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The big problem is that the people in government who spend the money don't actually have to earn it, which means that they don't value it. It's the same way wi

by steven2012 12y ago

The big problem is that the people in government who spend the money don't actually have to earn it, which means that they don't value it. It's the same way with Trust Fund babies, who suckle off their parents' wealth and spend it all on drugs and partying. Since they didn't have to earn the money, it's meaningless to them. What happens in government is that the ones who spend it have all this power, they don't value the money, so then it goes to people that give them kickbacks, and then there is no accountability. Except in the government you talk about hundreds of millions and billions of dollars as opposed to millions and tens of millions around here. The government needs to take up a different way of budgeting their money. Instead of cutting budgets where people can save money, they should be increasing budgets of those people that can save money or spend it wisely. There are so many things wrong with how the government spends money, no wonder people hate paying their taxes, when they see $300M spent on the government website that could have been made in SV for less than 1% of that.

GVIrish 12y ago
The fact that in government work spending money wisely is not critical the way it is in private sector is a component of the problem. But I think the more fundamental problem it points to is a lack of consequences for poor performance. An agency can waste a lot money but rarely does any experience consequences for it. A department can fail miserably on big initiatives, small initiatives and everything in between but again, rarely does anyone get fired or even disciplined for that. Even in the most high profile government IT failure in US history, no one was asked to resign. Start creating real accountability for government organizations and the right people can actually rise to the top and the wrong people can get weeded out (rather than waiting until the bad apples retire). People will start paying a lot more attention to their budgets when they're actually held responsible for using them wisely. > Instead of cutting budgets where people can save money, they should be increasing budgets of those people that can save money or spend it wisely. While that sounds like a simple solution, it would incentivize people to make ill-advised cuts one year so the budget could be increased next year. Really all that needs to be done to end the end of fiscal year spending spree is to not reduce budgets when an organization doesn't spend all of it in a given year

GVIrish 12y ago

The fact that in government work spending money wisely is not critical the way it is in private sector is a component of the problem. But I think the more fundamental problem it points to is a lack of consequences for poor performance. An agency can waste a lot money but rarely does any experience consequences for it. A department can fail miserably on big initiatives, small initiatives and everything in between but again, rarely does anyone get fired or even disciplined for that. Even in the most high profile government IT failure in US history, no one was asked to resign. Start creating real accountability for government organizations and the right people can actually rise to the top and the wrong people can get weeded out (rather than waiting until the bad apples retire). People will start paying a lot more attention to their budgets when they're actually held responsible for using them wisely. > Instead of cutting budgets where people can save money, they should be increasing budgets of those people that can save money or spend it wisely. While that sounds like a simple solution, it would incentivize people to make ill-advised cuts one year so the budget could be increased next year. Really all that needs to be done to end the end of fiscal year spending spree is to not reduce budgets when an organization doesn't spend all of it in a given year