What Did You Do Last Week?

Elon Musk, in his capacity as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), issued a directive for all federal employees on Saturday to email their weekly accomplishments by Monday night, or else face resignation. 

This is the email.

President Trump had earlier asked Elon to ramp up his DOGE efforts.

Elon Musk explained one of the reasons that he made the request at the direction of President Trump was a simple pulse check to see how many employees are out there and actually functioning.

For perspective, this is the same thing that Musk did after he purchased Twitter and it is also a common practice in other service industries after a change in management.

However, the American Federation of Government Employees thinks it is "cruel and disrespectful" for federal employees to justify what they are doing for their paycheck and the American people.

The AFGE represents 800,000 federal government workers.

When the AFGE says that Elon Mush has not performed one single hour of honest public service in his life they seem to be disregarding all that he is doing with DOGE right now for which he is not being paid one cent.

Shouldn't they also recognize the fact that Musk is almost certainly the nation's largest taxpayer who just so happens to be paying for the salaries of those federal government employees?

All of this raises the question as to why do government employees have the right to unionize in the first place?

It is important to remember that there is no real legal or economic reason for the very existence of a public sector union in the first place.  In fact, liberal Democrat luminaries in the 1930's such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia were opposed to public sector unionism for the simple reason that it threatened the broad needs of the citizenry.  That is why it was illegal for most government employees to unionize until well into the 1970's.  

Fred Siegel of The Manhattan Institute wrote about how liberals were once skeptical of public-sector unionism in The Wall Street Journal a few years back.

In the 1930s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia warned against it as an infringement on democratic freedoms that threatened the ability of government to represent the broad needs of the citizenry. And in a 1937 letter to the head of an organization of federal workers, FDR noted that "a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."

The historical basis for unions in the private sector is based on insuring a balance of power to insure that workers receive a reasonable share of profits and work in safe and sanitary conditions. Governments don't make profits to share. They only levy taxes. 

In addition, has anyone ever heard of a government worker working in a sweat shop? They also work in a monopoly situation meaning that if they provide poor service, or no service, or go out on strike, there is no corresponding power by the consumer to go elsewhere as there is with a private sector business that is unionized.

Private sector unions are also balanced against equity owners who have a natural incentive to push back on union demands. In the public sector no such tensions exists. More often than not the elected officials on the other side of the bargaining table are incentivized to give in to the unions for their own political survival. Democrat politicians in particular know that they would often not have been elected (nor will they be reelected) without that public sector union money flowing into their campaign coffers.

Why did the Democrats change their views about public sector unions? In a word, MONEY.

Beginning in the early 1960's the Democrats decided that the political advantage of having the political and fundraising power of these unions behind them outweighed any concerns about taxpayers and the broader citizenry.

We are now at the point that half of all union members in the United States are public employees.

Moreover, one-third of government employees are union members compared to only 6% in the private sector.

Source: https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2024/02/union-membership-in-us-workforce.html

What we are seeing in Washington, D.C. with the unhinged reactions by federal bureaucrats to the simplest questions and requests for information about how our money is being spent shows just how deep the swamp is.

The size and shape of the federal bureaucracy and the money that is flowing to it has created a fundamental imbalance between those who work for the government and the taxpayers who support it.

This is evident in national personal income rankings in which Washington, D.C. leads all 50 states on that measure.

Remember that this also takes into account a large number of people who live in poverty in D.C.

Source: https://www.voronoiapp.com/economy/The-Median-Income-in-Every-State-Adjusted-for-Cost-of-Living-1585

This is further evidenced by the fact that four of the top seven richest counties in the United States are all suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Source: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/richest-counties-in-the-us/

Washington, DC has no manufacturing base. It does not make rocket or electric vehicles as Elon Musk does. It does not grow crops. It has no oil wells or coal mines. It does not produce computer chips or other high tech items. It produces almost nothing that creates value in a traditional economy. Yet, its residents have the highest per capita income in the country! What more is needed to know that something is seriously amiss in our country?

Washington is largely a gigantic redistribution machine today. Money comes in one end from one group of people and it goes out the other end to another group of people. Money and wealth have been created in Washington because of the bureaucracy that runs that machine.

All of this speaks to a fundamental imbalance between those who work for the federal government and those who pay for it.

The DOGE effort is simply to try to bring some balance to the system.

The reaction we are seeing clearly shows how difficult a task that is.

I don't know if DOGE will be successful in seeing to it that the needed balance is restored to the system.  

All I know is that it has to occur if we are to survive as a country in the long term.

A system in which the takers end up with more than the makers will eventually fail. We can control the consequences or we can face the chaos when it crumbles. The choice is ours.

Is asking he question "What Did You Do Last Week?" cruel, disrespectful and out of touch?