it's handling areas of high upfront costs/high risk. Private military companies If you want to defund government, start by tearing down the TSA which nobody in any party believes is anything but a job-creating sham. Of course, the loudest calls for defunding or non-growth are for deparatments that provide real value--like the FDA or the IRS. So while you're happy the government is being defunded, most US citizens don't feel like promoting a national security problem for short-term gains.
Veelox 3y ago
The US government spent $6.1 TRILLION dollars in 2023. I don't think raising taxes is the solution to the government offering a more competitive wage.
- xnyan 3y ago
  That number is meaningless without also considering US GDP (even if you write trillion in caps). The US averages about 14% government spending as a fraction of GDP, placing it at ~90/140. For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.
  - opo 3y ago
    You are ignoring state government expenditures. >...The US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis as of Q3 2023 estimates $10,007.7 billion in annual total government expenditure and $27,610.1 billion annual total GDP which is 36.2%.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni... >For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher. The percentage shot up during the Covid spending and is still slightly above the historical average.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Is your entire argument that it's a really big number? Are we afraid of big numbers? How much do you think it should spend? It's the federal government, they do a lot of stuff. Stuff costs money. We can complain about how they spend the money, or that the money is being wasted or stolen, but pointing out that it's a big number isn't a very convincing argument.
- paulmd 3y ago
  Is this actual spending, or are you rolling pass-through savings programs into this? Cause the caveat there is people always seem to want to count the outflow but not the associated inflow…

acdha 3y ago

> Partly this is due to the concentration of wealth, inaccessible to taxing. This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly. The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right.

ProjectArcturis 3y ago
Yup. When a VC-backed company goes bankrupt, no one bats an eye. When Solyndra's loans go bad, even though it was a tiny fraction of the government's green energy portfolio, you get headlines and congressional hearings.
- acdha 3y ago
  And when a big contractor has an 8+ figure write-off, they have a PR team working to prevent accountability and none of the people who were talking about private-sector innovation and efficiency will be asked whether they had a more realistic position now.
- 486sx33 3y ago
  How many middle class workers were robbed through income tax to pay for the $524million dollars lost on solindra? Government money totally ruins any private business, to the tune of a huge party where everyone takes as much as possible with no accountability
  - acdha 3y ago
    How many orders of magnitude more money is “robbed” by Comcast/Verizon/Charter, the medical industry, manufacturers who hiked prices up during the pandemic, etc.? Large organizations of all persuasion need oversight but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the concept any more than Enron meant we should give up on the stock market or private energy companies.
ripjaygn 3y ago
> The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well? Aside from a very small percentage where the hiring culture is exceptional, it's almost universal. This is a problem with governments across at all levels in almost all countries. How many times do we have to match this movie before realizing that just increasing the salaries won't make a difference, and instead will be wasteful.
- acdha 3y ago
  > Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well? This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true? If your goal is successful projects, what you’re looking for is accountability and managerial discretion. The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either, and without technical staff they won’t have someone they can turn to for advice who doesn’t have a financial conflict of interest.
  - ripjaygn 3y ago
    > This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true Nice strawman. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree? Just look up at-will employment law that doesn't apply to government entities. Looks like you're the one following political dogma and accepting articles of faith and tropes. Otherwise why would ignore that a very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees? > The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either. Where did I say they cannot? Please stop with the strawmen. They just don't have enough incentive because it's very hard to fire them, unlike managers in the private sector.
nobodyandproud 3y ago
> This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly. It certainly has something to do with it. The market rates for engineers was distorted because FAANG had a lot of money to throw around, so therefore hiring staff at government pay rates is quite difficult and is subject to the General Schedule (https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-finalizes-2024-federal-pay-raise-for-civilian-employees/?readmore=1 https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-fi...). Contractors work from bills and projects, where the money is carved out; I agree it’s terribly inefficient. The other issue is how difficult it is to get into government vs getting in as a contractor. I tried the former many times without success; the latter? Easier than FAANG or finance.
- acdha 3y ago
  Yes, the GS scale is a problem. My point was that it’s not a problem because we’re trying to save money – if that were the case, someone would notice that raising the cap to allow a $300k civil service job is cheaper than allowing the same job to be performed by a $500k contractor who takes home less and is replaced more frequently. Politics enters the picture because the pay cap is derived from the salaries for politicians rather than what expertise is valued at on the open market: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/maximum-gs-pay-limitations/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    Yes, but “saving money” is your point and strawman; I never said anything about saving money, nor did I imply it. GS in general cannot grow when the market pay was distorted by both lack of tax funds; and when those driving market pay has a disproportionate amount of wealth to corner the labor market, in order to prevent the hiring of engineers by other industries.
    - acdha 3y ago
      I think you misunderstood: I agree that lack of tax funds is a problem in other areas but in this specific case it isn’t because the same or greater amount of money is already being spent.
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
I think it's more about greasy palms than political ideologies. No proof though.

ocbyc 3y ago

This is a straw man. Even if the top richest people paid an additional 16 billion in taxes that would run the gov for like a day. Our problem is with spending.

fragmede 3y ago
I agree. We don't spend enough money on everything, most notably housing.
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  The top earners only need so many houses and places to live, even including corporate housing. The median population doesn’t have the money to spend.
  - ocbyc 3y ago
    Isn't that a problem caused by inflation which is driven (right now) by gov spending.
    - nobodyandproud 3y ago
      No. Artificial inflation where the median wage doesn't adjust is from a handful of key industries and it's rippled across. Focusing on government spending is a distraction.
- ocbyc 3y ago
  How can we possibly spend more?
nobodyandproud 3y ago
I’m not sure where that 16 billion figure came from, but what about the top 100 businesses? The ones that have been gaming the tax system for 3 decades?

latency-guy2 3y ago

The single most well funded organization the world has ever seen struggles to pay the market rate, which the government also regulates?

ripjaygn 3y ago

> Naturally government pay would lag behind even the more mediocre H1Bs. Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1]. Meanwhile it's next to impossible to fire a govt employee for bad performance. Maybe the solution is to fill the govt with mediocre H1B employees, not pay govt employees even more without accountability if they don't perform. [1] https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/techie-on-h1b-visa-gets-fired-when-on-vacation-visa-revoked-unable-to-return-to-us-asks-friend-to-sell-his-car-and-belongings-article-97442201 https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/techie-on-h1...

nobodyandproud 3y ago
> Those "mediocre H1Bs" work their ass off compared to non-H1Bs because they get laid off/fired and deported on short notice with barely enough or sometimes no time to sell their belongings if they don't perform [1] H1Bs wouldn’t be so easy to fire if the skillset were rare or difficult to fill. Instead, companies are gaming the H1B lottery to create much lower-paid indentured servants while a sliver of the business rakes in 40% to 60% of the spread. And the Federal government employees are paid at the same level or less. I don’t find the H1B abuse defensible, but certainly a useful discussion point on relative salaries.
- ripjaygn 3y ago
  > H1Bs wouldn’t be so easy to fire if the skillset were rare or difficult to fill. By the same token a good chunk of government employees would be paid higher if their skillset were rare or difficult to fill, and they worked hard. The good ones that work hard switch to the private sector, even if the pay isn't much higher, so that they can get stuff done and not be surrounded by folks just existing while collecting a paycheck.
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    Within your disdain for government workers is a small sliver of truth. One problem with the Federal government--and why contractors are preferred--is that Government Schedule pay is decent for some jobs and insufficient for others. For software engineers--and the reason contracting is better--is that government schedule pay is far below market. But you see the same problem even in private industries like Lockheed Martin, where the brightest engineers (with security clearances) are really doubling/moonlighting with other jobs and the managers look the other way. Also: The private sector is extremely inefficient, when it's handling areas of high upfront costs/high risk. Private military companies If you want to defund government, start by tearing down the TSA which nobody in any party believes is anything but a job-creating sham. Of course, the loudest calls for defunding or non-growth are for deparatments that provide real value--like the FDA or the IRS. So while you're happy the government is being defunded, most US citizens don't feel like promoting a national security problem for short-term gains.

Veelox 3y ago

The US government spent $6.1 TRILLION dollars in 2023. I don't think raising taxes is the solution to the government offering a more competitive wage.

xnyan 3y ago
That number is meaningless without also considering US GDP (even if you write trillion in caps). The US averages about 14% government spending as a fraction of GDP, placing it at ~90/140. For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.
- opo 3y ago
  You are ignoring state government expenditures. >...The US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis as of Q3 2023 estimates $10,007.7 billion in annual total government expenditure and $27,610.1 billion annual total GDP which is 36.2%.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni... >For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher. The percentage shot up during the Covid spending and is still slightly above the historical average.
fragmede 3y ago
Is your entire argument that it's a really big number? Are we afraid of big numbers? How much do you think it should spend? It's the federal government, they do a lot of stuff. Stuff costs money. We can complain about how they spend the money, or that the money is being wasted or stolen, but pointing out that it's a big number isn't a very convincing argument.
paulmd 3y ago
Is this actual spending, or are you rolling pass-through savings programs into this? Cause the caveat there is people always seem to want to count the outflow but not the associated inflow…