The news is chock full of reports that Social Security may fire as many as half of its workers—all of whom are being pressured to take early retirement in one form or another. It's a huge and seemingly arbitrary layoff.
What makes it especially odd is yesterday's memo from OPM telling agencies to create layoff plans by March 14. It's nowhere near March 14 yet, so why not take the extra time to do a little more planning? Especially since OPM explicitly prohibited Social Security from making layoff plans on its own:
Agencies or components that provide direct services to citizens (such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ health care) shall not implement any proposed ARRPs until OMB and OPM certify that the plans will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services.
Very strange. OPM obviously hasn't had time to "certify" anything yet, so what's going on? Who's in charge?
The funny thing about all this is that I can see a case for big layoffs at Social Security. They seem tailor made to implement an expert chat system that would eliminate the need for almost all human support. Of course, this kind of thing doesn't pop into existence quickly. It would take a year or more to implement, and I realize this is too slow for Donald Trump's febrile mind. But if the MAGA crew were willing to act normally once in a while they might truly find a way of saving serious money here.¹
¹Or maybe not. It would take a lot of speccing and prepping and testing to figure out if it could work. But that's real life.
Re: They seem tailor made to implement an expert chat system that would eliminate the need for almost all human support.
Huh? Have you ever tried to deal with AI chatbots either by messenger or by phone? They can answer simple things like "What's my account balance" but they're useless in answering complex one-off questions, or resolving complicated problems, which is the main reason that I at least would be calling since I can usually get answers to simple questions by looking around on websites. Kevin's faith in AI is touching but quite unrealistic. AI may be artificial but it is far from intelligent. Really it has the intelligence of an idiot savant, or the speaking ability of a parrot.
Not to mention the demographic who uses SS is not typically the most tech literate and that only gets worse as you age.
Gilded Age > New Deal > Social Security > Civil Rights > Roe, Environment > Healthcare > Gilded Age.
Short Version- Where have all the flowers gone?
"The funny thing about all this is that I can see a case for big layoffs at Social Security. They seem tailor made to implement an expert chat system that would eliminate the need for almost all human support."
This is the worst thing you've written in a while, hopefully it's the illness talking.
Kevin,
The Social Security system is amazingly efficient (see Krugman's work on this).
The end goal of the GOP is to steal the money, first, last and always.
They'll do the standard play of f*cking with the system, then declaring it broken.
The reform, which will involve taking the money.
Yeah, I was just ranting about this earlier. There's bound to be mistaken payments and opportunities for cheats to commit fraud in any system larger than a lemonade stand. Social Security and Medicaid actually have *less* fraud, overhead, and inefficiency than the private sector. They're incredibly efficient and that's why conservafucks hate them so much: because they effectively transfer tax revenue to people who need it.
Conservatives hate the social contract. They're basically nihilists.