For CRE, the motto in 2024 was “Survive till 2025” via extend-and-pretend. Now it’s 2025, and here comes the government’s office space.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The DOGE people in the Trump administration are considering shedding a big portion of the massive office space that the government owns or leases nationwide, managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), including selling two-thirds of the office space the government owns and terminating three-quarters of the leased office space, according to the WSJ.
Much of this office space is vacant or underused and poorly maintained due to lack of funding, according to GSA testimony before Congress in 2023, cited by the WSJ, which further noted:
“A recent report from Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who chairs the Senate DOGE caucus, found that not one of the headquarters for any major agency or department in Washington is more than half full. GSA-owned buildings in Washington, D.C., average about a 12% occupancy rate. The government owns more than 7,500 vacant buildings across the country, and more than 2,200 that are partially empty.”
The office sector is already in a depression, with default rates that exceed those during the worst moments of the Financial Crisis. Putting this inventory on the market for sale is going to weigh on the already collapsed prices of older office buildings – prices of 50-70% below the last sale before the pandemic are now common.
And terminating leases is going to stress office buildings, their landlords, and their lenders even more, likely entailing more defaults and foreclosure sales. This is a much needed but very bitter medicine to alleviate government waste.
What office landlords and their lenders are facing.
Here we look at the leased office space, where those buildings are, and what portion of the leased space the GSA has the right to terminate in 2025, and also through 2028 (Trump 2.0), based on an analysis from Trepp, which tracks commercial real estate debt and CMBS.
- GSA leases 149 million square feet (msf) of office space around the US.
- GSA pays $5.2 billion in annual rent to private-sector landlords.
- Through 2028, GSA has the right to terminate 53.1 msf of leases, or 35.5% of its leased space, spread over 2,532 properties.
- In 2025, GSA has termination rights on 21.2 msf spread over more than 1,000 properties,
- If GSA terminates all possible leases during Trump 2.0, it would save the government $1.87 billion in annual rent after 2028.
- In the vast Washington DC metro, GSA leases nearly 10% of the entire office market, 35.8 msf in 446 buildings, and can terminate 9.6 msf of that in 2025.
- In the Washington D.C. metro, GSA currently pays $1.47 billion in annual rent.
- GSA leases nearly 6% of the office space in the Kansas City metro (DoD, USPS, Treasury, VA, and USDA), 4.3 msf, of which it can terminate 1.0 msf in 2025.
Here are the top 10 metros in terms of government office space. GSA leases 66.3 msf of office space in them and has termination rights in 2025 on 18.9 msf (28.5%):
| Metropolitan area | Number of buildings | Office space msf |
% of total market | Annual Rent, Million $ | Space with termination rights in 2025, msf |
| Washington DC | 446 | 35.8 | 9.7% | $1,470 | 9.59 |
| New York City | 223 | 5.0 | 0.7% | $249 | 1.53 |
| Hagerstown-Martinsburg | 60 | 4.8 | N/A | $210 | 1.58 |
| Kansas City | 78 | 4.3 | 5.8% | $99 | 1.03 |
| Philadelphia | 124 | 3.0 | 2.9% | $97 | 0.71 |
| Atlanta | 90 | 3.0 | 1.9% | $68 | 1.35 |
| Los Angeles | 168 | 3.0 | 1.0% | $134 | 1.04 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 86 | 2.8 | 1.4% | $82 | 0.57 |
| Chicago | 113 | 2.4 | 1.0% | $92 | 0.93 |
| Denver | 74 | 2.3 | 2.3% | $77 | 0.58 |
| Total | 1,462 | 66.3 | $2,576 | 18.9 |
Office CRE would be stressed enough without this.
The office sector of commercial real estate is in a depression, and office debt just keeps getting worse: The delinquency rate of office mortgages across the US that have been securitized into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) spiked to a record 11% at the end of 2024, blowing by the Financial Crisis peak, having exploded over the past 24 months from an everything-is-just-fine 1.6% at the end of 2022, to a disastrous 11.0% at the end of 2024.
The motto in 2024 was “survive till 2025” via extend-and-pretend. But now it’s 2025, and here comes the government’s vacant office space.
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“Much of this office space is vacant or underused and poorly maintained due to lack of funding”
$2T deficits and yet it’s not enough $ to adequately fund maintenance.
The PE sharks are going to have some exciting months/years as this stuff comes to market.
It’s not just GSA space. There are many additional “federal contractors” which likely have excess space as well.
And if the new administration also takes a serious look at reforming Medicare, where it’s clear that “perverse incentives” are needlessly driving up overhead costs… then trimming out those private, but government funded “administrative” offices will put yet another large chunk of real estate on the market.
I guess saving $5-6B/year is a start, but it’s going to be a while at that rate to get to $2T
1. Yes, but every little thing counts. Government spending is huge, and spread far and wide. “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” as Sen. Dirksen said so eloquently long ago.
So ok, today it might be: “$10 billion here, $10 billion there…”
2. This article was really ABOUT CRE, and what this WILL DO TO CRE, and where. It wasn’t about the government budget.
Indeed. What will do to CRE? Then what that will do to CRE debt? Then what that will do to the institutions holding that debt? And so on.
Your headline made sense to me not the Federal Budget. I can not even fathom what the market price for office buildings is. I would also expect a great deal of government office space outdated and not class A space and very difficult to sell if they try. Will be interesting to watch. Fortunately the decisions do not require any congressional approval since no funding is needed.
Unless funds are needed for demotion??
The bitter medicine may be too much for our current economy, increasing chances for a recession or worse. Cutting costs in our huge economy is complicated.
The office space tremors being felt in many cities are rooted in the interest rate manipulations of the last 3 decades. The manipulations were orchestrated by the banking industry which was conducted by the Fed. The Fed “thumb on the scales” of CRE valuations was joined by the “fingers” of the GSA (building ownership and leasing).
“I believe the root cause of every financial crisis, the root cause, is flawed government policies.”
—Henry Paulson, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, quoted in Huffington Post, August 27, 2013
Reassessing the role(s) of government policies surrounding all financial crisis makes sense, IMHO. That said, I share your sentiment on the enormity of addressing the problem…
Sell that baloney to the 1930s crowd.
This time IS different, you mean?
Yes, it makes sense, but won’t percent occupancy increase if the government employees who have been WFH come back to the office? Then, adjust that for how many subsequently get laid off.
That was my thought too, but the numbers aren’t very significant. The ambiguous executive order ending “telework” for Federal employees… Something like 10% are fully remote, putting that at 200-250k, and with 7,500 vacant buildings that comes to ~30 returned-to-office feds per vacant building. Executive offices for everyone! So between that, and factoring in partial vacancies, and reviewing Wolf’s data, there’s a TON of room to trim the fat despite the return-to-office order. Hybrid/partially remote folks tend to have offices, so they won’t tip the scale either
Then factor in layoffs as well. The plan to lay off or eliminate federal agencies will weigh in too. Like reducing IRS headcount to save a few bucks while foregoing the massive heaps of additional tax revenue they would bring in that pays for each IRS employee multiple times over. At first it just sounds completely moronic, until you think about who it benefits…
I’m sure the ex or “would be” government employees will become highly productive members of the private sector. Imagine the increase in GDP alone from all of their efforts.
Like moving land from unproductive government ownership (costing the taxpayer $$), into the hands of tax paying private entities who will certainly be generating tax revenue for the government.
The other thing nobody mentions is that the US Government is the largest buyer of almost everything, The program and research cuts already in the works represent hundreds of thousands of jobs that money flows down to – extra spending on defense won’t make up for that.
If you are looking for where the job losses come from that tip us into a recession, look at all the downstream spend of the things Government funds. Call it waste, but also call it mortgages and car loans.
What is the average additional tax revenue per employee at the IRS? I have no idea. Could be that AI can replace the employee for tax revenue generation. I would think AI would be much more productive.
@ini
The Congressional Budget Office, among others, has studied this. Google CBO publication 60037 (not going to post links). Half the country doesn’t trust the government, science, or math in general, so some may not trust these results. Politics could be a factor, I don’t know much about CBO credibility.
Summary: “the agency estimated the budgetary effects over the next 10 years of three illustrative options that would rescind varying amounts of the IRS’s mandatory funding:
A $5 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $5.2 billion over the 2024–2034 period and increase the cumulative deficit for that period by $0.2 billion.
A $20 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $44 billion and increase the cumulative deficit by $24 billion.
A $35 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $89 billion and increase the cumulative deficit by $54 billion.
This as with the tarrif impact as imposed by Canada will have a hugely negative impact on the public and employee consumers who lose their jobs
I don’t buy the mantra that civil servants don’t work or don’t contribute to the economy and yes they also pay taxes
It will however impact real estate practices (housing )
The tarrifs imposed USSide will however bring in revenue in lieu of directly raising federal taxes
There will be chaos and a huge amount of pain as things settle out less pressure on wages though as new workers to replace immigrants become available
The article and comments triggered my curiosity as to whether there are similar issues of states’ governments office space utilization including consideration of remote work.
A 5/2024 OMB report summarized in fedweek.com reported on the work site status of 2.3 M federal employees of the 24 cabinet departments and of larger independent agencies that account for all but two percent of federal employees. 1.2 M must work onsite full time, about 1.1 M are eligible to work offsite and 230,000 about 10% of federal employees work mostly remote fulltime.
In Michigan, office space is managed by the Real Estate Office Services of the Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB). In FY 2022 the state owned or leased 41.5 M sq. ft. of space which was down 53,400 sq. ft. from the previous year. Decreases in leased space were offset by the opening of a 100,000 sq. ft. state police building.
The legislature is interested in the fiscal effects of remote work and now requires an annual State Budget Report regarding this. The March 1, 2023, report stated that 23,700 state employees or 50% of all employees continue to work remotely. This appears to be much greater than remote working federal employees. The report categorizes related expenses as Building Operations, Utilities, Office Supplies and Information Technology and tries to compare 2022 with the onset of remote work in 2019. The report comments that the identification of costs and savings of remote work is “challenging as variations in reported costs could be attributable to multiple other factors.” Comparing 2019 to 2022 shows net $9.8 M costs.
The report has a “Boilerplate” chart comparing various items including office space for various departments. Some increased. The biggest decreases were in the Departments of Civil Rights, Health and Human Services and Licensing and Regulation. The Attorney General’s Office increased. Our equivalent of the DMV is basically unchanged.
Commercial real estate, a specialty of our current president and his kids.
This list of cities pretty much all blue non MAGA Harris supporters.
Elon and the Doge crew looking for cuts.
Looks like a great low hanging fruit opportunity to save a billion here and a billion there
California is similar and of course have to consider the massive amount of county workers in various areas like health care. The governor was fine with 100% remote but most agencies are back twice a week mostly to help save downtown businesses. Almost all offices that fall into 2 or 3 days in office have gone to hotelling and reservation systems rather than dedicated. This is shrinking the footprint but government has a need to grow and people might otherwise retire as working from home a good gig. I am still 100% telework and have been since 2020. They wouldn’t have a place to put if they brought us back in as they did give up lease on super expensive downtown buildings. Politically difficult too as the only positive of my job, sadly, is 100% telework, and if that changed a lot of people might move on and our agency knows it. After 5 years of working in bathrobe and slippers and filling gas tank once a month would be an adjustment.
Keep in mind that a lot of office space owned or rented by the government is a favor for a friend of a congressman or senator. Maybe a large contributor owned an older building for which he couldn’t get a decent rental rate or sales price, or there’s a building in a town that would be derelict if the government didn’t buy it and maintain it to some degree, bringing down property values throughout the area. Not to mention what happens when large land owners are faced with a massive decline in perceived wealth if property prices decline further. These kinds of announcements garner a lot of hope, but it will be interesting to see how much is actually relinquished over the next year or two as Congress weighs in.
Does Congress get to weigh in? I doubt that Congress has much to legislate on the subject of vacant office spending.
Maybe those congressmen’s friends should have taken the hit on their crappy property long ago like other citizens have done? It’s all nice, but…
I didn’t expect DOGE to notice something that might actually make sense! Maybe it’s not a complete dog-and-pony show…
Yeah it is. It isn’t just about having butts in a chair, the new directive means replacement computer networks have to be installed in some location as well as the recalled employees must work in an appropriate facility. The ‘supervisor’ needs to see them in order to supervise them….more wasted resources. The employee WFH now takes care of his/her own work station, does the cleaning, eats a quick bite at the kitchen table and does not require a lunchroom or cafeteria. Parking? Phone service?
It’ll end up costing more in the long run if the details are accounted for in a truthful way.
CRE office space for someone doing admin office work is about as necessary as berths for clipper ships are for commerce and trade. Computing has changed everything.
And think of the stupid forced to attend meetings all on ‘company time.’ Next thing you’ll know these recalled employees will be asked to work on a new ‘mission statement’ and/or display the ‘right’ attitude for acceptance and promotion….instead of just getting the job done.
The problem with WFH is that people have to be interested in and dedicated to their work, they have to be self-motivated to do the work, and they have to be disciplined. I run my own show, I work from home, and I love what I’m doing and I’m dedicated to my work. So for me, in my situation, WFH is great and very efficient. And there are many people like this, working very efficiently from home. But for many other people, their work is just a job, and they only care about the money, they’re not self-motivated about the work, couldn’t care less about it, and they’re not disciplined about it. And when not tightly supervised, they will do whatever, and become unproductive, and might discover that they can do two full-time jobs at home, working 20 hours a week in total, and double their income. For them, the discipline of an office environment and a supervisor nearby will do wonders, though they will obviously grouse about it.
Sorta true, but nobody knows the numbers between the ‘good’ wfhers and the ‘bad’ wfhers.
If they goof off at home, they will find a way to goof off in the office too. At least with WFH they are not wandering over to the productive person’s cube to distract them with tales about their cat, their broken garage door and their thoughts on the upcoming sportsball game.
Having dealt with insurance claims adjusters for the last two years has been a full time job for me because of a series of housing catastrophes and being a victim of a hit & run auto accident disaster. I have found most of these adjusters working from home. Their service has been substandard to say the least. They couldn’t care less about your concerns. They care about one thing, the bottom line, denying claims and saving money for the insurance company’s investment portfolio. They live in the comfort of their home with their dogs barking in the background, while you are suffering through living like you were in the 18th Century. The WFH model works for some jobs but NOT others.
Seems like it’s easier to identify the slackers when you can analyze their screen time, than trying to look over their shoulders.
I have a friend 4 wfh jobs .seems to be able to handle it . Just bought a 500 k house in flyover .
Screen time = Productivity?
No bigger waste of time than Monday mornings in the office discussing ‘the big game’ the day before. Good thing I could ad lib a whole baseball game by a 30 sec glance at a box score.
I work two full-time jobs as a software architect:
– A smaller company (500 employees) that went public in 2021. I’ve been working remotely here since before COVID because they didn’t want to lose me when I moved away from their office location.
– One of the largest US banks. I joined in 2021 after realizing how straightforward it was to secure an offer as a software engineer. While some banks are enforcing return-to-office policies, they gave me a personal exemption to continue working remotely.
At both companies, I’ve consistently overperformed, earning top bonuses every year. I’m much happier and more productive when working from home. While I agree remote work isn’t for everyone, I strongly disagree with shaming people for managing two full-time jobs.
Both my wife and I have been working from home for almost ten years. My wife works for the Federal Gov, via third-party firm- and it would not be impossible, but very difficult for them to find a resource with her skills to physically show up in an office. (Oracle Financial Applications Techno-Functional, very senior level) People with advanced skills in this area are easily able to find remote work for incredible money whenever they want a change.
Meanwhile, I am exactly the person you describe above- working more than one simultaneous job- one full time, with benefits, the other contracting. I’m making really good money in both. I work around 60 hours a week, including some weekends and both employers are lucky to have my skills at their disposal- and they have made it very clear they agree, and are pleased with my work. I mitigate cyber-security attacks and build logical security infrastructure to keep the bad guys out of your bank accounts and credit cards.
Going into an office makes no sense for either my wife or I. All caps NO SENSE! My wife covers all mainland time zones East to West. I’m often writing rules to mitigate attacks in the middle of the night. It would take 5 or six people in office settings to replace the work my wife and I do from home. I don’t go for the idea remote workers need to be supervised. It takes very little time to recognize and cull out lazy or stupid remote workers. I’ve seen more useless dead weight people in offices, at the proverbial water coolers, break rooms, and cubicles.
That’s a poor management problem resulting from failing to set deliverables that can be tracked. If someone can get their work done in 4 hours, why should they sit there for 8? All that does is reward the slow workers because they become the pace setters for everyone else.
The point of a job is to get work done, not put a butt in a seat for 8 hours. Bad managers just check to see if the butts are in the seats, good ones look at the work output.
My nephew told me that one of his Cal fraternity brothers was getting two full time paychecks working two ful time jobs from home during Covid. It seemed like a lot of work (like dating two women at the same time) but unlike dating two women that “costs” twice as much the guy working two jobs was “making” twice as much (all he did was buy a second laptop for the second job). Durring Covid I was dealing with multiple city and county workers who were all “working” from home and it was rare that I got a call back or email back in less than 5 business days,
@Sandy – Agree that managers should be looking at results and not judging employees by whether they can main a nonzero amount of productivity for an arbitrary amount of time each day.
There are so many bullshit jobs (and a book with that title). Most jobs I’ve personally worked have been at least 25-50% BS and basically a waste of everyone’s time and money, and these aren’t even office jobs.
If people can, in reality, do eight hours of work in half the time while in their underwear and with the cat doing half the typing, then by all means do it!
Instead of RTO, let’s do a 32 hour workweek to reduce the pool of available labor and see what happens. My bet would be mainly a decrease in fake work and little else.
Sandy,
That’s not how it works. Your mentality is what’s killing the whole WFH thing. Everybody thinks ‘i get my job done is 2 hrs therefore I deserve to be paid for 8’. No. This is dumb. Everyone thinks they are a great worker and can work uber fast, even when they can’t compared to their peers. The point is you are on contract for 40hrs per week at an annual salary, that’s the agreement. If you work way faster than your peers or more or better etc, the company should acknowledge this and promote you, pay you more, etc. But thinking you are entitled to 40 hrs pay at 10 or 20 hrs of work is what created this mess. And companies are catching on and hauling people back to the office to teach them that this isn’t how it works. WFH is a great thing but like Wolf says above, workers need to respect the flexibility and not abuse it. Too many abuse it because of an entitlement mentality and thinking they are more productive than they actually are.
For my company which put a dollar value of each head count as $300k per year on am average if in usa
If these people are allowed to wfh then the management point is.. why can’t we hire 3 people in cheaper countries for the price of 1 people if all the job can be done remotely.
Employees in higher cost geography should be careful asking for wfh as these jobs can be cheaply done in cheaper geography
Bang on on what it takes for WFH.
To Oldguy, while nobody knows the numbers, one can safely say the ‘bad’ wfhers will outnumber ‘good’ wfhers a good bit (my guess would be at least 3:1, if not 4:1). IMO, Discipline like common sense is fairly uncommon as most human beings natural state is laziness.
Won’t somebody think of the rentiers? /sarc
As a retired state employee of 40 years. We always had more people than we needed. Way too many layers to get anything done. This went way past all the HR issues which made it nearly impossible to get rid of people that needed to go.
When the medical center I worked at was sold, everyone was fired and had to reapply for their position.
It was rough to justify many as they really didn’t do anything. I was medical and worked directly with patients, so no issue and could have worked most anywhere.
Many were not hired and had no skills in the private world.
I would not expect this to help the labor shortage except at the dollar stores.
Just for the record, I stayed for awhile and then retired. Way too many years without any real supervision.
So true. Having worked at Intel in the 90s and in the state now it is crazy the differences in productivity, management bureaucracy and incompetency, and widespread nepotism. Most of us joke that our jobs are basically UBI. Hard to really name projects that have succeeded and can’t name one that did it on time and on budget. Usually they fail multiple times or they change the definition of success. Sadly no accountability ever happens as the system integrator is just blamed.
Certainly some policies might save some money but by and large many policies will cost money and some could be inflationary. An example is raids in farm country in Monterey and Central Valley, which isn’t a lot of people getting picked up but has scared most workers so only 20% of the regular workers are coming out to harvest current crops. If Mexico and Canada tariffs get implemented could see food inflation inch back up.
I am guessing a lot of these decisions haven’t been fully thought out in terms of implications but I think most logical people don’t think millions of people can be rounded up to start with and certainly what that means to the labor force and inflation. Citrus, strawberries and other items don’t pick themselves like how the wine industry has mostly automated harvesting where you basically need labor for winter pruning.
How did companies do all this stuff (harvest crops,etc) before the influx of people coming across the border to do this for next to nothing?
Farm work has mostly always been migrant labor or labor done by the owners, with most farms being corporate owned today the labor mix has changed.
Building trades are a little different, when the middle class decided that their children should have office jobs and not get their hands dirty, it shifted over the years to the a different labor source. As our own citizens had more upward mobility, we had a labor shortage in get your hands dirty work.
The big news in farming over last 20+ is how mechanised/ automated it has become.
Part of what’s created a strong demand for blue collar labor is what you mention, but also white collar dollars from people in tech, working multiple WFH jobs, PPP loans, free money, record asset prices, etc. Expect this to dry up and start rolling downward and hitting blue collar demand. White collar dollars are propelling a fair amount of this, and if those dry up, so will the demand for all this dirty hands labor.
From what I have read, this labor is going to come from ending social programs like welfare, imposing work requirements on others, and reducing the federal workforce. I don’t think they’ve thought this all the way through.
Given that about 1/3 of those receiving some type of welfare, which would have to be defined(TANF, etc), are disabled or have disabled child. Combine that with agricultural work is seasonal and often requires mobility is a problem.
They have continually decided to force e-verify with negative and punitive consequences for those that break the law. This dates back to Reagan.
Seems logical going after construction would be a more logical start as a good argument those jobs are taking jobs from others. Hard to make that argument with farm work.
There’s a reason these are called Skilled Trades – it takes 4 years to get a plumbing license. 5-7 years for electrician license.
All of the trades are desperate for labor, the older ones are retiring and not enough new entrants into the fields. It’s a major problem.
Agriculture does not employ the vast majority of immigrants. I think it would be worth paying a little more for food to have a secure border.
Paying more to the workers could be offset by properly enforcing antitrust law against the agro-industrial complex. Increased competition would lead to lower costs.
The other driver of lower costs could be MAHA, people changing their diets away from overly processed disease-inducing foods. I’m having an easier time shopping now that I just ignore all the shelves filled with processed carbo-junk foods, too…
We are all going to need to suffer in order for the US Government to get smaller. Some will suffer more than others. We need to help each other in order to get through this. DOGE needs to push: TERM LIMITS for all of Congress.
That what elections are for:)
Government doesn’t need to be smaller as that is never the solution. The solution is having government work on behalf of society. That will be most unlikely.
Nice piece Wolf! I grew up in Kansas City and had no idea the government had such a big role there.
Contradictions coming out of this admin especially around Return To Office (RTO):
Need to cut spending – Telework (TW) measurably saves hundreds of millions /yr (see OPMs annual TW reports)
Need to get rid of underutilized buildings – They also don’t have enough space to accommodate RTO
Need RTO to restore DC economy – Admin wants to move agencies out of DC
Want to reduce building portfolio and leases – going to require massive investment to move the up to 20% of the 2.5 million work force out of D.C.
RTO is about reducing headcount with having to do layoffs and severance packages. New office space is a gift to the rentiers.
It’s not about critical thinking or making things better; it’s about blindly changing as much stuff as possible from the last administration.
I just came on here to say the same thing.
RTO is about fairness:
“Fairness requires that federal office employees show up to the worksite each day like most other American workers,”
It’s about DC’s economy:
“Federal office buildings sit mostly empty, particularly Washington, D.C.-area agency headquarters offices, devastating the local economy and serving as a national embarrassment”
Many contradictory reasons, but the most simple explanation is the usually the correct one:
RTO “would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”
Off topic except concerns DOGE: they are going to kill the penny.
And about time. Canada killed it years ago. Its biggest defender: the mint.
They wriggled when it turned out they couldn’t make one for a cent. Even with copper long gone ( as nickle from the nickle) they managed to get a deal on zinc and briefly broke even. But they loved that gig. Why? It never ended. The coins didn’t circulate. They went into jars,
But what a freaking time waster! Don’t know about USA but here most cashiers had a little jar on counter with sign: ‘Take a penny leave a penny’
But not McDonalds. Shortly before it was killed I went thru drive thru and my bill was 7.01. The kid on the till was not going to round it off. I didn’t ask. No penny jar. So start looking for floor change: not a bad haul, maybe 4 $. But no pennies. But the kid is out too and if we are going to be strict, he needs four. So he has to go and get a roll.
Another six minutes later, deal done. At home a rough calculation: it cost McD about 15 cents to collect that cent. No allowance for my time or those waiting behind me.
But it’s inflationary, merchants round everything up?
No. It’s rounded up or down at till, which leaves most prices ending in a ‘9’
but they kind of did that before. At least the nuisance of the physical coin is over.
That kid would be fired if he did not receive full payment .
McDonald’s would never allow front line employees to make decisions regarding how much money to accept from customers.
How much money could be saved if the subsidy for buying electric cars was eliminated (looking at you, Elon).
How much money could be saved if the US mint stopped making one cent and five cent coins ? Just round to the nearest 10 cents at the point of sale (if paying with cash).
I doubt the people who rent buildings to the government will go along with this. I think they are more likely to cut food stamps, or some other social program before they cut anything that hurts, or might hurt, some rich f**ks in the donor class.
“rich f**ks” Not “rich f*lks” Nice touch. But I don’t think T***p gives a f**k.
1.RTO is not only to end WFH but to make employees leave on their own without firing them. CRO will also gain value. Employees wont leave. They cant find a job outside. Where could anyone find a job that is not too jobby. I want to work but not worky.
2. Government offered to buy back guns. Gun enthusiasts purchased new guns with that money.
3. One time government offered credits to use the penny. People got the pennies and immediately deposited in the bank. Free credits.
4. Inflation will heat up again because lot of cheap foreign labor will not work and the local labor cost more which will be passed on to the customers.
5. People who think EV-windfarm subsidy is wasteful spending never thought in the same way about farm subsidy, oil subsidy and MIC subsidies.
6. Federal gov is not about efficiency. Any measure to improve the efficiency is going to make it lesser efficient.
7. Tariffs are inflationary in the short and medium term.
8. My executive order is to bring the only other guy who made sense in this entire comments section.
9. Lets see after the (metaphorical) honeymoon period 100 days. During April so many big planets conjuncts.
So the moral of the story is to hit my landlord for a rent decrease ASAP.
Reducing space is much easier than reducing people. So, one can say, DOGE is strating at the right place.