At Freedom’s Phoenix, Craig Cantoni comments on President Obama’s speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He brings up two very illuminating points:
* Since 1970, manufacturing output in the USA has increased 120 percent, although the number of people employed in manufacturing fell from 19 million to 12 million.
* “If the growth in government employment at the state and local levels had kept pace with population growth since 1946 instead of exceeding it, there would be 12.4 million fewer government workers today.”
If “government efficiency” existed, one would have expected fewer government employees today than in 1946. Instead, we have 12.4 million MORE even when accounting for population growth.
Over the past 40 years, the manufacturing sector has more than doubled production while cutting one-third of the workforce, whereas government adds more and more personnel without actually making government services more effective. Imagine, then, how much money government can save, and how much more the private sector can produce, if those 12.4 million excess government workers were in the private workforce.
As it is, however . . .
* Businesses are taxed to pay the salaries and pensions of these government workers
* Leaving them with less money to expand, hire, and innovate
As Cantoni says, “Capital that is taken by the government for excess public-sector employment is capital that can’t be invested in new businesses and plants.”
Big government, even at the state and local level is holding the country back.