Zeitgeist
The comments sections for various NYT puzzles gives me a daily peek into a certain demographic's hot takes on the political stories of the day. On quiet days, people discuss the puzzles. Every few days there's a little desultory virtue-signaling about the sad state of affairs in the U.S., with commiseration from the world-wide audience.Predictably, they've been riled up this week over the cruel and inexplicable budget cuts that are separating U.S. federal workers from jobs they rightfully own for life. They're just slashing blindly! They're not even commissioning half-billion-dollar efficiency studies that will last for years and be studied for years longer! But today there's an unprecedented flood of outrage over the very concept of workers having to state in a few simple words what they accomplished during the past week. They're lying awake stewing over it; they're trying to decide whether they should refuse to answer out of principle. They can't imagine who this upstart is who is demanding to know what they do that even they consider of any value. How could this childish clown possibly comprehend the subtle worth of their efforts, even if they could bring themselves to jot them down?On Twitter, someone working on a DOGE-associated task posted a tongue-in-cheek inquiry about how he would begin in describing the incredible progress of his last week. Musk responded that he'd be fine, and that in any case DOGE was setting a low bar: he really hoped primarily to identify a small group that could respond in comprehensible English demonstrating a grasp of the point of the inquiry.In many online venues, most of what I read is bemoaning the sad fate of federal workers with mortgages they can barely handle. They don't even bother explaining what they're doing that anyone would miss. Why is my job important? Because of my paycheck, of course.
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7 comments:
I play two of these games because my mother likes them, and it’s a way of communicating with her that doesn’t involve politics. She’s become inured in the world of mainstream ABC-style morning shows, and such is constantly alarmed by The Current Thing.
I didn’t realize that the games even had comment sections. Now that I know, I’ll leave monitoring them to your good offices.
Jobs are increasingly viewed as things which exist for the benefit of the jobholder rather than for the doing of work which actually needs to get done. See my post A Swarm of Sinecures:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/73140.html
It used to be people posting their results and discussing their strategies, or observations about how the puzzles are constructed. Lately, though, it's just been freak-out mode turned up to eleventy.
It's an infantile view of the world as a place that exists primarily to supply one's needs.
Regarding the call to government employees to describe, in their email responses, their accomplishments over the prior week: it'd be interesting to compare those emailed claims with their claims on the timesheets those employees turned in Friday for the same week.
There are two groups who will be self-identifying for RIF: those who don't answer the email at all, after screening for those on PTO/sick leave, and those whose descriptions are at substantial variance with their timesheets.
Eric Hines
Those of us who have experienced layoffs in the private sector have little sympathy for laid-off federal workers. Federal workers, compared to private sector workers, have better salaries, benefits, pensions, and job security. Get out the violin.
Consider the economics. As one commenter put it, when you work for an organization that lost $2 trillion last year, why would you be shocked at the prospect of layoffs?
That loses $2 trillion dollars every year.
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