The declining working population is a worldwide problem, not just for the USA.
I am coming up to 79 so an old fuddy-duddy that knows nothing. When I was young the best thing that could be said of someone was "he is a good worker". That applied to both blue and white collars.
Now, across the world, it seems that those in white collar jobs (who we all need to keep the world rolling) do not actually go into their workplace so a lot of governmental departments have ground to a halt. In the blue collar industries there are so many on long-term sick leave that their industries have the same problem. Medics are so afraid of litigation that they dare not call out those who simply do not want to work.
Retirement age is far too low in many occupations, but trying to correct that gives rise to what is happening in France at present.
I do not have the answer as to how to fix it. I suspect there is not one, and those of us who live after, will have to adjust to the anarchy of the useless .
Governmental departments have ground to a halt because congress has not increased funding to keep up with inflation, and doesn’t remove missions from the agencies to correspond with the loss of funding. If you cut the effective budget, you need to cut the mandated tasks. Any successful business man knows that. And, the Congress has imposed so many idiotic security safeguards on teh agencies, that it is nearly impossible to function.
the private sector leveraged new and more effective methods to increase the productivity of their workers, and decreased staff accordingly. The idiot posse which is Congress decided they should decrees government staffing to keep pace. Well you can’t run the organization without the technical expertise so you eliminate things like clerical staff, mechanics, and facilities maintenance workers.
I am an Engineer. Yes I can file my own documents, service my own truck, and fix a broken toilet or window. But, having worked in both the private and public sector, I know that there is no way any engineering firm I worked for would let me do any of that, and that they either have people on staff or vendors who do it. They most certainly don’t have senior engineers with a billing rate of around $150 to $200 per hour, playing around washing thier own vehicles. It wouldn’t fly at any of the construction companies I’ve worked for either.
The output of most government agencies stayed constant or even increased when they began working from home. Despite what some people are telling you, the backlogs existed for all of the agencies before covid, they will exist after covid, and the cause has nothing to covid, and remote work. It is 99% caused by the inability of Congress to even begin to understand what missions the agencies have been tasked with, and decide to reduce the task load when they reduce funding.
Most people don’t understand that everything the government does was requested/demanded by someone at some time. And that trying to cut back service just becasue Congress didn’t give an agency enough money to perform them. Try not doing something which is legally mandated. Some interested party will take the agency to court and win a settlement forcing the payment of damages, and requiring that the task gets done. Which becomes a priority, until the next interested party sues because the agency is no longer doing their pet thing, and another judge changes the rules.
Congress needs to take a hard look at everything they have mandated agencies do, and other fund it, or remove the mandate requiring it be done. Failing to do that means they are failing in their mandate to help govern the nation, and should be sent packing.
taskandpurpose.com
