States, cities, counties and school districts hired 828,000 workers in the first four months of the year, up 20% from a year earlier, and the most since 2008, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the government's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.
Forget about where that money comes from, forget about the lack of contribution from those jobs to the economy, forget about creating wealth. This is how they think, and if it takes a lot more taxes to pay for them, all the better.
Remember all the stories from a month or so ago about how job cuts from state and local government payrolls were killing America's past, present, and future? Those apocalyptic visions of unemployed teachers roaming the streets like the Baseball Furies from The Warriors? For god's sake, didn't we understand that a 1.3 percent cut in state jobs and a 2.8 percent cut local in government jobs since 2008 was the very reason that unemployment was over 8 percent rather than over 7 percent (never mind that either figure was well above what the Obama administration had promised when it passed its $800 billion stimulus)?A little snark from Reason's Nick Gillespie, who goes on to point out that State and Local governments are hiring faster than in the last four years.
This frustrates me. People either don't understand or don't want to understand the harmful effects of taking money out of the private sector to create government jobs. And it's not like that was idle money in the government's coffers; it's either tax money or debt--which is a delayed tax. No wonder the private sector is worse off.
Yes, there is a place for government workers and it's good that we have some, but that doesn't mean we should keep hiring more, especially now.
