Best you wish your goverment would do this

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by Azure, Mar 8, 2010.

  1. Azure

    Azure I could kick your ass

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    http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...-leave-245-jobs-unfilled-in-cost-cutting-move

    Ignore the rest of the article as it is just insignificant bitching by an insignificant party.
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  2. Tuttle

    Tuttle Listen kid, we're all in it together.

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    That's cool that he fired a bunch of people that didn't exist.

    But if I had a "wish" on this topic I'd like my government - both New York state and the federal - to get rid of dead weight positions, not just fail to fill vacancies.

    Still, better than nothing (reduction in head count is always a good thing, and almost unheard of), and it's way better than the expansion we're seeing so of the border, good find.
  3. Azure

    Azure I could kick your ass

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    Thing is up here we don't have the bloated government you guys have down south so when something like this happens it is a move in the right direction.

    Sure, in a perfect world the government would cut a lot more people, but that is never going to happen.
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  4. Muad Dib

    Muad Dib Probably a Dual Deceased Member

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    I wish our government had the balls to do that.

    Hell, I just wish our government had some balls. Even tiny little ones.
  5. Asyncritus

    Asyncritus Expert on everything

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    Actually, this policy of not filling vacancies would suit me very well, if it were applied long term. Simply firing all those who aren't needed is going to be very disruptive to the economy, since that puts millions of people out of work at once. Even though it also saves a huge amount of government spending, which could thus stay in the private sector and result in more jobs, it would be better if all of that happened gradually. Just because you're going in the wrong direction is no reason to simply jerk the steering wheel around violently.

    But all government positions eventually need to be filled. So a long-term policy of not replacing dead-weight positions would do the job very nicely, especially since some jobs that are necessary also need filling, and can be filled by moving people out of dead-weight positions. I am pretty sure that applying this policy over five years would take care of most of the problem. Doing so over ten years would certainly allow any necessary reductions.

  6. Tuttle

    Tuttle Listen kid, we're all in it together.

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    Again I'll agree, and repeat the mantra that any reduction in head count is a good thing, but that is simply because our government has proven incapable of restraint (never mind reductions).

    But to a thinking society it's preposterous to agree with the proposition that head count should arbitrarily be reduced in accordance with the timing of attrition or retirement. If a job needs doing, it needs doing just as much after somebody leaves. If a job had no real purpose in the first place then it should be terminated promptly and not wait until someone is done milking the position for all it was worth (then passing it on to his brother-in-law like some kind of sinecure or a rent-controlled apratment in NYC). [Incidentally, it used to be that civil service jobs had "good benefits" but didn't pay that much, so there was a kind of self-correcting mechanism that kept it from growing unabatedly, but in the US can we even say that any more?]

    What your suggestion would accomplish would be the addition of just another step in the process whereby those jobs that actually need doing are then presented as request for additional head count that would happen almost immediately after the hypothetical attrition-based rule eliminated the position. Which would be a good thing, so I'd of course support it.
  7. Azure

    Azure I could kick your ass

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    I think a simple plan of telling all departments to cut their operating cost by 2-3% every year would do the trick.

    And of course slowly getting rid of people that aren't needed while at the same time helping them find jobs in the private sector.

    At the same time that this happened we changed our tax laws to encourage more investments by foreign investors into 'startups' here in Canada, which will also help create jobs and build the economy.

    I think our government is doing a very decent job considering what they have to work with.