No, it doesn’t. It’s only to COLA, and that distinction needs to be explained to the people in here who are not familiar with the deeply crappy federal system, lest they think this is some dramatic move that will deeply impact millions of federal workers.
Workers are hired at a given grade – let us say a clerk, who taters referred to above–is hired at a GS-5, step 1 ($27,431). Unless she is fired, which is exceptionally rare, she is guaranteed to rise three steps in her first three years, which amounts to a 10% raise. So long as she refrains from acting so badly as to get fired, she will keep on getting step increases for another decade.
Step increases are NOT affected by this action ( Neither is a manager’s ability to tweak a job description slightly so that a position that was a GS-5 becomes a GS-6, 7, or 8); which means it’s not a real freeze in the sense that private-sector workers may think of (i.e., no raises at all for anyone, period). The only thing that’s affected is the COLA of about 1% that comes on top of normal seniority raises.
So, while this a nice thing, it’s a very small thing. What’s really needed is a wholesale overhaul of the government’s personnel structure.
31 year Fed employee here. No objection to the freeze here though it will impact the lower grades (I’m a mid-level grunt). I’ve had opportunities to make significantly higher salaries but with less security - I took the safe route and lived modestly.
I believe the freeze will push many of us baby-boomers in government into retirement. Not sure of the entire workforce but my career program has 60% “eligible” to retire in the next 5 years. I suspect many other departments are similiar though not as extreme. Our hiring doesn’t significantly lower this age as most hirees are military veterans in the mid to late 40s already.
The freeze is symbolic and needs to be combined with revenue and spending reform. You can’t do it all in a year or two - it would kill any recovery (all these extra dollars put food on the table and pay for a roof). Perhaps a little sacrifice by everyone instead of screaming?
This highlights the real damage done by this gesture – it reinforces the current pattern of squeezing the middle class (both symbolically and by reducing competitive upward pressure on wages throughout the economy). As noted in your example, the pattern is independent of any actual rationale of economic necessity.
Most of us figured out the concept that you don’t just give stuff away – you grudgingly offer it to the other side in exchange for something else – before being considered sufficiently competent to walk the streets without a keeper. Why didn’t Barack Obama? :rolleyes::rolleyes:
Do you have any evidence that is able to sufficiently demonstrate that a cut in the marginal tax rate for the highest tax brackets will lead to sufficient growth in the GDP to off-set the decrease in revenue from the tax cut?
In other words: cite?
Yes, tax cuts may have some minor effect on the size of the GDP, but does the GDP grow sufficiently to off-set the loss?
I know this is an overly simplistic example, but as I see it, let’s say we have 100 dollars of production from the highest tax bracket. We tax them at 35%, so the government earns 35 units from that bracket. Let’s say we cut their tax rate by 5% to 30%. In the coming year, we would require more than 116 production dollars from that tax bracket just to break even on revenue (or make it up elsewhere).
I’d like to see some firm evidence that tax cuts sufficiently grow the GDP to off-set the loss in revenue from the tax cut. Do you have any?
You know, this is a good point, and possibly one of the reasons to support this freeze: shrinking government, by pushing people into retirement. At worst, the replacement hires will be cheaper, at best, perhaps one can eliminate positions.
Of course, there’ll be huge amounts of institutional memory loss, but that’s a price that can be paid. So it might actually save more money than expected.
On the other hand, where I come from, you don’t get raises or COLA. You only get more money if you’re promoted, and if you’re promoted, you won’t make the same money someone else did who got hired from outside the company. So it’s more effective to go find another job rather than staying where you are.
But that’s how things are outside government service, I suppose.
I can already tell you that I’ve heard a few people say they are thinking about moving up their retirement dates. How many will follow through I don’t really know. I can also say there are some pissed off people in my office, and a few who really don’t care that much. The unions are the ones who seem to be pretty mad though.
I’m not too sure how much this will affect me, hopefully not too much, but with a divorce coming I’m not in the best shape. I’ll get by and it will be tougher, but I’m still not that upset about it.
Until you’ve actually worked for the feds don’t talk to me about lack of accountability. You don’t have a clue. I am accountable not only for me, but for the stuff my office produces. Oh, and guess what…I’m not even management. That’s just a function of what is expected of someone at my grade and I’m fine with that. That means I get to be a grown-up and not be led around like a little second-grader that needs to be told what to do every second of every day.
I’ve seen people fired and it isn’t pretty. Believe it or not; there are some management types that actually have the balls to do the right thing.
And finally, I’ve always paid a “little” something for my healthcare. I guess five hundred bucks a month is just a drop in the bucket to you.:rolleyes: Oh, and that doesn’t include the extra I’d need to pay for my dental and vision, if I didn’t want to spend thousands out of pocket on that too. Co pays, etc as well. Just like the private sector. Hmmmm…how about that…
I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for us, but knock it off with the fed bashing. There are good employees and there are bad employees, just like in private sector.
I never said feds deserve “sympathy”. We deserve the same respect you give to anyone who is just trying to make it today, regardless of who they work for. Gas, food and taxes cost the same for us as they do for private sector.
20 years ago when my wife was working full time, we got our benefits through her job as it was better coverage for lower premiums than my fed job.
We’ve got fine health coverage, don’t get me wrong. But it certainly has not been free for me at any time in the past 25 years, and my experience is that it is considerably less plush than many in the general public believe.
But from the attitude of your post, I don’t care to do the research you could easily do yourself to go beyond my anecdotal experience.
I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I assume all comparisons are of full-time employees with benefits. Because I feel that perhaps the single clearest trend in private employment over the past decade or more has been to reduce salary costs by offshoring, going part-time and eliminating benefits, and such. With the result that overall many in private employ have taken considerable hits as opposed to public employ.
If private jobs are paying less and giving less bennies compared to public workers, the desireable solution might be to try whatever might make private jobs capable of supporting a decent living, rather than similarly reducing the standard of living of public employees.
I am all for the elimination of unnecessary/undesired/unaffordable government positions/programs. Of course, any such meaningful effort would be much more difficult than this largely symbolic gesture. Heck, symbolic gestures have their place as well. It just stinks that it seems that they are just about all we see these days from either party…
I think the number is more like 40% revenue, 60% spending. But even if it’s 25/75 as you claim, does that mean you support tax increases to deal with that 25%? Because the GOP certainly doesn’t.
The problem is, it seems exceedingly difficult for people to agree as to which programs are unnecessary/undesirable/unaffordable.
In my experience, it seems even the strictest budget hawk tends to consider absolutely critical those programs he personally benefits from, while considering expendable those someone else considers important. I have no expectation that our government - no matter who has majorities where - will intelligently resolve this.
You seem to think that getting rid of the Bush tax cuts will be a panacea solution to all our woes, DtC. Out of curiosity, what do you think they will actually accomplish? How much revenue do you presume they will bring in? My understanding is that the Dems only want to remove the cuts on those over $250k (though it’s interesting that they don’t want to remove them all, considering the assertions of the left that no one over that mark got any benefit at all from the tax cuts).
So…how much do you think we will actually get out of revoking the cuts (I’m not interested in debating what other effects this might or might not have on the economy, just curious how much YOU think the government will realistically rake in from revoking the cuts on those making $250k or more).
I don’t think this is a hijack as it seems to go with the theme of the thread…if it is then I’ll be happy to start a separate thread to ask for your answer there.
You said it better than I could have, but I come from a different perspective. During my school years I had had temporary jobs in various different places, both in the private sector and in federal agencies. After I got out of grad school and was looking for a permanent job I decided that I would only take a government job as a last resort. That is still my philosophy today. Over the years, as I’ve worked in private industry, my salary has sometimes had big jumps, and sometimes has had years of stagnation. But always it was because of real issues facing the company, or because of my real personal performance. I just could not stand the idea that something could happen to my salary or even my job because of the whims of the voters.
The CBO estimate from August 2010 (which has since been revised upwards) put the 10-year (2011-2020) cost of extended all of the tax cuts (and keeping AMT provisions the same) at $4.9 trillion. $2.7 trillion of this is due entirely to the EGTRRA and JGTRRA (commonly called the “Bush tax cuts”, IIRC). If only the high-earner provisions (>$250k) the cost is around $2 trillion. Modifications to the AMT also factor heavily into this, as the lower tax rates put more people into the AMT. As far as I can tell the CBO didn’t estimate the effects of changing the AMT and extending all tax policy other than the >$250k rates.
So, based on those numbers at least, the 10-year cost is roughly $700 billion. If you have better numbers feel free to provide them.
Obviously you were going to take it personally… what was I thinking. Your personal post wasn’t given the treatment you were looking for.
What did you mean by “security” then? You are likely to keep your job when a comparable private sector job would be eliminated? Or does it have more to do with your government pension plan?
My use of “accountability” was meant to refer both to the way individuals do their jobs and the accountability of the public sector as a whole.
What did you mean by “Believe it or not; there are some management types that actually have the balls to do the right thing.” … sarcasm? Or an admission that the typical government manager doesn’t have the balls or even need the balls?
I admit that I was thinking of public school teachers (quasi government employees in my mind) when I commented about paying for your health insurance. That sounds like a lot… you are talking about premiums rather than flexible spendng or health savings aren’t you.
Finally, how are you accountable for others but not “management”?
I support making extensive spending cuts first. We can raise taxes later, after all the cuts are made.
I have seen on the SDMB a great deal of pressure to raise taxes. It seems pretty universally agreed that this will not nearly suffice to reduce the deficit to manageable levels. Therefore, it behooves us to stick to the subject at hand.
Granted that most of the reduction to the deficit will have to be made by cutting spending, I would hope that most of the discussion will focus on where those cuts will be made. Some people have a bad habit of changing the subject away from spending cuts, consistently and (in my opinion) dishonestly.
This pay freeze isn’t even a cut, and the libs in Congress and elsewhere can’t stand the thought.
We are going to cut spending. Raising taxes will not - repeat, not - fix the problem. So let’s not pretend that it will.