November 13, 2010 @ 6:20 p.m.
In the past couple of days, I've been wondering how much of the U.S. government is made up of people who get hired instead of elected. Is it 80%? If you think about all of the people who aren't professional politicians, and all of the people who work in all of the offices, from the lowest-level secretary to the highest-level bureaucrat, that's a lot of people, isn't it?
They are the people running the government, aren't they? The longer you stay at a job, the more you become the one who knows what's going on all the time, who knows how to get things done, who knows how to prevent things from getting done, who knows everybody else who's been there for a long time, too, and who knows what all the cycles of government look like and can use those cycles to your own advantage.
What if you couldn't work in a hired position in the government for more than 10 years? What if you worked in the job for 8 years, then spent 2 years training your replacement, and then left with a limited pension that would last you for 2 years after that, long enough for you to find another job or settle into your retirement if you had started working for the government when you were older?
What if the retirement age in the business world were 55 instead of 65, if you wanted to spend the remaining 10 years of your employment working in government? When you were done with your 10 years, you'd get your 2 years of government pension in addition to the retirement that you already had from your former employer while you were working for the government.
That way, there'd be a bunch of 55-year-olds bringing their life and business experience into those government jobs, along with all of the younger people who could do their 10 years in government service and then go on to other things, including running for office if they wanted to do so.
I'm not sure about the military, or diplomats; it's important to have people in those jobs who have a lot of direct experience, but you also don't want those people to become too individually powerful. That's an important question, and I don't have an answer for it.
For people who don't make a career out of serving in the armed forces, things already work the way I've described they could work for the rest of government outside of elected positions, except that you can't quit the military before your term of service is over. What I'm suggesting is a limit on how long people can stay in government jobs, not keeping people in office jobs or other, non-military government jobs for 10 years if they want to quit.
I don't think that most people would want to quit, though; hire competent people, pay them, give them benefits, train them, give them good vacations and sick time. They'd be serving their country, and it would keep things moving.
It would be important not to have hiring or leaving times coincide with election years; too much upheaval.
As far as people who have been working in government for 30 years now; give them a great retirement plan and a lot of them would probably be happy to go. The ones who aren't happy to go.....I wonder if some of them are the baddies who are responsible for things like the government committing fraud. They're the ones who get the retirement package with lots of nods and smiles, and then you change the locks and security codes on everything once you get them out the door.
Copyright L. Kochman November 13, 2010 (But anyone who wants to try out this idea can.)
In the past couple of days, I've been wondering how much of the U.S. government is made up of people who get hired instead of elected. Is it 80%? If you think about all of the people who aren't professional politicians, and all of the people who work in all of the offices, from the lowest-level secretary to the highest-level bureaucrat, that's a lot of people, isn't it?
They are the people running the government, aren't they? The longer you stay at a job, the more you become the one who knows what's going on all the time, who knows how to get things done, who knows how to prevent things from getting done, who knows everybody else who's been there for a long time, too, and who knows what all the cycles of government look like and can use those cycles to your own advantage.
What if you couldn't work in a hired position in the government for more than 10 years? What if you worked in the job for 8 years, then spent 2 years training your replacement, and then left with a limited pension that would last you for 2 years after that, long enough for you to find another job or settle into your retirement if you had started working for the government when you were older?
What if the retirement age in the business world were 55 instead of 65, if you wanted to spend the remaining 10 years of your employment working in government? When you were done with your 10 years, you'd get your 2 years of government pension in addition to the retirement that you already had from your former employer while you were working for the government.
That way, there'd be a bunch of 55-year-olds bringing their life and business experience into those government jobs, along with all of the younger people who could do their 10 years in government service and then go on to other things, including running for office if they wanted to do so.
I'm not sure about the military, or diplomats; it's important to have people in those jobs who have a lot of direct experience, but you also don't want those people to become too individually powerful. That's an important question, and I don't have an answer for it.
For people who don't make a career out of serving in the armed forces, things already work the way I've described they could work for the rest of government outside of elected positions, except that you can't quit the military before your term of service is over. What I'm suggesting is a limit on how long people can stay in government jobs, not keeping people in office jobs or other, non-military government jobs for 10 years if they want to quit.
I don't think that most people would want to quit, though; hire competent people, pay them, give them benefits, train them, give them good vacations and sick time. They'd be serving their country, and it would keep things moving.
It would be important not to have hiring or leaving times coincide with election years; too much upheaval.
As far as people who have been working in government for 30 years now; give them a great retirement plan and a lot of them would probably be happy to go. The ones who aren't happy to go.....I wonder if some of them are the baddies who are responsible for things like the government committing fraud. They're the ones who get the retirement package with lots of nods and smiles, and then you change the locks and security codes on everything once you get them out the door.
Copyright L. Kochman November 13, 2010 (But anyone who wants to try out this idea can.)