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From the Wall Street Journal comes this depressing news:
"If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government."
"It gets worse. 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. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?"
What would be interesting is to see the total number of workers in the US, and compare the number of governmetn workers to private sector. Just how many private sector employees are there paying the salary of each government worker? If we trust the previously posted number of 108 million private sector employees, that's one government employee for every 5 private sector workers. No wonder this country is freekin broke. Or to look at it another way, for every private sector employee, they are also supporting 1/5 of a public sector employee. One with wages, benefits and job security they will never see.
From the Wall Street Journal comes this depressing news...
Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
This is interesting, especially considering that in 1962, 5.3 million of government jobs were federal, which was down to 4.4 million in 2009.
So, while federal government employee payroll has shrunk by 17%, the new number claimed by WSJ at 22.5 million implies that the state and local government payroll has increased from 3.4 million to 18.1 million (a 530% increase).
Funny that the WSJ is complaining about manufacturing. The U.S. has not been a manufacturing giant for almost 50 years. Selective comparison? Nah, couldn't be...not from the WSJ.
Here are a few items the Journal should take into consideration:
That's an almost 11 to 1 ratio. Walmart is one of the largest U.S. employers (as well as the world). Is Walmart a manufacturing company? The largest non Oil-Gas company (which is technically not manufacturing) was GE (which is also not majority manufacturing as well).
The Journal (in my best Ricky Ricardo voice)...has some splainin' to do.
Another right wing employment fallacy blown up.
Its not just manufacturing. From the same article:
"Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That's less than half of the state's 1.48 million government employees." Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com
that is not eve countig the number that are dependents o governamnt which many of thsoe employees serve. That is whyt eh presnt fiancing doesw not and will have to be changed, Too few supportig to many by tax revenues from a decreasing pot.With debt as massive in the future to pay off its even adding to the burden.
Funny that your link is only State Government employees..... we also have federal and local government employees.
The article was discussing gov't on the State level. If you included Federal Employee's of which the Congress would be included (except for Postal Service which for some reason is excluded) would account for just over 2 Million people.
That makes just over 11 million State & Federal Employees. There are over 239 MILLION people employed in the United States.
Do you want to do that math, or should I for you? The fallacy is complete and utter hogwash. It's not even in the same universe as being even partially true.
"With about 2.0 million civilian employees, the Federal Government, excluding the Postal Service, is the Nation's largest employer."
I am noticing the above states "civilian employees." I suppose that 2.0 million figure isnt counting any army/navy/military employed through the government. There may also be other groups that aren't "civilian" class.
I think for this discussion the military/non-civilian employees would need to be counted also, as they are paid with tax dollars.
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