And this isn’t even a theoretical or metaphoric description.
We have candidates now already laying out plans for massive workforce reduction in the already overworked, short staffed federal government, which will make them even less productive, which will prompt these people to point out that lowered productivity as evidence for why they should take even more resources away.
They’re literally pushing to eliminate jobs, not create jobs, and to bring unemployment to veterans (who are a big demographic in the federal workforce).
The same people who set up public education to be measured on standardized testing, in which your students falling short on their test scores means your funding gets cut, not increased.