Here is a thought to ponder:
When the Federal government was about to be shut down in the first half of 2011 because of the debt ceiling limits, 800,000 "non-essential" Federal employees were advised that they might have to stay home.
The private sector cuts back 10% of its workforce when times get tight. Wonder how many of those "non-essential" Federal jobs could be cut back too?
A little math: let's just say each "non-essential" Federal employee costs us about $100,000 per year in salary, fringe benefits, sick days, holidays, retirement, space in buildings, access to vehicles, training, and their freedom from worry about retirement and health security. So, 800,000 employees times $100,000/year average cost per employee equals $80,000,000,000 each year*.
Oh my gosh, that is about 80 BILLION dollars a year in the cost of people that are deemed "non-essential" by their own employer, the Federal government. You can do the math when it comes to all the "independent contractors" used by Federal government agencies, if you can ever find out how many of them they use.
Makes one wonder who is watching the shop as they raid the "social security trust fund", which of course, is not really a trust fund (investigate this for yourself, you will be stunned what the talking heads just will not point out) ....
* Thanks to e-mail from an alert reader that spotted a typo in the math that was corrected on January 2, 2013 at 848 pm. Note that the debtclock shows 4,578,361 Federal employees and that 800,000 non-essentials represent 17% of that workforce, or about one out of every six of them. As one observer noted, "How much energy does the department of energy generate?"
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