17 votes

Can You Believe This Number?

Bloomberg reports:

The Pentagon is ordering furloughs of 680,000 civilian workers in an effort to save $1.8 billion of the $37 billion in spending cuts it must make this year.

I'm sorry, but someone tell me.... How many employees does your company have?

Cuz the Pentagon has 680,000.... THAT THEY CAN FURLOUGH.

Check your pockets. If they're empty, there's a good chance it's because 680,000 Pentagon employees have your money.

A furlough is hardly far enough.

Say that number out loud, folks.


About 68,500 of 750,000 civilian Defense Department employees who are eligible for furloughs will be exempted, according to Hagel’s memo...

I'm sorry, make that 750,000.


(source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-14/pentagon-to-furloug...)

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Pentagon and Defense dept

Are not always synonymous. The way the budget is broken out these may be the same groups of employees or there maybe a 100k that are actually not counted in one of the groups meaning it maybe 900k employees.

You make a GREAT POINT nonetheless.


Liberty = Responsibility

What a bunch of cry babies

They are only getting furloughs for 11 days.Big deal.My carpenter
husband has been scrambling to get enough work to keep a roof over our heads for years!They could fire half of those people and nobody would even notice.Paper pushers are over rated.

Me too (Carpenter)

Job's are hard to come by and profit is harder.

If you fired them there would be less work

and you would probably be able to fire a bunch more. It's like that age old saying, "a small town is only big enough for 1 lawyer, but give it 2 and there is enough work for 8".

Cyril's picture

Yes, I can believe this number.

Yes, I can believe this number. You sound a bit innocent with the fantabulous potential of socialism (no offense... just teasing ;)

These are 1999 figures about another socialist country, smaller than ObaMARX-Land (aka the "USA") :


(note: and that's NOT including any type of govt contractors)

Let's see... some trivial math, shall we?

2.3 millions public "servants" for 60 millions total inhabitants ~ 4 % of total population... that is, when applied to the USA (as it is being geared to, anyway) :

4 % out of 315 millions... 12 millions of a potential public servants "pool" (again: NOT counting any federal govt contractors, yet).

See? That makes for a fair margin yet to explore!

Doesn't it?




Ain't math fun?

Ain't math fun?

~0.2% of the population of the US?

That seems a bit high, but perhaps they're counting their foreign operatives and sponsored terrorists working abroad.