Marine Corps could shrink in size

[gabosaurus]

FINALLY, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is doing his job and attempting to cut the overly bloated defense budget by $100 billion over the next five year.
Not that it is enough. Gates needs to slash defense contracting, cut the defense budget by 30 percent and cut Pentagon staffing by 50 percent. There are WAY too many generals, admirals and non-active Pentagon lifers who do little to nothing to earn their excessive paychecks.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/aug/13/pentagon-budget-reorganization-will-impact-san-die/

[Nukeman]

I will be the first to admit that EVERY gov't agency is over staffed and bloated. I find it ironic that YOU will take exception with the military yet call for MORE and increased funding in the public schools.

http://biggovernment.com/acoulson/2010/06/05/the-u-s-economy-needs-fewer-public-school-jobs-not-more/

I find it funny that even though enrollment in US public schools has only risen about 10% in the past 40 years the employment required to do the same teaching has risen 100%.

Please take a look at the graphs on the link. they are very telling. So tell me gabs are YOU willing to lose your job to make this a more secure economy or is it always up to someone else to lose theirs so you can keep yours.....


Teachers unions, the Obama administration, and most Democrats in Congress want to spend another $23 billion that we don’t have to shore up public school employment. If we don’t go along, they tell us, it’ll be a “catastrophe” for American education. With fewer teachers our kids will supposedly learn less, further crippling our already wounded economy.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment (see chart). There are only 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees. To prove that rolling back this relentless hiring spree by a few years would hurt student achievement, you’d have to show that all those new employees raised achievement in the first place. That would be hard to do… because it never happened.



But, some readers may ask: were all those new employees teachers? About two thirds of public school employment growth has been teachers (41 percent) or teachers’ aides (23 percent). The remaining third was comprised almost entirely of support staff in schools and district offices.

So, yes, a bit of public schooling’s employment bloat can be put down to a swelling bureaucracy. But given that adding a couple of million new instructional jobs did nothing to improve achievement at the end of high school, there’s no reason to expect that shedding a few hundred thousand of them would hurt it.

Ed. sec. Arne Duncan and friends are thus mistaken if they really expect a negative academic or economic impact from reversing some of our costly and ineffectual public school employment growth. In fact, they actually have it backwards.

In the private sector, jobs are created and retained only if they are believed to add value to the enterprise—if their salary and benefit costs are outweighed by the revenue they generate. By contrast, we know that the millions of new government school positions added over the past four decades have not added measurably to student knowledge or skills at the end of high school. So instead of boosting the U.S. economy, these jobs have actually been a drain on it. Returning to the staff-to-student ratio we had in 1980 would save taxpayers about $142 billion every year.

Thats right, a year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Agnapostate]

The Marine Corps has at times survived on leftover scraps thrown aside and has rarely been characterized by abundance or extreme surplus compared to the other branches of the Armed Forces, so it's odd that that's the first place cuts would go.

[Nukeman]

here I found the graphs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nukeman]

The Marine Corps has at times survived on leftover scraps thrown aside and has rarely been characterized by abundance or extreme surplus compared to the other branches of the Armed Forces, so it's odd that that's the first place cuts would go.

I have to agree with you. They are the first in and the last to leave usually!!!
why cut there to start????

[namvet]

this should put the unemployment rate well over 10%.

[avatar4321]

Well alittle protien powder, a healthy diet, and regular physical training will quickly get them back up to size.