🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <CDvroA.Ku1@odin.corp.sgi.com>,
Robb Pryor <robbp@healey_haven.esd.sgi.com> wrote:
>In article <27vqpv$pod@agate.berkeley.edu>, newman@garnet.berkeley.edu (Nathan Newman) writes:
>|> Actually, over the last twenty years, manufacturing employment and
>|> government employment have both decreased substantially.
>|> 
>|> To take California as an example, back in 1972, 20% of the population was
>|> employed at some level of government employment.  By 1991, only 16% of
>|> workers in the state were employed by government.
>|> 
>|> Despite all the rhetoric about "growing government", government has been
>|> shrinking as far as employment goes.
>
>This is a good example of statistics not telling the whole story.
>What was the population of the state of California in 1972 and 1991?  If
>the population grew less than 4% in that 19 year period. Then the above
>statement might be valid.  If, however, the population has grown more than
>4%, then in terms of absolute numbers, the number of people employed has
>grown even if the percentage is less.

Of course the absolute number of government workers has grown (although
not by a lot).  There are more total children so there has to be more
teachers (although the teachers have not kept up with student growth, the
reason California has the lowest teacher-to-student ratio in the country).

There are more people so there has to be more post offices.  There are
more roads so there have to be more people working on road repair.

However, what is stunning is that the share of employment paid for
directly by the government has decreased by over 20%.

The result of this government downsizing has been massive traffic
congestion due to failure to invest in infrastructure, declining schools
due to the failure to invest in public education, and the general failure
of many government services due to the lack of personnel to execute those
services.



-- 
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         *    Nathan Newman:  newman@garnet.berkeley.edu  *
         *                 UC-Berkeley			  *