Government Jobs are the Problem, Not the answer

If I were a government employee, I’d probably support the original $Trillion Stimulus and the $50 Billion additional that the president is now asking for. But I’m not a government employee.


The president claims that the Stimulus saved jobs and is helping the economy to recover; but this additional $50 Billion is required to keep it going. Like so much that comes out of his mouth, this too is a lie. It is doing no more than prolonging the inevitable, but in the process it also makes eventual recovery much more difficult.

Anyone who can read can see where the Stimulus money went, and it wasn’t into the private economy. Basically it was used to sustain government jobs in the face of evaporating tax bases. People without income don’t pay income taxes; and people without property don’t pay property taxes. Government jobs are 100% funded by taxes.

Therefore, no taxes, no money to pay government wages: thus the special “Stimulus” funding.

The problem with this is that funding government jobs does nothing significant to stimulate the private sector. To make matters worse, since there is nothing in the Treasury to pay for the Stimulus, it is being funded by debt. For the government to repay debt, more taxes are required. Since the existing tax base is rapidly evaporating, new taxes will be required. More taxes means less resources available for sustaining existing jobs or creating new private sector jobs.

To make matters even worse, government employees are paid much more, on average, than private sector employees; and are given much more liberal and much more costly benefits than anyone in the private sector enjoys. The average federal government employee is paid approximately $20,000 per year more than the average college-graduate private sector employee. Add to that an average benefit package worth another $20,000 a year and the gap grows to $40,000 a year: nearly double the pay and benefits of the average private sector employee.

Why the great difference? Private sector pay and benefits are determined by employers who have to balance outgo to income. They also have to be competitive in every transaction. Customers determine the selling price of products and services, so employers can only control costs to be less than the selling price, by a sufficient margin to enable the enterprise to survive.

Costs not only include rent and salaries, but also the cost to comply with energy mandates (Cap and Trade); business practice mandates (Sarbanes Oxley, et al.) environmental mandates (EPA); product safety mandates; occupational safety mandates (OSHA); work-rule mandates (Unions); financial practice mandates; local, state, and federal taxes. The reason that so many jobs leave the US is that they are moving to locales where the mandates are less demanding and therefore less costly.

Government jobs have no such compelling motivators to reduce costs. Employment levels, pay rates, pay increases are all determined by bureaucrats or politicians who have absolutely no direct responsibility to assure efficiency, efficacy, or necessity in operations, employment; or to meet payroll.

For 40 years the private sector has been forced by global competition to streamline; reduce waste; become more productive; to find more efficient, less costly methods; to demand more from every available employee. During that time bureaucrats and politicians have been expanding government at an alarming rate, unfettered by competition or common sense. Virtually no government bureaucracy is ever eliminated, even if the demand that created it no longer exists; or even if it proves totally incapable of meeting it’s charter. We now pay $24 Billion a year (and rising yearly) for a Dept. of Energy created 32 years ago when our dependence on foreign oil was 24%, to reduce our dependence which today is more than double that rate. This would never be permitted in the private economy governed by competition.

Every dollar the federal government spends is taken from the private economy. Every dollar taken out of the private economy reduces the ability of the private economy to survive; create new jobs, and prosper.

Our Founding Fathers were brilliant in their denial to the federal government of any authority to directly tax citizens. In the first place, they understood that taxation is simply a form of slavery that has been used since before recorded history to impoverish the populace. Second, they understood that such funding is used to further subjugate the people either directly through burdensome bureaucracy; or through costly wars and wasteful public works programs to expand the wealth of the privileged class or expand the un-Constitutional power of government.

We are governed by a corrupt government so confident in the power of special interests that they willfully ignore the constituents that selected them to represent them in government: politicians so dependent on the funding provided by corporate campaign contributions that they ignore the will of the people. Every government decision is subject to prior sale.

Our problems are solvable. Our Founders left us with a remarkable road map responsible for creating an environment wherein the most exceptional government in the history of man was created: The Constitution of the United States (COTUS).

If we restore limited government as clearly defined by the COTUS; if we restore the prohibition of direct taxation; if we restore the Senate as representative of the States rights; if we eliminate or correct the corruptive influence of political parties; if we honor the inalienable rights granted each citizen by his Creator we will have a federal government limited to doing only those functions delineated in the COTUS and we will restore a self-supporting and eminently self-reliant population with inherent motivation to serve others as they pursue their own dreams. That is what made America exceptional; and it can do it again. Restore the COTUS to restore America.