Teton Transplant

Mayor McGinn’s difficulty in cutting senior staff reminds us why growth in government jobs should be resisted in the first place.   We are dismayed to see the rapid increase in federal employees under the Obama administration.  From a WSJ editorial on the subject:

“Civilian full-time equivalent employees,” as they’re known in budgetese, held relatively constant before Mr. Obama came to Washington, but they surged to 1.978 million in 2009 from 1.875 million in 2008. In fiscal 2010, the Administration expects to add another 170,000 workers—a 14.5% leap in two years.

I guess this explains why United Van Lines moved nearly seven families to Washington D.C. last year for every three it moved out.  The average federal worker, according to USA Today,  makes something like $70,000, while the wage of the average private worker — the ones who support federal workers — is about $40,000.  This trend is marching us along the path to poverty.

Update: WSJ cites U.S. Department of Labor statistics that show that unionized public sector workers now outnumber unionized private sector employees. We’re becoming Europe.

According to this Wall Street Journal editorial, United Van Lines moved nearly seven families to Washington D.C. last year for every three it moved out.  Otherwise, migration was generally out of blue/high-tax states to red/low tax states.  This is encouraging, but would be much more encouraging if federal taxes didn’t account for the largest share of the tax burden.

Great post here on Hauser’s law, the observation that tax revenues approximate 20% of GDP regardless of the tax rate.

Except for a few short years in the 1990s, our national government has spent more every year than it has taken in in taxes.   Every year.  Over and over.   This is not temporary deficit spending based on sound policy objectives to get over short-term recessions in the economy.   Is is an endemic, destructive way of governing by those who have the responsibility to do better.

Lawrence Kadish correctly points out in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that, in 2009, about 40% of income taxes will go towards interest payments alone:

As of Sept. 30, 2009, the national debt was almost $12 trillion and interest on that debt was $383 billion for the year, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. The Congressional Budget Office on Oct. 7 estimated the 2009 budget deficit to be almost $1.4 trillion (about 10% of GDP). In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated total government revenues at about $2 trillion. The revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes. This means the cost of interest on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes.

We must reverse course before, as Kadish puts it, the economy plunges into “a level of chaos that would make the  Lehman bankruptcy look like a non-event.”