[TopQuark]

"How, in God's name, can govt. employment be a viable, contributing factor to the economy,"

By producing public goods --- such as safety, sanitation, etc. The policeman provides a public service, just as a waiter provides a private service.

[An economy involves production of there kinds of goods: public, private and club goods. The last category is intermediate between public and private.]

[kevslisababy]

Ha! I may regret saying this, but to me it is a silver lining. I work for a civil engineering firm, and have to deal with more local government nitwits that haven’t a clue about the limits of their position. A lot of them are nothing but make-work paper shufflers, trying to justify their position.

[Parmy]

I disagree. The waiter provides a service that the customer voluntarily pay for. A service that can be utilized or avoided. The police are paid with tax dollars that are extracted from the incomes of those who earn money by creating wealth, that is producing something. That something is either a good or service which in turn causes other to create something to support that good or service.

The service that the police provide is 'after the fact'. As I said previously, if my house is broken into at 2 am, is there going to be a policeman there to provide the service of protection. Absolutely not! I will be the one providing the protection.

The police may show up later to document the mess, but that is about all.

Finally, addressing the garbage service, we pay for that out of our incomes in the form of assessment (taxes) to avoid disease. But, garbage collection does not create wealth in the dynamic sense that wealth needs to be created.

[microgood]

By producing public goods --- such as safety, sanitation, etc. The policeman provides a public service, just as a waiter provides a private service.

A wise economist provides the following comparison: if you give $1.00 to the government, that results in $.60 cents of economic activity. If you give $1.00 to an entrepenuer, that results in $1.05 worth of economic activity.

The problem that we have today is that public employees salaries have skyrocketed because of public unions resulting in fewer cops, fireman per dollar. But since the taxes are outrageous in this country, they cannot really be raised much. If they are, the $.60 cents per dollar really destroys the private sector side since there is less money for the $1.05 per dollar side. Then you end up like Europe with permanent 10-15% unemployment.

The problem we have is that government employees should not be allowed to unionize or they should not be able to contribute to campaigns or lobby for legislation. That is because what results is public corruption. You do not have this at the Federal level because of the Hatch Act. They recognized the danger of allowing government employees to control legislation and elections. Federal employees have unions, but they are strictly controlled. The states have not wised up yet.

The only way for cities to get back to normal is to declare bankruptcy so they can redo the union contracts. Since the unions control the legislature, there is no way to stop the corruption with laws.

The other problem we have is with administration, which is the main problem with the schools.When I was in school, overhead ran about 7% in school districts in this country. I now is between 60-80 percent. In Washington state, less than 1/2 of the employees are teachers. The schools do not need more money, they just need to get rid of 80% of the overhead, and then they can pay the good teachers way more and still have lots of money left over.