&gt; An incremental change would be to start replacing MTA employees with Spanish, Indian or Hong Kongian contractors who can get the job done without featherbedding. Probably nothing but more money for the people currently robbing us will be &quot;politically acceptable&quot;.<p>If we believe that employers should be responsible for things like health coverage then it 100% should be the government&#x27;s responsibility to lead the way when it&#x27;s acting as an employer. If contractors are so much cheaper than employees then either we&#x27;re putting too high a burden on employers or we&#x27;re allowing those who hire contractors to shirk their social responsibilities (possibly both); either way while the MTA could probably save some money in the short term by using the loopholes I think that would encourage dysfunctional lawmaking in the long term. I&#x27;m not sure where nationality comes into it; it&#x27;s not like there&#x27;s some featherbedding gene that Americans carry and Spaniards don&#x27;t, and a fair share of the contractors for overbudget American public works projects have been foreign (e.g. bay bridge). Far more likely that the American bidding process or some other aspect of the political&#x2F;legal environment encourages such things to happen.