For anyone wanting to learn the importance of our federal workers, I highly recommend reading "The Fifth Risk", by Michael Lewis. It's only 220 pages long, but filled with information & examples of how our dedicated federal workers literally save our lives daily by doing their jobs - whether it's by inspecting the meat & poultry we eat, predicting the hurricanes & tornadoes that could kill us, making sure our nuclear facilities are safe from terrorists, or just funding vital programs like school lunches.
We take these workers' jobs & dedication for granted at our peril. Get the book!
Yes, a great book. Should be required reading in any civics or government class. Also recommend Lewis’ series of articles in the Washington Post over the last couple of years. I’m surprised he’s not out there railing against DOGE.
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I just purchased the book and will read it with great interest and attention. I would have reserved it with the library but they possessed no online copy for patrons.
I agree completely. I am highly educated in one field. But I recognize that what I don’t know in many other areas, and in some cases even in my own, would fill volumes. The new administration doesn’t seem to be that self aware. It puts us all in potential danger.
The cats woke me up, yowling. I did what I do every morning, get up, feed them, put on the coffee. Then I opened my email to clear out everything that screamed “don’t do it, don’t read it before the sun is up,” always coffee first, before the current madness.
Then I saw the words “it’s a scam, it’s a purge.” You turned my plans upside down.
I am retired, and I like many of my friends spent years working in public service. I did so because I wanted to make a difference. I have so many friends who are still dedicating every hour of the work day to helping our country. They work for lower pay than their counterparts in the private sector - engineers, accountants, lawyers, scientists, diplomats, health care professionals. They do this because they care about people, the environment, our food systems, national security - they do their jobs because they care about our country.
Many citizens don’t have a clue how much these workers do to make every one of us safe and secure.
When President Authur, in 1883, signed the Pendleton Act he was ensuring that federal government jobs would be awarded on the basis of merit, not cronyism. The act made it unlawful to fire or demote for political reasons employees who were covered by the law. The law forbids requiring employees to give public obeisance or make contributions to a particular party or organization.
Mr. Krugman, you are right this action wrong and illegal. It stinks like a barrel of rotting fish.
The Pendleton Act was the one positive act done under President Arthur’s administration. It stopped the hiring of political cronies. But how many students are taught it today. History & civics are simply not taught. I could go on and on about this topic.
Just another law/thorn in Trump's side for him to flout/pluck out and unceremoniously toss into the trash bin with all the other laws that he's flouted/broken. And, as usual, somehow, he'll get away with it. Yet again.
" I did so because I wanted to make a difference." Bingo! There are so many of us out here who feel the same way! If we could just all find each other, we would be a force to be reckoned with, for sure. Popular opinion to the contrary, the majority of us are not greedy, evil assholes only out for ourselves.
We owe it to writers, vloggers, and elected officials such as Governor Tim Walz, Senator Warren, Representative AOC, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, Ken Klippenstein, Robert Hubbell, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, and others to DO SOMETHING with the information they provide. They are risking their livelihoods and their LIVES by speaking truth to/about power. We can no longer be passive readers/viewers.
Contact your elected officials today! Script/Email: "Senator, please fight Trump’s illegal funding freezes, cuts, and terminations. Use every tool available:
TIP: Input all your elected officials' numbers and email addresses into your contact list so you can quickly contact them. I'm doing at least 10 calls or emails per week, using the information I get from the individuals listed above (and others). ANOTHER TIP: Always use a short script, then share your script with others so they can do the same. Do the same with emails - share your work! And be sure to include phone numbers, email addresses, and links!
Thanks for laying out specific actions. One more: encourage your senators, representatives and Democratic officials to push hard for Timothy Snyder's excellent, actionable idea for an "opposition cabinet" https://snyder.substack.com/p/an-alternative-cabinet
Trump is serving up a target-rich environment on a daily basis and we need this opposition cabinet to push back hard on a DAILY basis in ALL forms of media, not just once a month on a Sunday morning news show.
I support much of this but the only thing we owe Robert Reich is contempt for how he helped elect Trump in 2016 by shilling for Bernie and attacking Hillary Clinton LONG after she locked up the nomination all the way to the convention.
Adjudicating Reich's behavior could very easily have been a private matter. For some reason, it was important for you that we all see you put him on the scrapheap of history. The very act of making this public and performative casts serious doubt on your claim about not relitigating the 2016 primary.
This is a great idea, but just be aware, when officials find their inboxes flooded, they'll end up paying less attention to them. Much of it will simply be deleted without being read. Most, if not all of it, will be screened by lower level employees.
All of it is screened by low level employees, or interns. They tally up how many communications the office received on a broad range of topics and include how many pro and con. So yes flood the zone. If there are a lot on one issue with one broad conclusion, it gets noticed by the elected official. Whether s/he does anything about that info is another question.
Mr. Krugman, thank you for this. As a retired naval officer and current federal employee, I think you have nailed both the implications of the “Fork in the Road” offer/non-offer and the motivations behind it perfectly.
You’ll be encouraged to know the people I work with looked at the “buyout” with some mix of incredulity and derision, but I share the same fear that you have – that the best and brightest among us will move on to a place that appreciates their skills and where they can continue to pursue their calling in life without political interference. I especially think of those in the health and science fields who could be making so much more in the private sector and who now have been restrained in what they can communicate and have uncertainty about funding, a troubling thing in areas where projects need an assured multi-year funding stream to net expected benefits.
This buyout/not a buyout memo read led to the “perfect” phone call with Zelensky and the impoundment that accompanied, since what is being proposed here is impoundment, and both the carrot and the stick were offered. I found the following line especially galling because, as you have pointed out, so many of my coworkers and I feel the work we do is a calling and not just a job:
“If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce. At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.”
The ”renewed focus” line was just insulting, especially considering how many federal workers in Defense, Public Health, and so many other sectors did exactly what my team did, which was to continue working in the office and on the front lines during COVID – coming into work despite the dangers because is what the job called us to do. For those who did not need to be in office, we rapidly developed innovative ways to use technology so that employees could continue to serve the American people while teleworking.
As I discussed here (https://gregflo.substack.com/p/hello-my-name-is-greg-and-im-a-federal?r=12fx35 ), I am proud of the work that my team and I do, and I’m very disturbed by these moves. While I suspected something like the “Fork in the Road” memo might happen, I had no idea they would be so audacious, which is a failure of imagination on my part. The fact that so many of these moves are based on lies about the federal workforce is all the more troubling given most people’s level of understanding about their government, how it operates, and the workers who serve it is lower than I would like. So, thank you for taking the time to write and educate people in a direct, engaging, and informative way.
*These comments reflect my personal views and do not represent the views of my employer, the United States Navy, or the United States Government.
My fear is the “best and brightest” won’t be able to move to the private sector because it too is required to toe the ideological line. We’ve already seen this with private universities (e.g. Harvard). How much longer will health science based companies hire competent scientists if the regulatory system becomes a whimsical manifestation of various religious beliefs and conspiracy theories? (e.g. mifepristone, polio vaccine). Visions of Oliver Cromwell’s England keep coming to mind, especially after Alito referenced 17th century witch hunter Matthew Hale in his Dobbs opinion.
We use to have the spoil system in civil service. That cause all kind of problems. Which is why laws were written to make the system more based on merit. Seems we are going to have to relearn this all over again. Because ignorant people believed a con man and vote for him.
If I'm reading the stats correctly, it appears that the size of the civilian federal workforce hasn't changed much over the last 50 years. Considering the growth of overall population, this means that per capita it's a diminishing percentage, which must mean it must also have become much more efficient over time in order to service such a growing clientele.
Or some of the jobs have gone to Beltway Bandits, er, contractors. That may be part of the plan to privatize the Postal Service, privatize VA health, privatize federal prisons, privatize Medicare thru Medicare Advantage plans, privatize education through ESAs and corporate charters. Some of that is already taking place.
The GOP/Wall Street playbook has always been the privatization of any and all federal agencies: USPS, Social Security, Medicare. It enables grifters to make tons of money at taxpayer expense, some of which $$$ they'll kick back to the GOP as political donations. And for gravy, they get to guts unions; always a GOP crowd-pleaser.
First they underfund federal agencies; e.g., USPS, IRS. Then they mismanage them, eventually resulting in a public outcry. *Then* they say that privatizing them is the only way to fix them.
The same playbook has operated in the states. Services erode and citizens become even more dissatisfied with government, which the grifters use to gain even more taxpayer money. Then the men who became wealthy through government contracts or land leases run for the legislature and they win by claiming they’ll make government “run like a business”. As legislators they enact laws and budgets that further line their pockets while reducing services and pontificating against the poor, the working class, unions, POC, immigrants, women, and even children (“why isn’t that five year old child working? In my day I was working the family farm at that age”).
Spot on! The size of the federal workforce hasn’t changed much in the last 70 years, since we demilitarized after WW2. GDP has gone from $400 billion to $28 trillion and the federal budget from $65 billion to $6.8 trillion over that time. The federal government is way more efficient than any business could dream of.
I'd argue the exact opposite...as population has gone up, the size of the Federal workforce should have gone up as well. However, by staying the same size, you have fewer employees handling larger workloads and more numerous tasks...efficiency and service has gone down as a result. And unfortunately this admin (and the Conservative movement writ large) points to that dip in service ("It's so hard to talk to someone at SSA or IRS, blah blah blah...") as indicative of lazy/entitled government workers, when in actuality it's a civilian public service entity that is working even harder trying to stay afloat with all the work. When I worked as a (state) public defender, it was the equivalent of having 10 cases vs having 60....there's only so much time in the day get stuff done, you're already needing to put in more than 40 hours to do it, and oh you're also only being paid a third of your private sector colleagues...efficiency and service dip just trying to meet your basic responsibilities and obligations.
Rather than cutting the federal government, someone interested in improving efficiency would be hiring more people to it...the fact that this isn't happening just further shows that the current administration is not interested in "saving the American taxpayer money," but rather enriching themselves and the insanely wealthy with tax cuts. Government workers are often doing far more than their original job duties and being villanized by bad actors and a sector of the public that is unwilling to look into the issue beyond their own experience.
The Biden administration did hire more IRS agents; of course, that became a talking point for the Republicans. President Trump "joked" that he would arm them and send them to the border. To tax refugees?
His budget proposed an 8% increase in Fiscal Year 2025 for Social Security which has reduced its staffing 16% since 2010 while its population served increased 25%.
Instead, SSA is operating on a continuing resolution (same money as last year even though the pay scale went up to reflect inflation) thanks to a disfunctional House of Representatives and a hiring freeze, courtesy the new administration.
I'm just stunned that an unelected "official" (i.e., Mr. Sieg Heil) was able to get into a branch of the government and generate that scam email from an official address, as has been reported elsewhere today. It's lucky the email didn't also ask recipients to click some link and leave their SSN and banking details. And if they tried it the next time what recourse would anyone have. The scammer-in-chief is immune.
It's important to know that federal workers taking a "buyout" would also lose their retirement pension. I'm not sure this is true everywhere, but state and federal governments are one of the few places left that actually have pensions. In most cases, 401Ks do not cover retirement and a drop in the stock market can cause real havic with these. The point is however, is that pensions are a great incentive for many to stay.
As in corporate America, when buyouts are offered, the remaining employees always suffer... reduced benefits, downsize in retirement incentives, job restructure, demotions and loss of wages are common. It's the big squeeze Americans wage earners have been experiencing in corporate America for the last 40 years. It has got to stop.
Market based retirement plans scale with growth and give you the ability to change things if you don't like how things are going. Worried about stocks crashing when your close to retirement? Move your money into bonds. Pensions don't let you do that.
Pensions blow up when growth stops. As everyone has been pointing out that's going to happen soon because of demographics. You don't want to be living off a pension in 10 years.
What you’re basically saying is that we shouldn’t expect private entities and the government to meet their contractual obligations. Nuts to that crap. Contracts are contracts.
Contracts are nice but if they promise more than is possible to deliver they’re not going to meet it.
If growth shrinks the pensions will go bankrupt. That’s just reality. I’d expect readers of an economics blog to understand this.
They absolutely should be held accountable. But *you the individual* should be aware that you can't actually expect them to deliver because the thing they're promising doesn't exist.
The problem is, how did private equity make out like bandits when the companies they bought up and run into the ground were the cause of the pensions going bankrupt?
*that* is a consequence of the moral hazard created by repeatedly bailing out failed banks. That will keep happening until we stop bailing them out.
The money they make is effectively stolen from banks extending loans to the companies they buy who then default and don't pay them back. That's why these banks keep running out of money and need bailouts.
BoDs and executives make choices to underfund pension plans. You just sweep that away blithely with some nonsense about growth stopping, which rarely happens. Anyway, your “side” won, there basically aren’t any new pension plans except for executives in the private sector. Congratulations
Growth is tied to demographics. Growth slowing "rarely happens" while there's demographic expansion but that is coming to an end now and we are absolutely going to enter an era of economic stagnation that will look, at best, like Japan. That will absolutely kill pensions, the only way to cope with that is self directed, market based retirement.
You’re economically illiterate. There’s always growth for companies to chase, not only in this country but globally. The only reason our country has a declining population is because racists won’t admit we need immigrants, and politicians pander to them.
You’re not informed or intelligent enough to warrant continuing this conversation
Due to my ignorance, I do not understand the distinction of "Market based retirement plans" and Pension. Pension plans invest in the market too. Some pension plans goes into alternative investment, such as hedge funds, crypto, etc to maximize their returns. They do not sit there idly and money will grow. They all have similar constraints. Their investment sizes (number of shares of a stock or number of bonds) are usually very large. It will take time to build or sell such a large position. If there is a sudden market moves, nothing these money manager can do. In the end, it is the stock/bond picking that distinguishes the good from the bad, not the label of "pension", "public" and "private." Some performs well and some do not. That is just the nature of the beast (seems like I use this phrase more and more often lately). It is hard to generalize. As a matter of fact, if it is so easy to predict the ups and downs of the market, we do not have any financial crisis. A simple and recent example is the Monday DeepSeek sell-off. How many people has predicted it? I will bet it is a very small minority.
In retirement, the biggest challenge is the passive income generated regularly to maintain a person's desired life style. Another is inflation. To make it more complicated, with the advent of the medical science, life span in general is longer and it is hard to predict how long one is going to live and so what is the size of the retirement fund a person should have. Well. Of course if one is a multi-millionaire or a billionaire, problem is solved and it is really moot to discuss this.
I wish some one can give me a formula. My experience so far is that: If it is so simple to manage an investment portfolio, why don't people just play the market and get rich. What is the point of working?
You won't get a formula because production is not constant. This idea that pensions can provide a constant source of income despite shrinking production is a lie.
A better word for what I meant by "market based retirement" is probably "self directed retirement." I think that makes the important distinction much clearer.
I am not sure what you mean by production. Anyway, I can honestly say I am receiving two pension incomes and I have been receiving constant monthly payments for years. Some of my friends depend only on pension incomes.
I do have other source of investment income, including a self-directed portfolio. My point is that self-directed portfolio can grow and shrink too depending on its performance and how much you need to withdraw from it.
I can live on the pension income alone. My problem is my life style. I still travel wherever and whenever I want. I want to ski in the winter and golf in the summer. I love expensive wine and dine. I would like to keep it up as long as I can and so I keep working and keep myself busy.
Yesterday, a young lady at a business I patronize told me that there is a group of women in NYC that post videos to Tik Tok of them replacing laid off/fired workers and then show up to just do yoga or whatever and record the total fraud of the reasoning behind why all of the former employees were let go (these people had the resume qualifications for the job). It was of particular significance to her because of the industry. That won't last as a stunt for long because word will get around, but it just goes to show that the majority of the working population are tired of being gas lighted.
Given that a large number of these workers are unionized, may I ask "where is the union"? Surely the unionized workers (regardless of their politics) can get together and start resisting this illegal action?
To be fair, the unions by and large sent out very rapid messages to members, sometimes using channels like the emergency text system that they should not, under any circumstances reply to that email. There was a lot of discussion over on Bluesky with people sharing the alerts they got.
You hit the nail on the head, Paul. No mystery here: Vice president is an acolyte of Curtis Yarvin and his RAGE -- Retire All Government Employees. That way, you usher in the extra-constitutional order and have a CEO who is a dictator running the country. Who knew this is how Trump would accomplish that? Those boys have been busy in the past four years. How'd they know they were going to win the presidential?
Ask Elon. He did something to the coding on those voting machines. The Democrats just rolled over in the name of a peaceful transfer of power. The Democratic party is weak and behind the times. This is the perfect storm for the Republicans. It is their moment but people are waking from their lethargy. This why they are trying to and succeeding to create chaos because their window is very limited. Resist!
Is it nonsense? The Republicans have no regard for the law and will do anything to win. I think we have arrived at the point where we stop playing nice and put them on their heels by playing offense.
What Digispeaker probably means is that through social media, he was able to mine his followers' data to send them incentives for getting others they know out to vote, maybe with incentives in it for them, too. The GOP propaganda now on steroids due to new and advanced technological assistance.
It feels like watching a slow moving train wreck and I am helpless to do anything. I am torn between horror and shadenfreude for the people who voted for this.
It’s only week 2 of the Trump Presidency and already planes and helicopters are crashing into each other. Wait till many FAA agents decide to leave by taking the 8 month pay leave.
Everyone knows the good workers are the first ones to leave while the lower productivity workers stay behind.
What a mess and it’s only week 2 of Trumps Presidency
Even if Trump *isn't* at fault, in my opinion, everyone needs to make him own every single thing that happens. He said he would fix everything didn't he? Therefore any problem is his responsibility.
If you make grandiose promises, don't be surprised when people hold you to it.
Thank you for bringing this up. Musk's rocket debacle caused a lot of trouble with the airlines. Musk casually brushed it off stating something minor thing that happened. Oh well...
It reminds me of when Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers. That year had more air disasters than in all of aviation history before it combined.
That's not correct. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from fundraising on behalf of political candidates, but it doesn't prevent them from contributing. What concerns me is that donations to candidates are public record. I won't be surprised if the positions abolished after the Feb 6th deadline (Reagan's birthday!) passes are mainly those held by contributors to the Harris campaign.
Yep. Phil's correct. You can't use official resources to make contributions or volunteer work (i.e. you can't make a donation to a candidate out of a federal bank account or use a federal laptop to do phone banking). You also can not use your position to make endorsements. For example, you can't say "as an employee of [INSERT AGENCY] I'm endorsing Candidate X because [reasons]." You can still make the endorsement as a private citizen, just not using your job title as the primary thrust.
Of course Trump/the GOP don't follow these rules and never see them enforced against them, so it's extremely frustrating.
I met a Sierra Club member once who told me that he used to work for Koch Industries and what many of his fellow co-workers that didn't agree with the official Koch political stance would do is make personal donations just under the limit of being publicly reported so as not to create a circumstance as to be fired under trumped-up reasons.
One justification for firing the CG head was stagnant recruitment, lower reenlistment numbers and an old sex scandal cover-up she made public. She'd been given command in 2022, and within months she made public a 2014-2016 Analysis of mishandled assaults reported back in the 80's and 90's. Trump's charge was that she lacked transparency! She and her predecessor saw CG funds cuts under Trump, his DOD used poor data to estimate housing allowances ( allowances are set by DOD, not individual service heads ). It is difficult to recruit and retain service members often posted in remote places when their allowances are insufficient and it was reflected in the numbers. So, Trump got to relieve from command the first woman to lead the Coast Guard with a bunch of bogus 'charges'.
Trump fears strong, independent women. The only women he trusts are thrvGOP/MAGA Stepford type-womrn who owe their power, such as it is, to him- MTG, Bondi, as examples.
For anyone wanting to learn the importance of our federal workers, I highly recommend reading "The Fifth Risk", by Michael Lewis. It's only 220 pages long, but filled with information & examples of how our dedicated federal workers literally save our lives daily by doing their jobs - whether it's by inspecting the meat & poultry we eat, predicting the hurricanes & tornadoes that could kill us, making sure our nuclear facilities are safe from terrorists, or just funding vital programs like school lunches.
We take these workers' jobs & dedication for granted at our peril. Get the book!
Yes.
Fascinating, inspiring, and should be required reading for all high school students!
For Paul and ya'll, my song "Blue Daze" do enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYtTGIzb7OA
Not just high school students I’d say…
Yes, a great book. Should be required reading in any civics or government class. Also recommend Lewis’ series of articles in the Washington Post over the last couple of years. I’m surprised he’s not out there railing against DOGE.
Just placed on hold at my local library, thank you for the recommendation!
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I just purchased the book and will read it with great interest and attention. I would have reserved it with the library but they possessed no online copy for patrons.
You started a movement. I have put a hold on a copy at my local library.
I second this. It's a great read.
I agree completely. I am highly educated in one field. But I recognize that what I don’t know in many other areas, and in some cases even in my own, would fill volumes. The new administration doesn’t seem to be that self aware. It puts us all in potential danger.
The cats woke me up, yowling. I did what I do every morning, get up, feed them, put on the coffee. Then I opened my email to clear out everything that screamed “don’t do it, don’t read it before the sun is up,” always coffee first, before the current madness.
Then I saw the words “it’s a scam, it’s a purge.” You turned my plans upside down.
I am retired, and I like many of my friends spent years working in public service. I did so because I wanted to make a difference. I have so many friends who are still dedicating every hour of the work day to helping our country. They work for lower pay than their counterparts in the private sector - engineers, accountants, lawyers, scientists, diplomats, health care professionals. They do this because they care about people, the environment, our food systems, national security - they do their jobs because they care about our country.
Many citizens don’t have a clue how much these workers do to make every one of us safe and secure.
When President Authur, in 1883, signed the Pendleton Act he was ensuring that federal government jobs would be awarded on the basis of merit, not cronyism. The act made it unlawful to fire or demote for political reasons employees who were covered by the law. The law forbids requiring employees to give public obeisance or make contributions to a particular party or organization.
Mr. Krugman, you are right this action wrong and illegal. It stinks like a barrel of rotting fish.
The Pendleton Act was the one positive act done under President Arthur’s administration. It stopped the hiring of political cronies. But how many students are taught it today. History & civics are simply not taught. I could go on and on about this topic.
Just another law/thorn in Trump's side for him to flout/pluck out and unceremoniously toss into the trash bin with all the other laws that he's flouted/broken. And, as usual, somehow, he'll get away with it. Yet again.
"It stinks like a barrel of rotting fish."
Like everything His Orange MAGA Majesty, and his sidekick "X-man" does.
" I did so because I wanted to make a difference." Bingo! There are so many of us out here who feel the same way! If we could just all find each other, we would be a force to be reckoned with, for sure. Popular opinion to the contrary, the majority of us are not greedy, evil assholes only out for ourselves.
Linda, we are force to be reckoned with. We will not give up.
TIL that there was a US president with the last name of Arthur...
We owe it to writers, vloggers, and elected officials such as Governor Tim Walz, Senator Warren, Representative AOC, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, Ken Klippenstein, Robert Hubbell, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, and others to DO SOMETHING with the information they provide. They are risking their livelihoods and their LIVES by speaking truth to/about power. We can no longer be passive readers/viewers.
Contact your elected officials today! Script/Email: "Senator, please fight Trump’s illegal funding freezes, cuts, and terminations. Use every tool available:
--Oppose all Trump nominees.
--Deny any requests for Unanimous Consent.
--Oppose all Cloture Votes.
--Request a Quorum Call at every opportunity.
--Shut down the Senate."
https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials
TIP: Input all your elected officials' numbers and email addresses into your contact list so you can quickly contact them. I'm doing at least 10 calls or emails per week, using the information I get from the individuals listed above (and others). ANOTHER TIP: Always use a short script, then share your script with others so they can do the same. Do the same with emails - share your work! And be sure to include phone numbers, email addresses, and links!
Thanks for laying out specific actions. One more: encourage your senators, representatives and Democratic officials to push hard for Timothy Snyder's excellent, actionable idea for an "opposition cabinet" https://snyder.substack.com/p/an-alternative-cabinet
Trump is serving up a target-rich environment on a daily basis and we need this opposition cabinet to push back hard on a DAILY basis in ALL forms of media, not just once a month on a Sunday morning news show.
I support much of this but the only thing we owe Robert Reich is contempt for how he helped elect Trump in 2016 by shilling for Bernie and attacking Hillary Clinton LONG after she locked up the nomination all the way to the convention.
As Robert Reich would say Daniel, “Rubbish!”
Yes, what Reich spewed in attacking Hillary AFTER she locked up the nomination was utter rubbish.
wild assertions based on nothing.
Based on what Reich actually did and said in June and July 2016. Sorry you have amnesia.
RRL is a classic troll. Please don't feed the trolls on this forum.
This guy... same stupid line every single time.
wild assertions based on nothing
I don't think at this point re-litigating the 2016 primary 9 years later is going to help anyone. What's done was done, it was nearly a decade ago.
No need to relitigate anything. I simply put Reich on the scrapheap of history.
"I simply put Reich on the scrapheap of history."
Adjudicating Reich's behavior could very easily have been a private matter. For some reason, it was important for you that we all see you put him on the scrapheap of history. The very act of making this public and performative casts serious doubt on your claim about not relitigating the 2016 primary.
I'm sorry this hurt your fragile ego. I expressed an opinion. That's all.
I’m sorry to break this to you, but nothing you say rises to level of hurting my feelings.
pointless.
Yes,but only on your version of the “scrapheap of history”.
This is a great idea, but just be aware, when officials find their inboxes flooded, they'll end up paying less attention to them. Much of it will simply be deleted without being read. Most, if not all of it, will be screened by lower level employees.
All of it is screened by low level employees, or interns. They tally up how many communications the office received on a broad range of topics and include how many pro and con. So yes flood the zone. If there are a lot on one issue with one broad conclusion, it gets noticed by the elected official. Whether s/he does anything about that info is another question.
I stand corrected.
Watch out for shutting down the Senate. That's what enabled the consolidation of power to Hittler.
Mr. Krugman, thank you for this. As a retired naval officer and current federal employee, I think you have nailed both the implications of the “Fork in the Road” offer/non-offer and the motivations behind it perfectly.
You’ll be encouraged to know the people I work with looked at the “buyout” with some mix of incredulity and derision, but I share the same fear that you have – that the best and brightest among us will move on to a place that appreciates their skills and where they can continue to pursue their calling in life without political interference. I especially think of those in the health and science fields who could be making so much more in the private sector and who now have been restrained in what they can communicate and have uncertainty about funding, a troubling thing in areas where projects need an assured multi-year funding stream to net expected benefits.
This buyout/not a buyout memo read led to the “perfect” phone call with Zelensky and the impoundment that accompanied, since what is being proposed here is impoundment, and both the carrot and the stick were offered. I found the following line especially galling because, as you have pointed out, so many of my coworkers and I feel the work we do is a calling and not just a job:
“If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce. At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.”
The ”renewed focus” line was just insulting, especially considering how many federal workers in Defense, Public Health, and so many other sectors did exactly what my team did, which was to continue working in the office and on the front lines during COVID – coming into work despite the dangers because is what the job called us to do. For those who did not need to be in office, we rapidly developed innovative ways to use technology so that employees could continue to serve the American people while teleworking.
As I discussed here (https://gregflo.substack.com/p/hello-my-name-is-greg-and-im-a-federal?r=12fx35 ), I am proud of the work that my team and I do, and I’m very disturbed by these moves. While I suspected something like the “Fork in the Road” memo might happen, I had no idea they would be so audacious, which is a failure of imagination on my part. The fact that so many of these moves are based on lies about the federal workforce is all the more troubling given most people’s level of understanding about their government, how it operates, and the workers who serve it is lower than I would like. So, thank you for taking the time to write and educate people in a direct, engaging, and informative way.
*These comments reflect my personal views and do not represent the views of my employer, the United States Navy, or the United States Government.
My fear is the “best and brightest” won’t be able to move to the private sector because it too is required to toe the ideological line. We’ve already seen this with private universities (e.g. Harvard). How much longer will health science based companies hire competent scientists if the regulatory system becomes a whimsical manifestation of various religious beliefs and conspiracy theories? (e.g. mifepristone, polio vaccine). Visions of Oliver Cromwell’s England keep coming to mind, especially after Alito referenced 17th century witch hunter Matthew Hale in his Dobbs opinion.
It is my hope that you will use your leadership skills and experience to "renew" your focus on organizing resistance to the burgeoning fascist state.
Greg, thank you for your post. I am going to follow you. You give me hope.
Maybe that should be a response, “Remember the perfect Zelensky call. “
We use to have the spoil system in civil service. That cause all kind of problems. Which is why laws were written to make the system more based on merit. Seems we are going to have to relearn this all over again. Because ignorant people believed a con man and vote for him.
And the con man defines their gullibility and weakness as "merit".
If I'm reading the stats correctly, it appears that the size of the civilian federal workforce hasn't changed much over the last 50 years. Considering the growth of overall population, this means that per capita it's a diminishing percentage, which must mean it must also have become much more efficient over time in order to service such a growing clientele.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001
Or some of the jobs have gone to Beltway Bandits, er, contractors. That may be part of the plan to privatize the Postal Service, privatize VA health, privatize federal prisons, privatize Medicare thru Medicare Advantage plans, privatize education through ESAs and corporate charters. Some of that is already taking place.
This!
The GOP/Wall Street playbook has always been the privatization of any and all federal agencies: USPS, Social Security, Medicare. It enables grifters to make tons of money at taxpayer expense, some of which $$$ they'll kick back to the GOP as political donations. And for gravy, they get to guts unions; always a GOP crowd-pleaser.
First they underfund federal agencies; e.g., USPS, IRS. Then they mismanage them, eventually resulting in a public outcry. *Then* they say that privatizing them is the only way to fix them.
The same playbook has operated in the states. Services erode and citizens become even more dissatisfied with government, which the grifters use to gain even more taxpayer money. Then the men who became wealthy through government contracts or land leases run for the legislature and they win by claiming they’ll make government “run like a business”. As legislators they enact laws and budgets that further line their pockets while reducing services and pontificating against the poor, the working class, unions, POC, immigrants, women, and even children (“why isn’t that five year old child working? In my day I was working the family farm at that age”).
Medicare Advantage plans line the pockets of their CEO’s & CFO’s. Traditional Medicare spends a higher % than f their dollars on the patients.
Spot on! The size of the federal workforce hasn’t changed much in the last 70 years, since we demilitarized after WW2. GDP has gone from $400 billion to $28 trillion and the federal budget from $65 billion to $6.8 trillion over that time. The federal government is way more efficient than any business could dream of.
I don't quite understand your argument.
Why is it a hallmark of efficiency when the federal budget grows faster than the GDP?
I'd argue the exact opposite...as population has gone up, the size of the Federal workforce should have gone up as well. However, by staying the same size, you have fewer employees handling larger workloads and more numerous tasks...efficiency and service has gone down as a result. And unfortunately this admin (and the Conservative movement writ large) points to that dip in service ("It's so hard to talk to someone at SSA or IRS, blah blah blah...") as indicative of lazy/entitled government workers, when in actuality it's a civilian public service entity that is working even harder trying to stay afloat with all the work. When I worked as a (state) public defender, it was the equivalent of having 10 cases vs having 60....there's only so much time in the day get stuff done, you're already needing to put in more than 40 hours to do it, and oh you're also only being paid a third of your private sector colleagues...efficiency and service dip just trying to meet your basic responsibilities and obligations.
Rather than cutting the federal government, someone interested in improving efficiency would be hiring more people to it...the fact that this isn't happening just further shows that the current administration is not interested in "saving the American taxpayer money," but rather enriching themselves and the insanely wealthy with tax cuts. Government workers are often doing far more than their original job duties and being villanized by bad actors and a sector of the public that is unwilling to look into the issue beyond their own experience.
The Biden administration did hire more IRS agents; of course, that became a talking point for the Republicans. President Trump "joked" that he would arm them and send them to the border. To tax refugees?
His budget proposed an 8% increase in Fiscal Year 2025 for Social Security which has reduced its staffing 16% since 2010 while its population served increased 25%.
Instead, SSA is operating on a continuing resolution (same money as last year even though the pay scale went up to reflect inflation) thanks to a disfunctional House of Representatives and a hiring freeze, courtesy the new administration.
I'm just stunned that an unelected "official" (i.e., Mr. Sieg Heil) was able to get into a branch of the government and generate that scam email from an official address, as has been reported elsewhere today. It's lucky the email didn't also ask recipients to click some link and leave their SSN and banking details. And if they tried it the next time what recourse would anyone have. The scammer-in-chief is immune.
That's a perfect new nickname for "X-man".
If a CEO is so important for a business to succeed, then how does he have the time to be planted in DC or at Mar a Lago 24/7?
It's important to know that federal workers taking a "buyout" would also lose their retirement pension. I'm not sure this is true everywhere, but state and federal governments are one of the few places left that actually have pensions. In most cases, 401Ks do not cover retirement and a drop in the stock market can cause real havic with these. The point is however, is that pensions are a great incentive for many to stay.
As in corporate America, when buyouts are offered, the remaining employees always suffer... reduced benefits, downsize in retirement incentives, job restructure, demotions and loss of wages are common. It's the big squeeze Americans wage earners have been experiencing in corporate America for the last 40 years. It has got to stop.
Also lost is the sense of mission and meaning. Gained is a sense of dysphoria and foreboding - for all of us.
Market based retirement plans scale with growth and give you the ability to change things if you don't like how things are going. Worried about stocks crashing when your close to retirement? Move your money into bonds. Pensions don't let you do that.
Pensions blow up when growth stops. As everyone has been pointing out that's going to happen soon because of demographics. You don't want to be living off a pension in 10 years.
What you’re basically saying is that we shouldn’t expect private entities and the government to meet their contractual obligations. Nuts to that crap. Contracts are contracts.
Contracts are nice but if they promise more than is possible to deliver they’re not going to meet it.
If growth shrinks the pensions will go bankrupt. That’s just reality. I’d expect readers of an economics blog to understand this.
They absolutely should be held accountable. But *you the individual* should be aware that you can't actually expect them to deliver because the thing they're promising doesn't exist.
The problem is, how did private equity make out like bandits when the companies they bought up and run into the ground were the cause of the pensions going bankrupt?
*that* is a consequence of the moral hazard created by repeatedly bailing out failed banks. That will keep happening until we stop bailing them out.
The money they make is effectively stolen from banks extending loans to the companies they buy who then default and don't pay them back. That's why these banks keep running out of money and need bailouts.
BoDs and executives make choices to underfund pension plans. You just sweep that away blithely with some nonsense about growth stopping, which rarely happens. Anyway, your “side” won, there basically aren’t any new pension plans except for executives in the private sector. Congratulations
Growth is tied to demographics. Growth slowing "rarely happens" while there's demographic expansion but that is coming to an end now and we are absolutely going to enter an era of economic stagnation that will look, at best, like Japan. That will absolutely kill pensions, the only way to cope with that is self directed, market based retirement.
You’re economically illiterate. There’s always growth for companies to chase, not only in this country but globally. The only reason our country has a declining population is because racists won’t admit we need immigrants, and politicians pander to them.
You’re not informed or intelligent enough to warrant continuing this conversation
I don't want to live off a pension >right now<.
Due to my ignorance, I do not understand the distinction of "Market based retirement plans" and Pension. Pension plans invest in the market too. Some pension plans goes into alternative investment, such as hedge funds, crypto, etc to maximize their returns. They do not sit there idly and money will grow. They all have similar constraints. Their investment sizes (number of shares of a stock or number of bonds) are usually very large. It will take time to build or sell such a large position. If there is a sudden market moves, nothing these money manager can do. In the end, it is the stock/bond picking that distinguishes the good from the bad, not the label of "pension", "public" and "private." Some performs well and some do not. That is just the nature of the beast (seems like I use this phrase more and more often lately). It is hard to generalize. As a matter of fact, if it is so easy to predict the ups and downs of the market, we do not have any financial crisis. A simple and recent example is the Monday DeepSeek sell-off. How many people has predicted it? I will bet it is a very small minority.
In retirement, the biggest challenge is the passive income generated regularly to maintain a person's desired life style. Another is inflation. To make it more complicated, with the advent of the medical science, life span in general is longer and it is hard to predict how long one is going to live and so what is the size of the retirement fund a person should have. Well. Of course if one is a multi-millionaire or a billionaire, problem is solved and it is really moot to discuss this.
I wish some one can give me a formula. My experience so far is that: If it is so simple to manage an investment portfolio, why don't people just play the market and get rich. What is the point of working?
You won't get a formula because production is not constant. This idea that pensions can provide a constant source of income despite shrinking production is a lie.
A better word for what I meant by "market based retirement" is probably "self directed retirement." I think that makes the important distinction much clearer.
I am not sure what you mean by production. Anyway, I can honestly say I am receiving two pension incomes and I have been receiving constant monthly payments for years. Some of my friends depend only on pension incomes.
I do have other source of investment income, including a self-directed portfolio. My point is that self-directed portfolio can grow and shrink too depending on its performance and how much you need to withdraw from it.
I can live on the pension income alone. My problem is my life style. I still travel wherever and whenever I want. I want to ski in the winter and golf in the summer. I love expensive wine and dine. I would like to keep it up as long as I can and so I keep working and keep myself busy.
Right, my point is the shrinking/growing of the self directed portfolio is a feature, not a bug.
💯🎯
Yesterday, a young lady at a business I patronize told me that there is a group of women in NYC that post videos to Tik Tok of them replacing laid off/fired workers and then show up to just do yoga or whatever and record the total fraud of the reasoning behind why all of the former employees were let go (these people had the resume qualifications for the job). It was of particular significance to her because of the industry. That won't last as a stunt for long because word will get around, but it just goes to show that the majority of the working population are tired of being gas lighted.
Yep, that the plan…. turn the bottom 95% into serfs and peasants of our corporate overlords.
Given that a large number of these workers are unionized, may I ask "where is the union"? Surely the unionized workers (regardless of their politics) can get together and start resisting this illegal action?
They're also protected by the Civil Service Act, protecting the rights of civil servants.
Ah, but that's a law, and we already know all too well how the Orange Deity responds to the law.
"Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole" - The Onion
To be fair, the unions by and large sent out very rapid messages to members, sometimes using channels like the emergency text system that they should not, under any circumstances reply to that email. There was a lot of discussion over on Bluesky with people sharing the alerts they got.
The union has already spoken out against it. Unfortunately, there's only so much they can do.
You hit the nail on the head, Paul. No mystery here: Vice president is an acolyte of Curtis Yarvin and his RAGE -- Retire All Government Employees. That way, you usher in the extra-constitutional order and have a CEO who is a dictator running the country. Who knew this is how Trump would accomplish that? Those boys have been busy in the past four years. How'd they know they were going to win the presidential?
Ask Elon. He did something to the coding on those voting machines. The Democrats just rolled over in the name of a peaceful transfer of power. The Democratic party is weak and behind the times. This is the perfect storm for the Republicans. It is their moment but people are waking from their lethargy. This why they are trying to and succeeding to create chaos because their window is very limited. Resist!
Please stop spreading this nonsense.
I agree the part about "X-man" hacking voting machines is nonsense, but the rest of it is pretty on target.
I keep forgetting to be more specific in replies, yes the hacking is the nonsense I was referring to.
Is it nonsense? The Republicans have no regard for the law and will do anything to win. I think we have arrived at the point where we stop playing nice and put them on their heels by playing offense.
What Digispeaker probably means is that through social media, he was able to mine his followers' data to send them incentives for getting others they know out to vote, maybe with incentives in it for them, too. The GOP propaganda now on steroids due to new and advanced technological assistance.
The same way they knew they'd pull off anything - by lying, cheating, stealing, etc. That's their standard M.O.
It feels like watching a slow moving train wreck and I am helpless to do anything. I am torn between horror and shadenfreude for the people who voted for this.
For the moment at least, the horror is winning out.
It’s a scam! It’s a purge! It’s so bad it’s impossible to form an appropriate portmanteau!
No it's not! You can- It's a scurge! It's a pam! Okay heard myself. I'm sorry, you're right.
You're close though. It's a scourge!
I suspect this column would never have appeared in The NY Times.
Have any proof?
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/leaving-the-new-york-times
No. Stop ASSuming
It’s only week 2 of the Trump Presidency and already planes and helicopters are crashing into each other. Wait till many FAA agents decide to leave by taking the 8 month pay leave.
Everyone knows the good workers are the first ones to leave while the lower productivity workers stay behind.
What a mess and it’s only week 2 of Trumps Presidency
Even if Trump *isn't* at fault, in my opinion, everyone needs to make him own every single thing that happens. He said he would fix everything didn't he? Therefore any problem is his responsibility.
If you make grandiose promises, don't be surprised when people hold you to it.
Now you know he'll find a way to weasel out of any responsibility for anything. That's a big part of his M.O.
Thank you for bringing this up. Musk's rocket debacle caused a lot of trouble with the airlines. Musk casually brushed it off stating something minor thing that happened. Oh well...
It reminds me of when Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers. That year had more air disasters than in all of aviation history before it combined.
Note that with the Hatch Act, the employees are not actually allowed to make donations to Harris or any other federal candidate.
That's not correct. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from fundraising on behalf of political candidates, but it doesn't prevent them from contributing. What concerns me is that donations to candidates are public record. I won't be surprised if the positions abolished after the Feb 6th deadline (Reagan's birthday!) passes are mainly those held by contributors to the Harris campaign.
Yep. Phil's correct. You can't use official resources to make contributions or volunteer work (i.e. you can't make a donation to a candidate out of a federal bank account or use a federal laptop to do phone banking). You also can not use your position to make endorsements. For example, you can't say "as an employee of [INSERT AGENCY] I'm endorsing Candidate X because [reasons]." You can still make the endorsement as a private citizen, just not using your job title as the primary thrust.
Of course Trump/the GOP don't follow these rules and never see them enforced against them, so it's extremely frustrating.
I met a Sierra Club member once who told me that he used to work for Koch Industries and what many of his fellow co-workers that didn't agree with the official Koch political stance would do is make personal donations just under the limit of being publicly reported so as not to create a circumstance as to be fired under trumped-up reasons.
True, but Trump and his minions never let the truth get in the way of their propagandizing.
Last week Trump fired heads of TSA, Coast Guard and key aviation safety advisory committee.
One justification for firing the CG head was stagnant recruitment, lower reenlistment numbers and an old sex scandal cover-up she made public. She'd been given command in 2022, and within months she made public a 2014-2016 Analysis of mishandled assaults reported back in the 80's and 90's. Trump's charge was that she lacked transparency! She and her predecessor saw CG funds cuts under Trump, his DOD used poor data to estimate housing allowances ( allowances are set by DOD, not individual service heads ). It is difficult to recruit and retain service members often posted in remote places when their allowances are insufficient and it was reflected in the numbers. So, Trump got to relieve from command the first woman to lead the Coast Guard with a bunch of bogus 'charges'.
Trump fears strong, independent women. The only women he trusts are thrvGOP/MAGA Stepford type-womrn who owe their power, such as it is, to him- MTG, Bondi, as examples.
Trite
How's that working out for him now after that plane from Wichita crashed with the helicopter near DC? This schadenfreude is just so depressing...
pointless and obvious