In this excellent column Michael Barone exposes the fact that while the private sector has been hit hard by the recession, the public sector is doing fine. Employment in the public sector has hardly fallen at all and pay remains higher on average than in the private sector.
John Kenneth Galbraith used to whine about how America’s public sector was being “starved.” That was baloney back when he first said it nearly 50 years ago but it’s now apparent that the public sector is now fat and happy.
This reminds me of the silly phrase the left uses against free-market prescriptions for increasing prosperity — that it’s based on the idea that if wealthy people get wealthier, some of that wealth will “trickle down” to the poor. Allowing capitalism to function without government interference yields much more than a trickle of wealth (higher wages, lower prices, better goods, innovation) for the poor. But let’s look at what the left seems to think works — hire lots of government workers and pay them well. Their spending will then “trickle down” to help the poor.
You might be a progressive if you can’t spot the difference: Under capitalism, people are paid based on productivity whereas under big government, people are paid based on political pull. Lots of those government workers actually do things to impede productivity.
