patrick.net

Are you?

OK, let me answer the question.

No, our government is not going a good job with the resources we are giving it.

Allegedly total government spending this year will be well over $6T. I think this is double-counting Federal transfer payments to the states but let's go with $6T.

The way I see it, every dollar spent by government ends up in someone's pocket eventually, either as wages to labor, profit to entrepreneurial effort (including graft and embezzlement of course), or capital interest to savings (government bills & bonds).

Naively, at $100K per job that would fund SIXTY MILLION public sector jobs, either directly on government payroll or indirectly like the military-industrial complex.

But it doesn't end there. People who get government checks spend this money into their local economies, supporting another round or three of jobs until the money leaves the local economy.

The velocity of money is a curious thing but I would think that should result in another SIXTY MILLION jobs at say $30K to $60K.

So in this notional world we've got sixty million people allegedly creating or preserving wealth on the government dime, and another sixty million people dependent on this government money coming into their economy.

In reality, state and local government employment is 16.7M and Federal employment is 2.8M for around 20M government jobs.

Federal payroll was $180B/yr and state and local government payroll is $800B/yr, so $1T per year is going to government workers, at an average of $50K per job.

That leaves $5T of government spending to account for.
About a trillion flows through social security and medicare, so there's $4T of spending.

Much of this $4T is leases on land and buildings and procurement that is direct transfer to the private sector. That's a lot of money!

There's no doubt an immense amount of waste in this $4T the government doles out into the private sector. US GDP is supposed to be $14T, so that's almost 33% of our GDP being spent by government at all levels.

I'd like to scale back spending, but most of the fat is in the defense budget with its $700B+ a year outgo. Cutting jobs there will really hurt many communities dependent on the government teat.

More importantly, am I awesome? At least that's quantifiable. (hint, the answer is "hell yes.")

elliemae says

More importantly, am I awesome? At least that’s quantifiable. (hint, the answer is “hell yes.”)

Self delusion is considered to be a sure sign of mental illness. I'm not in any way saying that applies to you ellie.

Other people think I'm awesome, so your statement certainly doesn't apply to me. But thanks for playing, rayray.