Expert says government is choking state industry

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | August 29, 2003 | Rick Stouffer

[buzzyboop]

A silent killer is methodically choking Pennsylvania to death: State and local government continues to grow and, with it, increased government spending, according to the president of the state manufacturers' association. One outgrowth of the continuing ratcheting-up of spending is the ongoing demise of manufacturing within the Commonwealth, Jim Panyard said. One only has to look at the number of state, local and federal government jobs as of last December, versus the number of manufacturing jobs, to understand something is radically wrong.

[buzzyboop]

Not only does Fast Eddie not recognize what goes on here in PA, he wants to burden us even more. Wish we had recall provisions here.

[caisson71]

Hear this again. It is not cheap labor that's attracting American companies to foreign countries. It is imposing and expensive government that's driving them away.

[lelio]

As of May, there were 753,300 government employees in Pennsylvania

I can't believe that! How many people live in PA? Is there a breakdown of the state employees per "industry"?

[Think free or die]

PA has about 12 million people. I don't know about where all these government employees are, but there are too many. We could stand to privatize the liquor business for starters. We also have a lot of folks working the turnpike in one or another fashion, and of course, lots of teachers and a multitude of patronage jobs in Philadelphia. There are also a lot of state lands, but I can't imagine the forest rangers are what's killing the budget.

[Ken H]

As of 1990, 25% of the workforce population worked in manufacturing, 25% in professional services, 17% in retail trade, 8% in construction, 7% in Finance and 28% in other trades.

In 1990, 5.8 million people were in the Pennsylvania labor force, representing nearly 62% of all people over 16 years of age. The state unemployment rate was 6%. The average driving time to work was about 22 minutes. There were 4.4 million private wage and salary workers and approximately 635,000 government employees in the state.

www.homesdatabase.com/comm_pa.shtml

Looks like there were a little over 1,000,000 manufacturing jobs in 1990.

Government jobs have increased by 20% while manufacturing jobs have fallen by just over 25%.

[lelio]

We could stand to privatize the liquor business for starters.

You have privatized it in comparison to WA state! Here all the liquor distribution and selling to the public is done by the state. Isn't it just the distribution in PA that's state run?

So one in 15 people, including people younger than 18, works for the state? Lovely.

I worked a State University in New York and in one of the offices they had to take in a former toll booth worker as his booth was taken away. Dumb as a box of rocks. Its like the state doesn't comprehend the idea of slimming down.

[Think free or die]

I used to work in the manufacturing sector in PA. I don't know whether marketing jobs in manufacturing companies are counted in that total. If so, I can account for two of the job eliminations. Sigh.

I was in the chemical industry, and the cost of complying with Federal regs is one mighty big chunk of change. We employed a small army of lawyers and regulatory specialists, while cutting jobs out of sales, marketing, production and research. PA taxes surely didn't help.

[Think free or die]

We also have state-run liquor stores, so indeed it's a monstrous enterprise. There have been some small steps recently to make it more "friendly", such as limited Sunday sales in selected stores. It's a lot of money to the state, so they're not in a hurry to give it up.

[ikka]

There is also the Gross Receipts Tax. Fuel taxes. And the PA turnpike, which SHOULD be free but instead is kept around. Get this: the PA turnpike spends $80million per year on operations and maintenance but pulls in $400 million in receipts. That is an 80% profit margin.

[SAJ]

The profit is 400%. The markup is 80%.

Profit% = (sale price - all costs)/(all costs). Markup% = (sale price - all costs)/(sale price).

Do please try to use the terms accurately in future. Thank you.