Seattle: poster child for the $ 15 minimum wage

[BobR]

I have nothing productive to add, so here;




bob

[Scout26]

The only efficiency of .gov is "less".

[Firethorn]

Only in government does improving efficiency and setting up alternatives cost more money.

Incorrect.  That's the normal status in life.  You have to invest to improve efficiency. 

There's lots of examples:
When I worked at McDonalds we had fancy grills that would cook both sides of a burger at once. I'm sure they were much more expensive than a regular single sided grill, but they more than cut cooking time in half.  Doubling the productivity of the grill allowed the cook to be more productive in a smaller amount of space. 
For construction work - you don't need a nail gun to build a house, but it saves effort, but you gotta buy the thing first.
Factories - again, a robot designed to do a task is generally extremely expensive, and you often have to design the product to work well with automated manufacture.  It takes TIME to automate a factory to any great extent in addition to the buckets of money.  But in the end each product out the door is far cheaper than if you didn't automate.
I replaced my boiler a while back.  Got a fancy high-efficiency one that saves me lots of oil, but it cost more money up front.
Insulating your house more increases efficiency, but costs money.

With the government(or any large organization), to increase efficiency you need to figure out an alternative way, set up that alternative way, then shut down the old way.  It costs money up front, but saves money in the long run.

I think you are missing a key aspect of government spending in that it doesn't go away, and anything "temporary" merely becomes a new baseline.  See the 2009 "temporary" stimulus...has government spending gone down since then?  If you look up the graphs the administration released that spring, it was supposed to be back "down" in 2-3 years.  Well, its 5 years later, has it gone down?

When I'm arguing how things *should* work, griping how it's actually being done doesn't move me.  I know it's a problem.

I have nothing productive to add, so here;

whitespace?

[Scout26]

Incorrect.  That's the normal status in life.  You have to invest to improve efficiency. 

Not always.  Developing processes that use the current tech more efficiently, does not require an investment (unless you count training time).  I reduced headcount in my warehouse from 90+ when I took over to about 20 without investing in anything other than asking people questions about how they do their job and could they think of a way to do it "better".   I let them answer, kept the ones that "got it", fired the rest and let them do it "their way". 

I didn't have to buy any fancy equipment or develop any tech beyond the computer system we already had.

Inventory accuracy went from ~20% to 99.96%.  Costs dropped dramatically, customer (both internal-Production and external-Paying) satisfaction soared, as in rarely^* getting complaints regarding deliveries or their timeliness.

And it was an evolution.  Not

figure out an alternative way, set up that alternative way, then shut down the old way

.  Not even one part at a time.   Letting my supervisors and their subordinates that "got it" work it out.  All I did was ask questions.


^*- except Kmart.  I still believe that their only profit center was their logistics arm.  Following their delivery instructions - Chargeback for not being smarter then them when it came to setting up and delivering loads.  Being smarter them them when it came to setting up and delivering loads - Chargeback.

[birdman]

Incorrect.  That's the normal status in life.  You have to invest to improve efficiency. 

There's lots of examples:
When I worked at McDonalds we had fancy grills that would cook both sides of a burger at once. I'm sure they were much more expensive than a regular single sided grill, but they more than cut cooking time in half.  Doubling the productivity of the grill allowed the cook to be more productive in a smaller amount of space. 
For construction work - you don't need a nail gun to build a house, but it saves effort, but you gotta buy the thing first.
Factories - again, a robot designed to do a task is generally extremely expensive, and you often have to design the product to work well with automated manufacture.  It takes TIME to automate a factory to any great extent in addition to the buckets of money.  But in the end each product out the door is far cheaper than if you didn't automate.
I replaced my boiler a while back.  Got a fancy high-efficiency one that saves me lots of oil, but it cost more money up front.
Insulating your house more increases efficiency, but costs money.

With the government(or any large organization), to increase efficiency you need to figure out an alternative way, set up that alternative way, then shut down the old way.  It costs money up front, but saves money in the long run.

When I'm arguing how things *should* work, griping how it's actually being done doesn't move me.  I know it's a problem.
whitespace?

What I meant was in a business, the ROI of an investment is counted, and the costs trend downward if the efficiency is implemented.  In government, additional money is asked for or taken, something is implemented, and yet the costs never decrease.  Also, businesses tend to stop spending money on things that aren't working.
Government does not.

And there is one form of efficiency or improvement that costs nothing...simply stopping doing something that isn't working.  Changing behavior doesn't always cost money up front.

[Firethorn]

Not always.  Developing processes that use the current tech more efficiently, does not require an investment (unless you count training time).  I reduced headcount in my warehouse from 90+ when I took over to about 20 without investing in anything other than asking people questions about how they do their job and could they think of a way to do it "better".   I let them answer, kept the ones that "got it", fired the rest and let them do it "their way". 

Being able to effect that level of improvement without any more investment than your knowledge/time isn't 'normal'.  Good job though.

But in cases like this I'm looking at drastically reforming various systems

Also, businesses tend to stop spending money on things that aren't working.
Government does not.

You're still engaging in excessive pessimism about how things currently work.  You can find examples of the government ending programs if you look.  Red light cameras are coming down in many locations, for example, because they don't issue enough tickets to justify their existence. 

Look at it another way - simply complaining about the government never stopping spending isn't going to stop the spending unless you actually push for an alternative way, then push for the savings to actually be realized.  I know it's tough.  Doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.

And there is one form of efficiency or improvement that costs nothing...simply stopping doing something that isn't working.  Changing behavior doesn't always cost money up front.

You have a point.  I'm sure there's billions to be saved where you can simply let leases expire, transfer or let the employees go after having them 'shut things down'.  Then you put the millions into programs where it's going to cost additional money to shut down, or to develop alternatives.  You could start saving money almost immediately by ending the war on drugs, for example.  Stop subsidizing DARE programs(which they've found to be statistically between ineffective to more likely to get kids to use drugs than to prevent it).

But it's going to take some money to do the studies to find and verify said opportunities.

Then there's the places where you'd 'save' money simply doing things the right way.  Take NASA as a good(but not only) example.  It costs money, serious money, to simply keep the lights on in a satellite/rocket construction area.  Starving them of money they were promised - IE they were promised $x, so they started up Y projects, causing delays in the use of what they're building is incredibly expensive for no return.  IE a $40M project might end up costing $80M for the same results if you don't fund it properly so it takes another 5 years to finish.  Same with big research construction projects.

[geronimotwo]

i'm a little late to this party but i wanted to add that NY's minimum is in the $8 range, however there is a law that any worker on a bid job performed for a "municipality" (which includes state, county, town, and village work as well) must make union scale.  that puts the average construction worker in the $38 range.  heck of a way to get competitive bids.