A Political Comment
The
following is the opinion of a cranky old man with virtually no expertise in the
topic opined. Opposing opinions are
welcome, but they are wrong.
As almost no
one reads blog posts anymore and Blogger won’t display my post for days after I
hit PUBLISH, I feel it is safe to actually vent on a political issue.
What
particularly grabs my attention is the DOGE effort to cut Government spending.
No sooner
than it was announced that two billionaire business and technical geniuses
would head an agency to slash government waste, than the Democrat talking point
was, as stated by that efficiency genius Senator Elizabeth Warren,
"The
Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership:
two people to do the work of one person," Warren said in a post on X,
sarcastically adding, "Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient."
Could there
be a more negative comment, not to mention incredibly STUPID! (OK, so I
did mention it.)
First of all
the two people are not drawing a salary so…Oh hell even if they were it is
still an incredibly ignorant comment.
Next,
talking heads keep advising me that government spending is 90% Social Security,
Medicare and Defense and those programs can’t be touched. As if there is no waste in these areas, and
cuts can not be made without diminishing service.
Apparently
to many, the thought of reducing government spending is not just a bad idea,
but a dangerous concept.
Hmmm,
dangerous to whom?
My
experience in operations of a large brokerage firm was expense cuts were periodically
directived from above. As soon as profits began to slip All departments would
receive notice to,
“Cut
spending 10% across the board!”
Periodically
expenses would be cut and operations if anything improved.
HOW?
Over the
years, computers and technology advances increased operation productivity by
factors of 2 and 3, yet staff remained the same until cuts were mandated.
Managers are
never incentivized to cut costs on their own.
Why?
The importance
of most departments is often an expression of it’s budget. If a manager cut his budget by 10%, he was
not only not rewarded, but his importance was diminished from the eyes
above.
Managers knew
what staff or processes needed to be cut but would never do so until mandated. Many employees were given busy-work, waiting
for the eventual mandated expense cuts.
Older
employees ready to retire, wait for the mandated cuts, knowing they will be
given pay packages to leave in lieu of not suing for age discrimination.
In my operations area, from 1970 to 2010 we went from processing orders and executions on the New York Stock Exchange at an average of 9 million shares a day with 110 employees, to processing volumes of 350 million shares a day with 15 employees. Service went from unsustainable to instantaneous. Errors went from significant, to insignificant.
Does any of
this waste exist in Government.
Government where employee numbers have grown explosively even while
technology has cut work load in half many times in the last 30 years?
The whining
of many that DOGE just,
“Does
not understand the inner workings of operations like the dedicated expert
employees!”
Reminds me
of hired efficiency experts putting fresh eyes on processes in areas where I
once worked. Often the experts, “Did
not understand” because many obsolete processes were simply
unexplainable.
Perhaps Government
is not the same as the competitive world of business. Maybe these many areas of waste that are
stripped from corporations via “Mandated cuts” do not exist in Government.
Maybe.
Then again,
maybe Elizabeth Warren is right. Two
people to do the work of one is waste.
Perhaps we do not even need one person.
DOGE should
simply put out a memo to heads of all Government agencies,
“Cut expenses
by 10%, or pack your bags!”
Those cuts
would be made before the ink was dry and productivity and service would only
improve!
The preceding
was the opinion of a cranky old man and not necessarily that of management…Mrs.
Cranky.
