I've been sitting over here in China watching with detached, mild frustration at the idiotic piling-on of teachers and other public sector workers by people who just 18 months ago were bemoaning the possibility of canceling the bonuses of bankers and investment house executives who had taken TARP money. (BTW: That program just turned a profit.)
With a busy work schedule, a Russian girlfriend and some special personal projects that I've been working on I haven’t had too much time or inclination to get too fired up about what's been happening back in my homeland.
Also, I have lots of TV and movies to catch up on.
But today something changed. My friend Sandra posted a column from the Wall Street Journal by Stephen Moore in her Facebook feed and it really pushed my buttons. I'm not sure why, but it turned out to be the proverbial straw.
Something like this only contributes to the demonization of public sector workers by implying that they're well-off or that what they do is inherently wasteful and it really bothers me that people actually read this and think to themselves, "Right on!"
I started picking it apart point by point in my head and couldn’t stop my fingers from flying over the keyboard. Strap in for a wonky ride, 'cause here I go…
"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. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers."
1) The reduction in manufacturing jobs in the US has nothing to do with the "growth" of government. Comparing the number of workers in government to the number of manufacturing jobs is a red herring. One has nothing to do with the other and changes in their numbers over time explain nothing. It even has little to do with the switch from "giving" to "taking" as the entire economy has shifted to being services- and information-based. That's what happens when you get really prosperous.
So right away the entire premise of the column is flawed. But wait. There's more.
2) US population in 1960: 179 million. In 2010: 309 million. That's a 42.1% increase. Federal government workers in 1960: 1.81 million. 2009: 2.10 million. That's a paltry 13.9% jump. Clearly, the government has been adding services since 1960. Medicare. Medicaid. The Great Society programs. Yet it is growing at a VASTLY slower rate than the population as a whole. Can it possibly be that government is actually efficient? When this writer asks later, "Where are the productivity gains in government?" I would simply point to those statistics.
Even that doesn’t tell the whole story. When you discount Homeland Security (a division of government that didn’t exist before 2002 and few would argue that you can get rid of) and added Veterans Affairs workers (needed to handle the massive influx from two wars), the total number of federal workers goes down to 1.89 million in 2009 which is actually just a 4.3% increase from 1960.
In essence, almost all of the growth of the federal workforce over the past 50 years can be traced to 9/11 and the US's involvement in 2 wars. Which, I might add, were championed by the Right and certainly benefit international contracting companies and arms suppliers (not to mention mercenaries) more than they do the US economy.
"Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers."
3) This should be a call to arms about the ravages of big agribusiness and not of the dangers of increased government payrolls. Any small/family farmer will tell you that massive supply chain inequities and disparate populations that cluster in far-flung cities are the reason that small farms can’t hang on. That's why there are fewer farmers. But nobody who writes for the WSJ will want to talk about that. They'll just throw out those numbers to pull at your middle-America-loving heartstrings.
"Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence."
4) I don't know which survey he's talking about because he doesn't cite any, but college students haven’t traditionally looked at government work as being very promising. (That trend has been changing of late, however; many reasons are given, including a desire to serve and "give back".) It's a lot more complicated than he makes it seem.
Though he is not completely wrong. As recently as 2005, government wasn’t seen as such a great place to end up, with 57% saying that the pay and benefits weren't good enough. I wonder what happened between then and now to make a steady paycheck with health and pension plans look so good? Either some huge salary increases were enacted, or maybe it's the fact that companies simply don’t offer pensions anymore and health care is nigh-unaffordable. That seems to be more of an indictment of corporate greed during a time of record profits than of government spending.
And there was also the whole recession thing.
"Mass transit spends more and more every year and yet a much smaller share of Americans use trains and buses today than in past decades."
This is REALLY bothersome. In cities with subways ridership is at or near record levels! But, as everybody knows, the population has been growing the most in areas of the country where there are few or no mass transit options so OF COURSE "a much smaller share" of the population is using rail. What he doesn’t mention is that in places like Phoenix or Denver or Minneapolis where new light rail projects have opened in recent years (only after overcoming, in some cases, 15 years of opposition), the useage numbers are way above forecast. Build it and they will come. And economic development is not far behind. Is that wasteful?
I'm stopping there. If you read the full piece then you now that I've skipped the two other big points: That schools are crappy even though spending has gone through the roof, and that cities should explore contracting out their public safety services (police, fire & EMS) to save money. Each of those points are so inflammatory that they need posts of their own. I could go on for 20 pages about the state of American schools alone. Do they suck? On the whole, yes. Is it the "fault" of them being run by government? Of course not.
But that's another angry blog post for another slow work night.
I wish that my friends would stop reading this simplistic garbage.
You're focusing on the federal government, but that's not what the article is about. A few points based on numbers from the US Census Bureau:
ReplyDelete1. The U.S. Census Bureau reports different numbers than you, but the federal employee numbers basically support your thesis: 12% increase in federal workers from 1960-2006.
2. The problem is, the article referenced doesn't say "federal government", it says "government". When you add state and local government, you're looking at very different numbers: 8.81 million in 1960; 19.7 million in 2006. That's a 224% increase in government workers vs. 42% population growth.
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=228
3. You could even say...well...maybe the number of employees isn't the important part. It's really about money, right? In 1960, government spending accounted for 28% of GDP. In 2010, we're looking at 40%. That is a 42% increase, almost the same as the population increase, coincidentally, but that number shouldn't ever have to go up, because it's adjusted per capita.
I totally agree with a lot of your qualitative points (government workers not coming at the expense of manufacturing, schools have all sorts of issues, the USA needs a 1st class transit system), but I think the real numbers are alarming.
Government shouldn't be on the road to being 50% of the economy, or it will stifle innovation, and eventually go bankrupt.
This is what the article referenced: "2. The problem is, the article referenced doesn't say "federal government", it says "government". When you add state and local government, you're looking at very different numbers: 8.81 million in 1960; 19.7 million in 2006. That's a 224% increase in government workers vs. 42% population growth." Quoting gravitycollapse.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=228
Some good points Mike but less emotion. You are a good thinker/analyzer. I love your spirit and your intellect. You are engaging!
@Gravity 1) You're right about the numbers. I had the 2009 numbers in my head and the source material at my fingertips. I knew, though, that the 2010 figures wouldn't be drastically different. You'd still need to pull out the Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs numbers from that total to get a fair comparison with 1960. And that number is still going to be very, very small, dashing the argument about government being inefficient as a default.
ReplyDelete2) Thank you for pointing out the fact that I only referenced the federal numbers and not the state numbers. This is yet another flaw in the column's reasoning but I didn't get into it at the time. It is pretty much impossible to derive a national trend by combining state and federal numbers. Using California's massive increase in government employees says nothing about Nevada's place at the bottom of the list of states with government payroll as a percentage of population. Each state's situation is unique. It would be like saying that Michigan's high crime numbers are somehow related to Massachusetts' low crime statistics. A national snapshot can be a headline grabber and vaguely informative, but you certainly can't ascribe any themes or trends to it.
What's more, I am not sure of Mr. Moore was counting just state workers or if he was counting local government employees, too. THAT'S actually where the biggest numbers are. Check out this list from the Nevada Policy Research Institute (http://www.npri.org/blog/mythbusting-economies-of-scale). They show a partial ranking of states based on the percentage of population that is on the state government payroll. The "best" states all have numbers around 1%. But when you add in local and municipal workers, those rates skyrocket. Only 1 state comes in at under 1% while the next nine are the only ones that are even under 3%.
So what does this say? It says that at the local level, where the people have the most direct control over spending (most localities have elected school boards and some sort of voter-controlled property tax system) is where the bulk of the government payroll exists.
So while this column talks about national trends and how we have become a nation of "takers" it completely ignores the fact that the national and state governments are actually doing FAR MORE than they ever have with fewer employees as measured as a percentage of the population (or in relation to the growth of population).
3) I am in total agreement with you on the money aspect. Government spending as a percentage of GDP is a massively dangerous statistic. But, as you must know, the biggest increases in government spending over the last 40 years have been in the areas of healthcare and defense spending. Nothing else even comes close. So, again, while social and public safety programs are taking the brunt of conservatives' vitriol right now (and you can't claim that this column was anything other than a vaguely-veiled attack on pubic sector employees) the real impact on those GDP numbers is the DOUBLING of the defense budget in the last 10 years alone (and we can talk about Regan out-spending the Soviets another day) and the uncontrolled skyrocketing costs of healthcare.
Back to the point of the column: Are either of these circumstances born out of government's supposed inefficiency? The short answer is, "No." The long answer is something like, "No, and it's idiotic to try and even make that point and the people who fall for it are gullible and/or have some aversion towards tackling the real problem and would rather just have a convenient group of people to blame instead."
To sum up: For me, this whole line of thinking intellectually lazy. Tragically so. It's frustrating to watch the hypocrisy on both sides and to see people get all riled up and turn out in massive numbers to protest over things that, ultimately, don't matter or have very little to do with the causes for the fiscal problems that we are facing.