Thought this was interesting, too. I guess “privatization” doesn’t really save money, after all. Gee, who would’ve guessed?

Looks like a lot of our financial problems are tied to privatization and war (and domestic spying, IMHO). Things the “leftists,” who are often blamed for expanding govt costs, are largely opposed to.

….

[from the above-linked article]:

“Peak Washington of the early 2010s, many economists believe, got its start during the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Reagan’s messianic push to get government out of the way of private-sector growth famously led to lower taxes and reduced regulation. It also led to a subtle change in the way government did business. Hiring became secondary to contracting, and more and more public projects were outsourced to private firms.

It was not until the Bush years, though, that this increasingly wealthy not-federal-but-still-government work force truly metastasized. The amorphous war on terror and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security — plus the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — bloated the country’s spending by about $1 trillion. The contracting dollars that were pumped into the local economy, Fuller says, more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, when it reached $80 billion a year. This, in turn, created hundreds of thousand of desk jobs and fostered a sprawl of nameless, faceless office parks lining the roads out to Dulles Airport.”

——–

Lobbyists, lawyers, defense contractors, and Wall Street bankers — people who are largely responsible for the mess in govt, and who’ve benefited the most from the massive expansion in spending, but have managed to shed all the blame by casting it onto others.

The supply-side argument about lowering taxes, reducing regulations, and increasing govt spending (flow more money to “private sector” contractors and lobbyists) doesn’t seem to be working, now does it?

In most of the cases I’m aware of, the contractors in D.C. need special security clearances and are very specialized. That could account for most of the difference, though it probably doesn’t account for all of it.

Like the Bay Area and the need for “mobile” engineers now, there was so much demand for contractors in D.C. that the rates went up very quickly over the past decade or so.

But yes, when you combine powerful lobbyists, lots of tax money, and the desire to “spend it into the economy, right now” there is a lot of room for all kinds of shenanigans. This is why I say that the #1 place to look for fraud and abuse is where public money and private enterprise meet. Always was the case, and always will be.

…

Also, though I do not know this for sure, the cost of the contractor might be the cost that the govt pays a private company for the contractor (usually the case as far as I’ve seen). This cost would include all the overhead and profit for the corporation, this is not necessarily what the contractor is receiving individually. There is a lot of bloat, as usual, where the middleman is concerned.

Some security clearances can take more than a year to obtain, and the top levels need to be re-investigated on a regular basis.

I don’t think you understand the enormity of handling all of the administrative duties and security clearances for all of those people. It’s much easier for them to go through a company.

This is one of the things that far too many people do not understand about govt work. It takes a tremendous amount of resources to recruit and train people, and the sheer number of employees working for the government is unfathomable for most people who work in the private sector, even to those who work for very large corporations.

By using companies, it’s easier to keep these individuals in the “govt fold,” where they might work for one public agency, and then another, then another, and then back to the original agency…but all under the control of one company. By using the company, all of the administrative work is streamlined and, once the relationship between company and the various govt agencies has been established, it’s easy to just tell them that you need a person with x qualifications for x amount of money, and then that person arrives as soon as they are needed.

And yes, it does prove my point about privatization being more expensive than the govt having its own employees. The privatization movement wants to **expand** government (especially as it relates to expanding government spending for private contractors), and they spend a tremendous amount of money lobbying to get this done. With govt employees, while they might lobby for better pay and/or working conditions, they do not usually lobby for expansion in the way that private contractors do, and they cost less per employee.

I guess I wasn’t aware of outsourcing = privatizing. My definition of privatization is more of transferring the completely ownership to the private sector (for profit or non-profit). But I guess after looking into the term, it can mean either. So, I concede that if you’re talking about outsourcing, then yes, outsourcing will cost more. But if it’s transferring complete ownership, then that’s debatable.

You’re right, $135k vs $270k is almost exactly what I quoted. Although, that’s on the very high side. The $135k is also on a very high side to start with for just a software engineer, the $270k is very very high side. Also, wasn’t there some people who said government employees are underpaid because they have such wonderful fringe benefits? The $135k doesn’t bare out that claim.

[quote=AN]I guess I wasn’t aware of outsourcing = privatizing. My definition of privatization is more of transferring the completely ownership to the private sector (for profit or non-profit). But I guess after looking into the term, it can mean either. So, I concede that if you’re talking about outsourcing, then yes, outsourcing will cost more. But if it’s transferring complete ownership, then that’s debatable.

You’re right, $135k vs $270k is almost exactly what I quoted. Although, that’s on the very high side. The $135k is also on a very high side to start with for just a software engineer, the $270k is very very high side. Also, wasn’t there some people who said government employees are underpaid because they have such wonderful fringe benefits? The $135k doesn’t bare out that claim.[/quote]

I was wondering whether that $135K was actually the cost of a federal employee doing the work rather than the salary. (those who aren’t as pedantic as I am might think they’re the same thing.) If so, that would make the actual salary probably around $100 to $110K, benefits would increase that to about $135K.

The term “computer engineer” can encompass a whole lot of different jobs. My last gig, I had 130 employees who could all be called “computer engineeers”, though not a single one of them could write code (that I’m aware of). And their average pay was right around $150K, average total cost per employee was $180K (average billing rate around $210/hr. But there were some that earned well over $200K and billed $400/hr. Sadly, we never did any federal govt work.

The bulk of the country suffers, while DC thrives.

Sickening.

Reminds me of The Hunger Games – a rich Capital District surrounded by much poorer subjugated districts.

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]Some security clearances can take more than a year to obtain, and the top levels need to be re-investigated on a regular basis.

I don’t think you understand the enormity of handling all of the administrative duties and security clearances for all of those people. It’s much easier for them to go through a company.

This is one of the things that far too many people do not understand about govt work. It takes a tremendous amount of resources to recruit and train people, and the sheer number of employees working for the government is unfathomable for most people who work in the private sector, even to those who work for very large corporations.

By using companies, it’s easier to keep these individuals in the “govt fold,” where they might work for one public agency, and then another, then another, and then back to the original agency…but all under the control of one company. By using the company, all of the administrative work is streamlined and, once the relationship between company and the various govt agencies has been established, it’s easy to just tell them that you need a person with x qualifications for x amount of money, and then that person arrives as soon as they are needed.

And yes, it does prove my point about privatization being more expensive than the govt having its own employees. The privatization movement wants to **expand** government (especially as it relates to expanding government spending for private contractors), and they spend a tremendous amount of money lobbying to get this done. With govt employees, while they might lobby for better pay and/or working conditions, they do not usually lobby for expansion in the way that private contractors do, and they cost less per employee.[/quote]
I think you just contradicted yourself in this post. If it’s cheaper to do it in house, then why outsource? I never knew the privatization movement was for expanding government and increase government spending. If that’s the case, then I’m very anti privatization. What would you call completely offloading the service/job to the private sector then? Keep in mind that there are some jobs where I don’t think should be privatize. Jobs that need clearance are usually the one that needs to stay in house. In stead of paying contracting firms to do the clearance process that you set up. Why not just stream line the clearance process and allow your employee from one agency to move to another more easily. Streamline the process instead of paying extra money to not have to deal with the process.[/quote]

No, I didn’t contradict myself. It is cheaper to use government employees, but with the growth of certain industries being fed by tax dollars, that’s not always possible, nor desirable. The government is (IMHO) paying for things that we have no business paying for, but the lobbyists are extremely powerful, and they (the people who hire them) control who we get to vote for, how much we spend, and where we spend it. This is why we’ve been seeing the huge moves toward privatization, even though it’s more expensive and more vulnerable to abuse.

Some good resources to get a better understanding of the privatization movement:

http://dianeravitch.net/category/privatization/

This is more biased, but argues some of the anti-privatization points fairly well:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5531195&mesg_id=5531195

And definitely read this:

http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/predatory-privatization-exploiting-financial-hardship-enriching-1-percent-undermining-d

It’s very important that people understand what’s going on WRT privatization and our government. Most important is that if we lose this battle, it will be almost impossible to turn back.