As The Nation’s Workforce Suffers, Government’s Thrives

There are basically two camps in the debate about how to stimulate an economy. On the one hand you have the capitalists who hold that economies are driven by the private sector and that it is most important for the people to have money to spend. On the other hand you have the socialists who think that government spending drives an economy and that it is more important for the government to raise taxes in order to have money to spend.

Right now, the socialists are in power and they are doing everything they can to implement their agenda no matter how disastrous it may be.

Writing for Publius Forum, Warner Todd Huston looks at what is happening in the private sector versus how the Federal government is growing:

Our stern and earnest president told us that it is time for Americans to sacrifice. Gone are the good times, he’s told us. We are in for austere days, he says. Sacrifice, people, sacrifice. That is the word of the day. Well, it’s the word for we commoners, anyway. For if you happen to be looking at government don’t expect to find any “sacrifice” going on at any level. In fact, government seems to be a boom business under the president of change and “sacrifice.”

There is no sacrifice at the Federal level. Government workers can see their pay increase from an average of $72,800 in 2008 to $75,419 in 2009. And as one who lives in the D.C. area, I can honestly tell you that for that money, we taxpayers are getting very little in return.

Warner even quotes from CBS News to show how fast the Federal government is growing:

Some of the Feds’ hiring increases have been stunning. If you look at the four-year period from 2006 to 2010, the number of Homeland Security employees has grown by 22 percent, the Justice Department has increased by 15 percent, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can claim 25 percent more employees. (These figures assume that Congress adopts Mr. Obama’s 2010 budget without significant changes.)

Now, those of us in the private sector are struggling and we pray on a daily basis that we will still have a job tomorrow. Out pay raises haven't been anything like the Federal workers are getting. Where is the government getting the money from to pay for those raises? Taxes. Tax money that if left in the private sector would do more to grow our economy than any bloated government would ever be able to do. The tax money the Feds confiscate to give out pay raises to government employees could very well have been money that employers could have used to give private sector employees bigger pay raises.

Keep in mind that the only region of the nation that benefits from higher taxes is the Washington D.C. Metro area and parts of Northern Virginia and Southern/Central Maryland. The rest of the nation suffers economic decline.

Warner's parting shot:

What we see here is that President Obama is not helping the economy at all. He is helping inflate the power of government. And, since government is only a drag on the economy, he is making matter far worse than they were. What we have here with this perpetual Obama political campaign is not a president that is a savior of the economy, but one that is the patron saint of the expansion of big government.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

As The Nation’s Workforce Suffers, Government’s Thrives
Warner Todd Huston
Publius Forum
May 19, 2009