Friday, April 1, 2011

"Who Works for Whom?" Part II

From Stephen Moore, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

"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."


What happens when government, which is supposed to serve the people, and arbitrate between competing societal interests, becomes itself an interest group--and further, an interest group that can acquire the citizens' goods by force of law?
Many countries have found out, and now we are, too.

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