Conservatives LOVE to tell the American people that government at all levels is too large, too overwhelming, and that we do not need as much government as we have had, despite the constantly growing population of the United States, now at about 313 million and counting!
The argument is that government has multiplied at all levels, but that is absolutely NOT the truth!
On the federal level, we have about 4.4 million government workers, only slightly up from 4.3 million a few years earlier.
On the state and local level, there are about 14 million people who work for governments, down slightly from a few years earlier.
Realize that if you add the total number of federal employees to the number of state and local employees, it is about 19 million, which is about SIX percent of the total population, actually slightly less!
Also realize that federal employees are only about 1.5 percent of the population, and only one fourth of the total number of government workers.
Also realize that the majority of state and local government employees are in education, health care, police protection and corrections, with many others in firefighting and sanitation services.
Also, not all government employees at any level are full time, so the part timers do not gain the kind of health care and pension coverage of full time workers.
Also, about 2 million people are in the federal government civilian work force, with an additional almost 600,00 in the postal service, and a little less than 2 million in the military and security fields.
Are we willing to cut our military, or not get the mail delivered, or believe that two thirds of one percent of the population is too much for civilian federal government services?
Are we willing to cut in large numbers our teachers, health care personnel, police officers and prison guards, firefighters, sanitation workers, and the numerous other classifications of state and local workers who make our lives better in so many ways?
In other words, it is time to stop acting as if there is too much bureaucracy on the federal, state and local levels, as the number of government workers is TOO FEW, not too many, for a society of 313 million people, and continuing to grow rapidly!
This is the 21st century, not the 18th or 19th century, when populations were small. We cannot go back to the “good old days”, which were not, by the way, all that good!