Kinda Scary
Via Insty, comes the revelation that We now have more poeple employed in government than manufacturing.
Via Insty, comes the revelation that We now have more poeple employed in government than manufacturing.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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January 20th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I guess I’m still old fashion and think manufacturing is very important to an economy. It seems you need to produce something tangible. Government produces very little except red tape.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Government produces nothing.
Could we possibly keep that straight?
January 20th, 2009 at 11:38 am
“Government produces nothing.”
I have to disagree; the government is the major manufacturer of red tape.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
If we could just export, at a nice profit, about 98% of the government output I’d be okay with it.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
“I have to disagree; the government is the major manufacturer of red tape.”
It’s an adorable little bathroom-scaled joke, but look: we live in a time when government is very busy mutilating the rational faculties of whole generations, and they could use all the help they can get. It would help if we could keep this clear.
Government produces nothing. That’s the fact and it’s astronomically more important than the joke.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Billy, I will nit-pick just a little here, government does provides some security from foreign invasion and provides for a legal (not a justice) system which I do think has some value, patents and trademark protection have are valuable “products” as well.
I do agree that a huge portion of our existing government could be eliminated and we would be better for it. But to say it produces nothing is overstating things–just a little.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
It also produced roads and a couple of moon rockets too, last time I checked.
Now whether the money that the .gov took to build those roads could have been *more* productive had they been left in the hands of those that the money belonged to is a different matter.
If the money the gov’t took to produce those moon rockets would have instead produced rockets capable of going to Mars, there still would be *gross* production even though *net* production would have decreased.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
“Billy, I will nit-pick just a little here, government does provides…”
I didn’t say “provide”. I said “produce”. There is a categorical difference. A burglar could “provide” what he stole from someone else, and this is exactly what government does.
Government produces nothing. Now, there can be any number of rationalizations about all the rest of it, but that is a fact, and it is crucially important to keep it straight.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 am
Here’s a simple lesson. Production increases wealth. That is the only thing that does. Service economies don’t increase wealth, government doesn’t produce anything.
Whatever government causes to be produced when they purchase a good or a service is wealth neutral. That’s right, no change in the nation’s wealth, just a redistribution of the already existing wealth. What they give to one, they have taken from another, or a host of others.
Wealth is produced and increased when a good is manufactured, fabricated or grown that exceeds in value the sum of its parts. Nothing else creates
wealth. A nation without a strong manufacturing base, strong agricultural base, and the ability to combine components of lesser value into components of greater value than the cost of its parts cannot sustain a static population. It has no chance to provide the conditions necessary for economic security for a growing population.