Wall Street Journal reports today:
More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees.
The hard facts are few if any of these people do work that would be done outside of government, and certainly not in the way it is done inside of government, or at the cost of government. USA is the #1 in prison population in the world, 5 times China, 12 times Germany. Most of these people are nonviolent drug offenders, but prison is a huge growth industry in USA, so we have it. And gitmo. And Abu Ghraib.
A hard problem is as the economy crumbles under this dead weight, this majority will vote for government solutions, in their self-interest, and the government solution, in history, is war.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Or 44 year olds, for that matter. But the problem is more that these two generations have not the slightest idea of how to start a company. These dot.coms and facebook are false economy, or at best, entertainment sector. Entertainment is something that come after work.
Yes, the farmer today is 3 times more productive than a farmer in 1960, that is to say in weight of corn, but not in nutritional value. And efficiency is supposed to not only lower cost, but release people into doing things that give us ever wider division of labor. Another government building inspector is not division of labor. A manufacturer with a new roofing material is a division of labor.
I see the powers that be do not want to lose it all, so they are turning on the government unions. They will succeed, because what was promised to govt workers simply is not there to fulfill.
The way out of this mess is less government, less prisons, more freedom, and division of labor.
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