Posted on 09/22/2007 4:52:03 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at The Atlantic, came upon a chart at TheAgitator.com last week showing two trend lines: the ranks of private workers decreasing and the number of government beneficiaries increasing in the United States since 1950, with beneficiaries now surpassing workers. The only comment from Mr. Sullivan on his blog at TheAtlantic.com was his headline: The Road to Serfdom.
Radley Balko, the libertarian commentator and journalist who writes TheAgitator.com, credits the chart to A. Gary Shillings financial newsletter Insight. It was also posted on the Web site of Reason magazine, where Mr. Balko is an editor (reason.com).
According to Katherine Mangu-Ward, an editor at Reason, Mr. Shilling, an economist and columnist for Forbes, totaled up government workers, private-sector workers who owe their jobs to government and recipients of government entitlements like Social Security and food stamps. For good measure, he threw in dependents of these beneficiaries. Shilling found that for each person earning his pay in the private sector and paying taxes, Ms. Mangu-Ward wrote, there is at least one more person relying on a check from the government.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well, well, well. How convenient!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1900782/posts
I should have read down a couple of articles before I posted.
What makes you think the employer would give you the payroll tax they pay, rather than putting it in their pocket. After all, you will work for what you are getting now. How would you get them to give you a raise if their taxes go down?
So you’re strongly in favor of the current size of the government, then?
Or did I misread your post?
Can it make sense that there are more people working for the Dept. of Agriculture than there are farmers in the US?
I don’t know the full scope of the Dept. of Agriculture’s responsibilities, but I do know they extend beyond looking after farmers. Fer instance, in the last 36 months, the Dept. of Agriculture has funneled nerly a billion dollars into providing high speed internet access to rural areas.
My opinion on the gubmint workers versus private sector is different than most. I believe there’s a place for gubmint work, but that folks have to pay attention to how the money is spent. That “tension” between the public and gubmint insures accountability.
Perhaps it is time for an anti-peonage amendment to go along with the indentured servitude amendment to the constitution.
In fact, the new bankruptcy reform act has a pending issue of peonage. (iow forcing those who want to simply liquidate all their non-exempt assets for their debts in ch 13 plans.)
I believe the size of gubmint has to expand and shrink as needed and dictated by circumstances. There’s no perfect recipe, but every expenditure as well as every cut must be justified.
“What makes you think the employer would give you the payroll tax they pay, rather than putting it in their pocket. After all, you will work for what you are getting now. How would you get them to give you a raise if their taxes go down?”
For the same reason all business don’t pay all workers minimum wage. It’s a free market. If you don’t pay competitive wages you lose your employees.
Here’s your justification...Taxes are too high, government spends too much, and is too big!
Therefore, cuts are in order.
Any questions?
Uh, yeah. Where do you propose making the cuts?
I’m pretty sure there was a time when politicians and federal employees could not vote in elections. There was a time when Washington DC has NO ELECTORAL VOTES and therefore no citizens of DC voted in federal elections or had any representation in the government.
I think it’s time to get back to this concept.
So are you stating that it is better that folks be on government pensions? Somewhere on FR there was an article about how insolvent MANY government pensions are.
But no worry. If a government pension is in trouble all they need to do is contact the msm, get together a bunch of senior criers and it will all be made right.
Those pensions are connected directly to the tax-payer teat and are NEVER in trouble.
Bookmark
That's 20 million.
And how is that the job of government? Anything the government does costs 2 or 3 times as much (or more) than the private sector
Actually, the billion was given to private sector firms to offer the service. The dept. of agriculture saw it as akin to rural electrification.
I would propose abolishing the federal department of education entirely.
No more college pell grants. Drastic cuts in student loans.
No more disaster relief. That’s what insurance companies are for.
Medicaid gets axed completely.
Crack down on SS benefits awarded for fraudulent disabilities. SS should be for senior citizens only.
All the assistance programs to young single mothers should be axed immediately.
All federal money to planned parenthood should be axed immediately.
All federal money to after school programs should be axed immediately.
I could go on. But the most important thing would be to freeze all budgets.
The market sets the value of my worth to the employer. Let's say that's 108x. The employer sees that to pay me at 108x he's got to offer 100x, and wouldn't hire me if I wasn't worth that. So absent government coercion if I'm worth 108x before, pay that or someone else will.
I could go on. But the most important thing would be to freeze all budgets.
p.s.
a lot of the programs you mentioned will be picked up by the states. And guess what? State taxes go up.
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