When More is Less – Government Jobs

In the summer of 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was president the Federal government had 2,721,000 employees. In September of this year, before the government shutdown, the government had 2,723,000 employees [Note during the G.W. Bush administration we had 2,724,000 federal employees]. Thus we have 2,000 more federal government employees right? Well, not really.

In order to gain a proper perspective of the relative number of federal employees you need to look at percentages. In 1966 4.3% of our citizens were federal employees. Today we have 2% of the population that are government employees. Or, in other words we are at a 47-year low in terms of government employees in relation to the population.

Certain folk love to complain about the corruption we find in government, industry, banking, and the lot. They expound upon the abuses of those on welfare. My question is what do we expect? If you have less folk to oversee these programs, even with deregulation, you get less oversight and more opportunities for corruption. As for welfare fraud, it may make for good rhetoric but the numbers are low, even though some agencies try to make them appear more than they are. Best guesses there are 2% of folk on welfare who commit fraud.

We also are a nation that loves to put people in jail, which is very expensive. This is way out of proportion to other countries. But how many of the big corporation CEO’s, Bankers and the lot have we seen put in jail? Charges are not even brought against them when they defraud those who trusted them. And then some are trying to get tax deduction for fines they agree to pay without admitting any fault.

The country’s infrastructure is falling apart and we have high rates of unemployment and too many low paying jobs. It seems to me we should high a lot more government workers, which would benefit the entire economy. Didn’t we learn anything from the New Deal?

The cartoon reflect popular scapegoating, so let the whiners go to work for the government, and if you think government workers get undue raises, talk to a teacher.