Category Archive 'Size of Government'

03 Apr 2011

America Has Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers

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Stephen Moore, in the Wall Street Journal, quotes figures demonstrating just how much government in this country has grown in recent decades while at the same time industrial productivity has declined.

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. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers.

Read the whole thing.


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