What did you do at your job today?

I just caught a commercial last night advertising USAJobs.com. Apparently these commercials have been running for a while, I just now saw it. Here's an article about them...

www.govexec.com...
OPM, which has spent $600,000 since the start of May to produce and air four commercials in 12 markets, just created a fifth ad featuring a NASA bioengineer on the International Space Station. Each of the ads highlights a federal employee at work, followed by the tagline: "What did you do at your job today?"

A few conclusions arose when I saw the ad... the most significant being that this smacked of socialism. I can't imagine that the Federal Government has a hard time finding employees, so why run an ad campaign that mirrors military recruitment efforts?

From my studies it is clear what happens when the majority of civilians are government employees. Could this be the actual motivation behind this new campaign? Or is this just an innocent attempt at filling some civilian boots abroad?

I encourage all viewpoints to reply.

The government is just trying to attract the best and brightest people to work in it's departments, they are having to compete with the private sector which generally pays better.

But then shouldn't it have always been that way? Why the sudden marketing surge? Is this simply to boost civilian employment in Iraq and other countries or could this go hand in hand with the intentional growth of the welfare state?

Even if this is just to boost civilian employment in these stressed times, why? Those jobs should contract to the private sector. To the lowest bidder, of course.

Originally posted by apc
Even if this is just to boost civilian employment in these stressed times, why? Those jobs should contract to the private sector. To the lowest bidder, of course.

When Government's contract out to the lowest bidder, you get what you pay for. That's all I have to say on the matter...

(Bear in mind I come from Blairite UK)

Then what should we expect from even lower pay government employees?

I just found abnormality with this very seductive marketing campaign in the context of everything else going on these days, which prompted my suspicion.