"Fed. Government Pays IT Contractors Nearly Twice As Much As Its Own IT Workers"

By Stephanie Overby, CIO, Wed, September 14, 2011

A Comment...

Finally! Somebody crunched the numbers and put them in a form everyone can understand. Now that their small pilot project of the Federal government has proven it can be done, POGO should move on to where the real waste, fraud and abuse is -- State Governments.

Let's summarize...

• Public employees, in all fields, have always been, and probably always will be, paid less than private industry employees doing the same work, with the same experience, and the same level of quality. The trade off used to be better job security, but that is rapidly disappearing with no increase in pay.
  
• For the typical government contractor, its salaries are higher, it has additional staff and resources dedicated to nothing but obtaining and managing contracts, and it has to make a profit.

Where in all that is there room for any cost savings?

Blasphemy Warning!

The mantra that "Anything government can do, private business can do better" is a fraud. It is pure marketing. There is no factual basis for it whatsoever.

Government, like business, has its share of slackers, "creative advancement strategists" and "funding siphoners".

Unlike business, it usually can't keep them hidden for long.

If businesses were required to be as open as government, people would vote to vastly expand government because it does everything far cheaper and most importantly... far more beneficially to you and me.

The Founding Fathers wisely realized (after much heated argument) that our success as a country depended on always maintaining a healthy balance between competing interests. In this case -- government and business.

Business interests on the other hand, have spent the last 235 years dismantling that principal. They've spent the last 30 years constantly screaming "government is too big", though it is far smaller than it needs to be. In doing so, the gargantuan business community has succeded in taking over the country and virtually enslaving (albeit, lavishly) our elected officials.

If all outsourcing were eliminated tomorrow, within 2 years I think we could pay off the national debt and buy Canada (Okay, maybe only British Columbia and the Yukon - so we're contiguous with Alaska.)

But the way things are going, it may be Canada that buys us. (Works for me!)

I don't doubt for a minute that American business would sell if the price were right!