Yesterday I mentioned that the Social Security Agency will have 69,675 employees in 2012. Re-reading the entry later on, it seemed like an awful lot of people to me, and not being familiar with what the agency does, I looked it up and here's what I found on their website.
The Bureau of Federal Old-Age Benefits, renamed the Bureau of Old-Age Insurance (BOAI) in 1937, was created in December 1935 and was the forerunner of today's Social Security Administration. The Bureau was responsible for Title II of the Social Security Act and its functions included: the maintenance of wage records; supervision of field offices; examination and approval of claims, including related claims functions (for certification of payments recovery of excess payments, and hearing and deciding appealed cases); and the making of actuarial estimates.
Now, the bureau has gone through several changes over the years, but their primary focus remains the same. And as near as I can tell, all they really do is keep records and handle claims. So, assuming that even the government is automated and systematized today, much of the work is done by machine. That means, almost 70,000 people push the paper around that's left, and deal with questions and issues from the public at a cost of $13.5 BILLION dollars per year from taxpayers. What's more, the bureau doesn't raise a cent in revenue, so it's all overhead and cost that's being spent against no income.
Looking at the size of the bureau's budget, I tried to find some comparative private entities size-wise, just to see if there was anything similar in the real world.
Microsoft, for example, employs 88,596 worldwide. So that's an awful lot of people too. But, whereas the Social Security Agency costs $12.5 billion to run without any income other than taxpayer's bucks, what does Microsoft earn? Last year they earned $18.76 billion on sales of $62.46 billion and had a growth rate of 29%.
I looked at Exxon/Mobil too, because they employ lot's of people. In fact, there were 83,600 of them in 2010. Those folks produced gross revenue of $383 billion dollars, netting almost $31.5 billion in profit.
Now, I realize I'm comparing apples and oranges when it comes to government and business, but nonetheless, you'd think that even though government isn't Microsoft or Exxon they'd try to trim their costs. And perhaps a place to start would be to tell their workers to fill up their tanks at Exxon and drive their paperwork over to Microsoft, and after that...tell them not to come back.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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