[Raidion]

It's not the hiring people that's the problem. Assuming those people "cost" 300k a year all in (benefits/offices,etc) which is probably high, that's $24 billion. The government spent $6.8 trillion, cutting these jobs cuts spending by .3891%.

Cutting the people without cutting the programs won't do much and is (IMO) a problem in that you should be able to access government services in a way that the writers of the laws (house/senate) have clearly agreed to. When you're cutting this widely, it's hard to believe you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[nameless912]

This is the thing that keeps making me so angry when I hear so called "budget hawks" get mad about the number of federal employees. Payroll is _not the problem_!! All of the federal payroll is something like 10-15% of the government's expenditure. Firing _everyone_ would only cut costs by 10-15%. There are plenty of programs (read: bloated defense contracts and corporate subsidies) that we could cut to save costs instead, and we wouldn't crater the federal workforce like we are now.

You can be mad about the government spending money on things you believe are unnecessary, and you can even want to fire the people related to that program! But across the board personnel cuts don't fix the appropriations issues and will waste money in inefficiency, waste and loss as the folks that are left have to pick up the pieces.

Does the federal government employ too many people? I dunno, maybe. Do we fund too many programs? Yeah, probably. But these cuts are _fucking insane_.

[araes]

Part of the personal issue also. Notably, not especially Democrat or Republican related. Both administration groups for years.

The Defense part especially seems crazy. Per USASpending.gov [1], last year the federal government spent $9,700,000,000,000. Despite all the talk that Covid budgets were short term event, they never actually went back down. Dropped to $9T in 2022, and then started rising again. Post-Covid surge was $6.6T in 2019, then jumped to $9.1T in 2020. $10.1 in 2021.

[1] https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function

At the same time, post-Covid, the Defense Department budget has been rising at about $100,000,000,000 / yr for the last three years. 2021: $1.1T 2022: $1.2T 2023: $1.3T 2024: $1.4T

(To be fair in comparison though, the largest other single items, Medicare / Social Security, have also been rising fast. 2021: 1.4 / 1.2, 2022: 1.5 / 1.3, 2023: 1.6 / 1.4, 2024: 1.6 / 1.5 )

However, with the DoD, what have we got from that much spending? Incredibly depressing slides from The War on the Rocks like this one about the incomprehensible gap in shipbuilding capacity? A factor of 232x? The US only has 100,000 tons of shipbuilding? That's a single neo-Panamax cargo ship. [1]

[2] https://www.twz.com/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-china...

Or this one from Military.com, that the government does not know where $151 million of $225 million collected from soldiers for food supplies on garrisons was actually spent. [3] Fort Stewart, 87% of funds redirected. Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, 63% redirected. All but two bases left more than half of the money for food unspent. $225 million doesn't mean almost anything to the government, yet $460 of mandatory / month deduction in paycheck for a Basic Allowance for Subsistence that then goes "somewhere" matters quite a bit to individual soldiers. And the defense budget rose $100B every year for years.

[3] https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-featu...

Anyways, specific examples of the issues I have with current government spending and the way it's allocated.

[blindriver]

I really hate this attitude. "$24 billion a year is nothing compared to the deficit so we should just ignore it and keep spending."

Spending cuts have to start SOMEWHERE. Saying $24 billion is ignorable is insane. We are in a critical debt situation and my children's future is at stake.

[efnx]

The attitude comes from a point of analysis, and the argument that follows is that we can save by cutting spending in specific areas that we overspend in (military) and we could rake in lots more in taxes by making the rich _pay their fare share_.

The current firing of government workers is about political alignment, not about cost. Cost is a pretext.

[blindriver]

I believe we should gut military spending. That doesn't mean that hiring 82,000 employees in 5 years is justified. I'm happy to see spending cuts straight across the board.

[buttercraft]

What would be the appropriate number to hire, and how do arrive at the answer?

[blindriver]

No new headcount. Layoff the bottom 5% of the institution per year based on performance reviews and replace them with new hires. When someone leaves, replace every 3 people leaving with 1 new hire.

[acdha]

This is a good way to destroy productivity and morale, but if that’s not your goal you need to expect your managers to earn their pay.

Laying off the bottom 5% presumes that you’re measuring that accurately and that individual workers have control over their productivity, both of which are unlikely to be true - and if you get either wrong, you just incentivized playing political games and shying away from work which is hard, uncertain, or under-weighted by your metrics. Stack ranking almost destroyed the ability of Microsoft and Google to make anything people love, and you can see its cost in the unperformed maintenance work people know won’t juice their metrics.

Similarly, if people are leaving because you have too much work, poor working conditions, don't pay well enough, etc. capping rehiring is just going to make the situation worse.

If you’re not a PE guy looking to juice a company before dumping it, cost cutting has to be a process of understanding and identifying your true goals first. If you’ve truly over-hired, the first lesson to draw is that you have a management problem which you need to deal with first since it will make everything else likely to fail as well.

[efnx]

This is known as "death by attrition". It's generally not a successful strategy.

[kstrauser]

Here are the official spending numbers[0]. The largest categories are:

* Social Security

* Medicare

* National Defense

* Interest payments

* Health

* Income Security

* VA Benefits

Which of those categories are we overspending on? Which specific cuts do you want to make? It's impossible for one to claim they're serious about saving money without talking about slashing Social Security, Medicare, and the military, which together make 40% of the budgets, so... which are you in favor of reducing?

When you've cut your budget as far as you can and you're still losing money, the only solution is to make more money. Here, that means taxes, and specifically that we must start taxing the rich. I'm not saying that as some far-left "eat the rich" kind of thing, but as basic arithmetic and economics. We need more revenue, and it has to come from somewhere.

[0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

[bpt3]

What gives you the impression we don't tax the rich?

The American middle and lower class are the least taxed individuals in the developed world. The upper classes, especially given a disproportionate percentage live in places like NYC and CA, are carrying EU-levels of tax burden already.

I'm certainly open to changing how things like dividend income are treated, but the rich don't have enough money to solve our budget problems.

I think your question about what spending to reduce was intended to be rhetorical, but the answer is: everything.

[kstrauser]

> What gives you the impression we don't tax the rich?

Math and history. One example explainer: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/80552/total-tax...

> The upper classes, especially given a disproportionate percentage live in places like NYC and CA, are carrying EU-levels of tax burden already.

Citation urgently needed. That doesn't jibe with literally any report I've read about such things, except from anti-tax extremist organizations.

[bpt3]

> Math and history. One example explainer: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/80552/total-tax...

I honestly have no idea why you think information about aggregate tax revenue over time is relevant to your original claim. If you want to see the tax rate increased on the upper extremes (like the top 400 mentioned at that link), I would too but it's a drop in the bucket.

> Citation urgently needed. That doesn't jibe with literally any report I've read about such things, except from anti-tax extremist organizations.

From https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/top-personal-income-ta...

The average statutory top personal income tax rate in the EU is 42.8%.

"For comparison, the average combined state and federal top income tax rate for the 50 US states and the District of Columbia lies at 42.14 percent as of January 2025, with rates ranging from 37 percent in states without a state income tax to 50.3 percent in California."

Feel free to call the Tax Foundation an "anti-tax extremist organization" if you'd like, but I wouldn't agree and they are just reporting facts here.

[seanmcdirmid]

Could we stop talking about top marginal income tax rates as if graduated income taxation wasn't a thing? You will pay less taxes in California than Mississippi or Alabama if you are poor.

Even if you are a single person in California making $400k/year (which I would call pretty rich!), you are only paying 8.38% of your income in state tax (you don't even hit the 13.3% bracket until a million dollars or so?). In total, you are paying 39.22% of your income in taxes (including federal and payroll). As a baseline, if you are in Texas which doesn't have state income tax, you are paying around 31% for the same income.

[throw0101a]

> What gives you the impression we don't tax the rich?

The top tax rate perhaps:

* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IITTRHB

Maybe just a coïncidence that inequality started going up around 1980, when it was cut the most.

[bpt3]

Yes, it's likely it was a coincidence given that many loopholes were closed at the same time and the effective rate wasn't changed much.

The US has the most progressive tax code in the developed world, and the average American has more disposable income than their peers anywhere else on Earth. Why is it that the upper class is the only one that needs to kick in more?

[lenerdenator]

> The upper classes, especially given a disproportionate percentage live in places like NYC and CA, are carrying EU-levels of tax burden already.

And?

They can afford more, and taxation is a way to reintroduce actual risk of financial ruin for the wealthy. If financial ruin is a good motivator for the rest of us, it should be for them, too.

It's not about percentage, it's about the reality that taxation brings about for you. When you have a net worth that's equal to the entire economic output of a major American city, you can endure massive tax bills because you make enough off of your holdings to equal the average lifetime earnings of dozens of Americans.

[bpt3]

It's very convenient to sign other people up to pay for your preferred government services and I'm sure your peers are willing to eagerly pat you on the back for your generosity, but ultimately even taxing the wealthy at 100% won't cover the deficit no matter how good it would make you feel. That's the "And".

There's a reason nearly every developed nation has a VAT.

[lenerdenator]

>It's very convenient to sign other people up to pay for your preferred government services and I'm sure your peers are willing to eagerly pat you on the back for your generosity, but ultimately even taxing the wealthy at 100% won't cover the deficit no matter how good it would make you feel.

Other people sign me up to pay for their preferred government services all the time. It's called living in a civilization. And don't get me started on the retirees getting a slice of my labor because they have a piece of paper saying they own part of my company.

I'm under no illusion that taxing at 100% would cover the deficit. It'd probably mean a better financial picture for the government, though, and if this whole national debt thing is the existential threat that fiscal conservatives say it is, well, is any improvement not good?

[marcusverus]

It's an intentionally deceptive framing, so you should hate it. $24 Billion is $183 per taxpayer per year. I sure as hell think $180/year is a lot of money, and if the government is going to forcibly take 1/4 of my friggin' salary every year, they really ought to be at least as careful with my money as I am!

[jrs235]

I don't think blindly saving $183/year is worth throwing a wrench into our economic engine that provides everyone else an ecocomy that allows us to have jobs and things. I think we we need more thoughtful cuts rather than just thoughtlessly making cuts. Speed doesn't kill, the sudden change in velocity is what kills. All these cuts so quickly is going to kill the economy. This desire for instant gratification/change is like slamming on the brakes, for a dog in the road a mile away, and we don't have seatbelts. People will suffer and die. Depression approaching.

[bpt3]

How exactly is cutting VA headcount back to 2019 numbers "throwing a wrench into our economic engine"?

This is why we end up with indiscriminate and thoughtless cuts, because the alternative is people who seem to believe that every penny of government spending is absolutely essential the second after the line item is conceived, and the only way to fix any issues that exist is with more spending.

[acdha]

That’s 80k people suddenly, thoughtlessly forced to stop contributing to the economy. In some areas, stable federal jobs are the backbone of the local economy and surprise cuts like that mean that small businesses fold and home prices fall because people can’t make mortgage payments without jobs which aren’t there (this was brutal in San Diego in the early 90s because whole neighborhoods near the big defense contractors went from being full of highly-paid engineers to unemployed, and you’d see people with Ph.D’s applying for software QA jobs just to have some income and health insurance).

If you wanted to cut things responsibly, you’d plan it in advance and think about how to avoid shocking the economy into a recession.

[bpt3]

> If you wanted to cut things responsibly, you’d plan it in advance and think about how to avoid shocking the economy into a recession.

Absolutely. I in no way support what DOGE is doing.

But when people think cuts are needed (and the majority of Americans seem to think that's the case), and the options are your position that the country would seemingly collapse if a single job was cut and someone who is going to take a figurative chainsaw to the federal budget, don't be surprised when the chainsaw wins due to your refusal to compromise on your unreasonable and largely unpopular position.

[acdha]

$0.50/day is well below most people’s discretionary threshold, and it isn’t just money being burnt but keeping a promise. If we want to lower the cost to the taxpayers, we should be shrinking the military first rather than cutting the benefits which were promised to people decades ago.

If you want to cancel it out, there are many easier ways to do it, including things like more IRS auditing for tax evasion. There’s roughly a 10:1 return rate for enforcement, with an estimated gap of over half a trillion dollars.

[beebaween]

very fraction of a percent counts... small things add up quickly...

Idk why this is a political issue? As a progressive I also support firing people who aren't producing effective outcomes for veterans. With all we save that money SHOULD be used to actually help veterans.

[apical_dendrite]

Why do you think they aren't producing effective outcomes? The administration's track record is that it cuts indiscriminately, without considering the impact, and then sometimes tries to backtrack and rehire people when critical things break.

[WalterBright]

> cutting these jobs cuts spending by .3891%

A billion here, a billion there, soon it adds up to real money.

[nameless912]

But how much extra waste will be generated by losing the experts in these bureaucracies? Of course some of them are redundant, but some of them have the proverbial bathroom codes and are irreplaceable. These cuts are incredibly irresponsible; cutting _programs_, along with the staff associated with those programs, is IMO wrong but at least workable as a long term cost reduction strategy. Just slashing staff left and right is malpractice.

[blindriver]

Citation required that we are losing "experts" or that people can't learn any government job in weeks/months with higher efficiency.

[nameless912]

NOAA just fired hundreds of weather forecasters. World class ones, literally some of the best meteorologists in the world. And they knew how to interact with NOAA's systems to gather data and publish forecasts, issue realtime watches and warnings, and a thousand other things. Realtime forecasts are _vital_ to hundreds of different industries and save thousands of lives a year, and part of that is because they are able to quickly issue new forecasts when the situation changes. We get tornado warnings, fire forecasts, tsunami warnings, and a whole bunch else with enough time to get to safety because of these extremely talented folks.

These people are irreplaceable. And I know one of these forecasters very well, he's an old friend of mine. He is done with the federal government; even if they offer him his job back he's not going back, because his trust that his job as a meteorologist was safe is smashed to pieces. That's irreparable harm.

[blindriver]

NOAA has over 10,000 employees and they laid of 800 of them. The idea that NOAA laid off their top 800 employees out of 11,000 is laughable.

[bathtub365]

What do you think government workers (as if this was an actual job title) do?

[blindriver]

I worked in government. I know exactly what it looks like and how 33% of workers could be cut with no effect besides the rest being scared of losing their cushy jobs.

[WalterBright]

> Just slashing staff left and right is malpractice

All businesses above a certain size do that, because there's no other practical way.

[nameless912]

Sure there is. _Cut initiatives_, and exit the related staff. Don't cut staff without a corresponding cut to programs.

[WalterBright]

I bet you know who the deadwood are in your organization. Every organization I've worked in had deadwood and everyone knew who they were.

[jrs235]

Government isn't a business.

[WalterBright]

It's a very large organization, much much larger than a business. If business can't cut with a scalpel, it would be even less possible with government.