fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/milestone -> fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/milestone/
Can you see the signs of spring in the coming of winter? Esp note graph #2, "US exports of goods and services as a % of GDP." Not so, as exports have grown as a fraction of the US economy for 30 years. America must earn its way in the world, and by some means other than as a largely unwanted global policeman. Afterword If you are new to this site, please glance at the archives below.
Comment Policy, please make them brief (250 words max), civil, and relevant to this post. Or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling). For more information from the FM site To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp relevance to this topic: For more information from the FM site To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar.
How about a similar graph, say over the last hundred or more years, showing total private sector employment and total public sector employment? There is little economic data before the 1930's, and increases slowly in the following decades. Employment data was first collected in the 1940's (unemployment during the Great Depression can ony be estimated). Over long periods of time economic data becomes incomparable. See the long discussion about Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice": how rich was Mr Darcy in our terms?
Government's appetite for money sucks the life out of the rest of the population. As the productive citizens vote with their feet and move to North Carolina the state of New Jersey has become home to two symbiotic groups of people -- government workers and the rich liberal dilettantes who buy elections by lavishing taxpayer financed goodies on the public employee unions in exchange for votes.
Chris, I suspect the situation is a little more complicated, and a little less flattering to the productive citizens. Notice how the productive citizens move to states receiving more federal money relative than federal taxes paid, and away from the state that receives the *least* amount of federal money, relative to federal taxes paid.
But your entrepeneurs aren't quite the rugged individualists they're pretending to be. They're moving to states that are getting money pumped into them by the government and out of states that are in effect donating that money. Probably the number of state employees in Jersey is still absurd. But a slightly more even-handed look at what's going on in our economy would probably help.
It leads to economic stagnation, at best, and slower or faster reductions in real after-tax disposable income in the more expected cases. The gov't sector is the force-based sector, while the private sector is the peace-based sector. Yes, democracy means there is some agreement on who the representatives are that decide against whom how much force is used, but gov't collects money by force. Even with better macro-economic fiscal & monetary policies, more gov't employees means slower growth.
There are any number of other factors as to why the productive class is moving from the Garden Gtate to greener pastures. Spin it any way you want but the simple fact that more people work for the government than in the business of making things is a sad, sad, statistic...
Note the only significant reduction in the size of government, in this recent history, occurred during the Reagan presidency, 1980-1988. Total government employment returns to about the level where he started by the time he turns over the reins to Bush I, even though US population grows about 9% over the same period. Even though Clinton presided over a significant reduction in defense and intelligence staff during his terms, it only shows up as a temporary slowdown in the growth rate. Similar temporary slowdown with Bush II during the aftermath of the dotcom bust. Why does our government employment need to grow nearly twice as fast as our population?
DBake, just to be clear, this chart reflects the national problem. manufacturing numbers for NJ are not indicated, so I'm not sure what your point is. BTW, NJ has been rated as the least business-friendly state in the US, and business owners are voting with their feet. Yes, the number of NJ state (and county and local) government employees IS absurd.
A few things to think about - If manufacturing and construction (which the chart shows - not just manufacturing) are sectors that have seen productivity growth then you could expect payrolls there to flatline even as they produce more and generate more tax revenues. So in that sense, what we are seeing should not be (in itself) seen catastrophically But in light of taxpayers should demand and expect productivity growth out of government employees. After all, just about everything gone in government is manipulation of information. We have had a revolution in information technology so it is reasonable to ask "why can't government employees be expected to do more using these tools, just as their taxpayers have."
Notice that that red line trajectory is pretty straight, regardless which political party is in power. The blue line moved up and down with the business cycle, at least for a while. This is the most depressing chart I've seen in a long time. Something fundamental seems to have just happened, but nobody except contrary investor' and this site seems to have noticed.
does it refer to people doing manufacturing *work* or to people in manufacturing *businesses*? For example, does it count an engineer designing turbines for GE, or only the people actually building them?
Mix that in with the amount to which the Fed devalued the dollar in the last year, and the "bail-out" debt that you've committed them to ... I really want to be able to explain to my children just how it was that they were born into slavery.
The notion that manufacturing is QED "productive" needs to be challenged. Manufacturing, after all, means dehumanizing work, pollution, and related problems: Blake's "Dark Satanic Mills and Orwell's Wigan Pier. Much of the criticism of 2GW relates to the imposition of Taylorism, scientific management, on the military. Taylorism is the sort of management adapted to manufacturing. Efforts to effect 4GW reflect efforts to overcome Taylorism, as applied to the military. So the notion that manufacturing is "productive" raises questions.
We are long away from that resounding quote: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." Someone should tell them that "1984'' was not a blueprint for governance, nor "Atlas Shrugged" the gameplan to our future. Another sad realization is that, when you add them all together, the taxes and fees we are assessed by all of the governments we struggle under take over 50% of our earnings.
As the percentage of people who have a direct interest in expanding government influence grows, the tendency of government to expand its influence will grow as well. Somewhere in the vicinity of the point of collapse, cooler heads will prevail and government will be scaled back. After some period of time (10-20 years probably) people will start to forget the lessons and the influence of government will grow again. People might be careless and their attention and memory may have short time frames, but they are not insane or suicidal. We will periodically approach the abyss, but I don't believe we will venture in.
Manufacturing will never employ relatively large numbers of people again, unless we have a dark age and forget about robots and such things. The country in the world with the biggest drop in manufacturing in the past 20 years is China, with 20M fewer people in manufacturing now versus the late 1980s. The old factories with giant Mao statues in China's "Rustbelt" cities were closed, and new modern plants with enough modern manufacturing technology and management practices replaced them - but with far fewer workers.
I was pointing out that a lot of the so-called productive people are themselves benefitting from government largesse, whether through subsidies, contracts, or catering to patrons who are themselves government employees. It's hard to get exact statistics on that, but the fact that busin...
|
http://csua.com/feed/