On Friday, the Wall Street Journal posted the following statistic:
"Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government."
This becomes an even more interesting statistic when you add in the fact that government workers are twice as likely to be unionized than private sector workers. What this means is that a large part of the money flowing into unions is from the taxpayers that pay the salaries of government workers.
The article points out:
"...Don't expect a reversal of this trend anytime soon. Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence. When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles."
If we intend to grow the American economy we need to go back to being a nation of people who work for or start private companies, not a nation of civil servants.
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