Having worked for a government contractor, I decided that the government was using the Charlie Sheen principle: not paying them to come around, but paying them

Having worked for a government contractor, I decided that the government was using the Charlie Sheen principle: not paying them to come around, but paying them to go away. I have no idea what they billed us for to the government, but I doubt we were getting paychecks equivalent to what the government folk we dealt with got. (To say nothing of benefits.) But I assume that it was far easier to let contractors go. Actually, the friction of hiring and placing made it relatively hard to let contractors go other than through downsizing. People showed up drunk or stoned, and hung on for a month or two.