Andrew Yang Policy on LIMIT BUREAUCRACY IN THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE

[Sherman A1]

Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, combined, employ around 750,000 individuals. The federal workforce is made up of 2.3 million individuals.

That’s too many.

Federal workers are smart, dedicated, and hardworking, but they shouldn’t be a protected class of worker. Technology is advancing to the point where we should be able to get more done with fewer people, and studies show that fewer federal employees leave their jobs than their private counterparts and enjoy much higher pension benefits. At the same time, the federal workforce is aging and struggles to recruit and retain younger workers. If the top four tech companies can do as much as they do with fewer than 1 million workers, the federal government can find ways to do more with less.

"I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost twenty years - I know what small teams can accomplish when they’re scrappy and resourceful. I also know that most organizations over time become bloated and inefficient unless there are requirements otherwise. Most organizations respond to benchmarks and incentives. The federal workforce can and must do more with less. The rest of us are suffering and our government has to become leaner and meaner. It also has to get younger and smarter. "

PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED
The American people are paying for an oversized and inefficient federal workforce.
The federal workforce is aging fast and struggles to recruit and retain young workers.

GOALS
Reduce the size of the federal workforce by 15 - 20%
Increase efficiency so as to not lose productivity
Improve the recruitment and retention of younger workers

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/downsizing-federal-workforce/

[hlthe2b]

1. So easy to say without even understanding WHO the workforce IS and WHY we have them

Sick and tired of this. Federal workers are not the problem. The Federal workforce infiltrated and "overseen" by horrendous political appointees--no more so than with Trump's--is the problem.

"Entrepreneurs" like Yang think they know everything about government because they fancy themselves "expert" on the private business world. GWBUsh* didn't. Trump sure as hell doesn't. Romney sure as hell doesn't. I'll take someone who understands government at some level any day rather than egotistical financial self-promoters.


I will vote for NO ONE who demonizes the Federal workforce for their own self-promotion--whether a Reagan, Newt Gingrich's cretin band of Republicans--whose demonizing helped to incite McVeigh's attack on the Murrow Federal Building-- any one of the Bushes, or ONE OF OUR OWN.

[Skidmore]

2. Yang has never made my list

because he treats governance as an academic exercise in a corporate boardroom. He s sounds like a Republican testing out a new gimmick.

[hlthe2b]

4. +++

[marylandblue]

3. The top 4 tech companies have a combined revenue of $600 billion

while the federal budget is $3.8 trillion, so by his accounting, the federal government is actually running leaner than the tech companies.

[lapfog_1]

5. beware of those who know nothing about the workings of the federal government

As you doubtlessly remember, somewhere in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series Mr. Adams told the story of the The Golgafrinchans, a race of people who sent their Telephone Sanitizer population away. The Sanitizers were sent along with another third of the planet’s population who were also deemed useless to form a colony on a remote planet (Earth as it happens). Of course, the remaining Golgafrinchan population was then wiped out by a virulent disease contracted via unsanitary telephones.

Researchers have now confirmed Mr. A’s prophecy, finding that the phone is indeed a key spreader of germs. According to Charles Gerba, a microbiologist and clean water expert at the University of Arizona, it’s telephones and computer keyboards that are among the most germ laden spots in any home, not the usual suspects.

https://collateraldamage.wordpress.com/2006/05/02/douglas-adams-right-again-lack-of-phone-sanitizers-will-doom-planet/

In other words, don't make assumptions about what is needed.

BTW, yes, I worked for NASA for 10 years... spent quite a bit of your federal tax dollars to do the following:

1. Store all of the remote sensing data of Planet Earth so that we now have a record of Global Warming from data collected in the 1990s and beyond. Not the the policy morons have done anything with it.

2. Founded a Computer Storage industry around a technology now called RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks - using the original paper by UC Berkeley that I funded with your dollars in 1989)

3. Invested in a new technology now known as DWDM or Dense Wave Division Multiplexing... what is used today exclusively by long haul Internet providers to move data over optical links.

4. Helped to reconfigure the launch sequence of the NASA Space Shuttle to ease the vibrations as the shuttle moved through what is known as Max-Q (know as the throttle down phase now). Still in use today by commercial space launch companies.

5. Ran the simulations on Semi-truck air dams that help the entire industry save about 5% of their fuel budget (some say 10%)... the savings by the trucking industry are more than the entire NASA budget.

and I could go on and on... and not every investment or dollar spent yielded anything useful I might add... but that is the nature of research (not corporate sponsored development where the technology is already proven but the market place may not have a place for the product).

I'm not saying that the federal workforce couldn't use some modernization... but tread carefully here.

[hatrack]

6. Ah, yes, "Run government like a business!"

Sounds vaguely familiar . . .

[Sherman A1]

7. Not at all what he said, but

you are on a roll there.

[hatrack]

8. Yeah, it is what he said - the same old boardroom platitudes . . .

. . . platitudes that betrayed no knowledge whatsoever of what's involved in his GOP-Lite "vision" of a "leaner, hungrier federal workforce whatever".

Rolling out of here, buh-bye.

[Sherman A1]

9. As I said

You are on a roll now, enjoy yourself.