More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.
The number one in employer in Silicon Valley, the home of high technology for the world, is not Intel or Google or Apple, it's the federal government. And the California state government is the number two. In total, California has 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing.
Half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments goes for pay and benefits of state and local employees, not services or roads or anything else we are told are essential aspects of government.
It's a good time to be in government. You get a union and a guaranteed pension and government agencies have paid top dollar recently, claiming otherwise they can't get the best people from the private sector.
Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.
Here's hoping the government nationalizes Science 2.0. With even a small slice of the $450 million NPR gets in taxpayer money we could be the best science site on the planet.
