Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Government Waste

Article on MSN about the states with the best and worst unemployment rate. Lists the number one source of employment. This is where the sickening part is.


Wyoming #1 source of employment is...Government at 23% of employment


Hawaii as well at 19.6%


Virginia at 18%


New Mexico at 23%


Maryland at 18%


Mississippi at 21%


Alaska at 26%


Red state, blue state. East coast, west coast. Northern, Southern. Doesn't matter. The long tentacles of government are everywhere. And it shows on days like yesterday. Presidents Day. One of those holidays where pretty much the only people that don't work are government employees and there is no traffic.


I think old George Washington would be rather upset if he saw the state of the union these days. I don't think this is what he had in mind. I don't think his vision was for a country dependent upon the federal government to run the people's lives on a daily basis. I doubt he had "FREE" health care in mind on those cold nights at Valley Forge. But why quibble with Washington, a new messiah is about to lead us to the promised land where the streets will be paved with gold and milk and hope/change spring eternal.


In case you can't keep up with the amount of spending Barack has proposed, you can keep up to date here.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, come on? Is that for real? You mean to tell me that 1/5th of all employment comes from government in those states? Holy shiite. I would have guessed around, maybe, 3-5 percent.

One things for sure, that number can't go anywhere but up.

Todd McDaniel said...

If you add those who rely on social security and/or welfare as their primary source of income, the percentage goes over 40% nationwide. A recent CNN report said that 94% of seniors expect social security to be their primary source of income.
At some point, the math does not work but when the government "owns" a near majority it is hard to get popular support for spending reductions. I don't want to sound like a tin foil hat guy but I think this percentage of government support has started and accelerated the decline of our society. People expect government to take care of everything for them and politicians are more than happy to buy their votes with my money.
The most frustating part is trying to figure out what to do to start fixing the situation. Unfortunately, I think the only thing that fixes it is a revolution ala Atlas Shrugged.

Anonymous said...

"I don't want to sound like a tin foil hat guy but I think this percentage of government support has started and accelerated the decline of our society."

Nothing wrong with being right. Be proud of your beliefs.

Here's my theory on why socialism will create a morass of low achievement and unhappiness in this country and cause the cohesiveness that we've known up till now to disintegrate. Whether you believe it or not, we are genetically different from our ancestors who stayed in the homelands where our genes originate from. Your ancestors took a risk and traveled thousands of miles to come to a country where they might not speak the language, know the customs or know how society functioned. In short they took large risk for a possible reward. This risk/reward gene combined with the freedoms that we have combined with the intellect of the people that were allowed in (mostly pre 1965) combined with the promotion of individual liberty and the promotion of individual capability with low tax punishment for high achievers is what has made this society the wonder of the world.

Socialism is a slap in the face to your genetics. Would you want to work hard and pay 50% in taxes so the illegal immigrant who is on welfare can have the same societal benefits as you? You won't want to work hard when so much of your money is going towards people you don't have anything in common with. It will make the achievers angry. It's unnatural for America. It works just fine in other homogeneous societies like Denmark but America has far too many high achievers and far too many low achievers. The low achievers would love socialism and this would attract more low achievers from around the globe. We can't build and maintain a first world country with so many third world people.

I've had an awakening of sorts recently on who really pulls the strings in this country. And no doubt Obama, Hillary or McCain would be the advancement of this agenda.

I'm sorry to say this but I really feel that America is in a state of decline now. Social security benefits that are going to be paid out to boomers over the next 20-30 years are going to cause major financial trauma. The third world invasion and the destruction of our once great cities (detroit, st. louis, los angeles -- all cities loaded with welfare recipients and low achievers and criminals) by our own and by others is an indicator of what this country can look like in the years ahead.

Ed said...

Anon #1, the link for some reason didn't get displayed. It was a careerbuilder/msn article on where the highest and lowest unemployment rates were by state. And then each state's top employer was listed. For those states it was the #1 employer.

Only 30 states were listed, top and bottom 15. So the other 20 could well have a few more where government is the #1 employer as well.

Anonymous said...

"The most frustating part is trying to figure out what to do to start fixing the situation."

The answer is to do what any good parent does: start doing what is best for your kid and stop acting so self interested all the time. Have you ever watched those nanny shows where the parents seem to be saddled with misbehaving, screaming brats with conduct disorders? Then the English nanny comes on and in one week, shows us that the real problem is that the parents simply didn't enforce effective discipline in the house- they were 1) soft on discipline, or 2) inconsistent with their discipline, or 3) did not provide a good mix of discipline/incentives. Instead, the parents were stuck in the "I'm just a person who whelped some other humans, and whyyyyyy can't I control them???" attitude.

It's the same thing with welfare dependency, and other kinds of dependence on the govt. Politicians often, in their OWN self-interest, propose programs as "band-aids." When the goal of the programs are not achieved or worsen over time, they throw more money at the program, or propose even stupider programs. The real solution is some tough love and teaching the public to be more self-reliant. Government needs to be smaller and move out of people's lives, markets need to control more, and the public at large needs to do for itself.

The answer is really, really simple. Stop intervening. Phase it out.

Anonymous said...

Ed, I should have clarified. By third world I meant Mexico and Africa. From what I've seen, most of the Indians, Asians and Arabs have shown a strong desire to be part of the America. I see a lot of those people working hard in one way or another: owning a business in the case of the Arabs and Indians. I see a lot of the Indians with a high degree of technical skill in one way or another and same goes for the Asians. The Mexicans and Africans that I see moving here don't bring much to the table in terms of skill and seem to bring a lot of other problems with them like crime.

And the other Anon is right about punishment and the tough love part. Our government is slowly getting around to having some cojones when it comes to deporting illegals and enforcing immigration laws. But you can bet your bottom dollar that it will all go out the window next year.

Anonymous said...

Anon 12:18, I take issue with your characterization of Mexican and African immigrants.

"The Mexicans and Africans that I see moving here don't bring much to the table in terms of skill and seem to bring a lot of other problems with them like crime."

The Mexicans in the United States, first of all, make up a predominant segment of skilled labor in the workforce, in addition to unskilled labor.

To say that the African immigrants are unskilled and are criminals is to lump them in with American blacks, which is patently unfair. In fact, immigrants from Africa are usually much more peaceful and law abiding than blacks who grew up in the United States and commit less crime, while becoming the victims of black on black crime. Also, their lack of skill at this point does not mean that they don't "have a strong desire to be a part of America."

Try reading this book: "What is the What" by David Eggers. It's easy reading.