21,995,000 to 12,329,000: Government Employees Outnumber Manufacturing Employees 1.8 to 1

a reply to: Metallicus

You hit the nail on the head.

Most government employees do not create wealth. They don't make phones, or cars, or rugs, or houses, or firearms, or food.

They watch other people do that. It's management. All successful and well-organized companies, countries, have management.

But they never have more management than they do workers.

a reply to: jude11

Nasty stuff, jude11

13 years ago, I worked in a rural county of another state, assisting in modernizing said county/area through a 'private' business, but with the assistance of State "grant monies", and under the jurisdiction & oversight of State personnel.
The 'deal' was -
State - Here's the money to start bringing these country folk' into the 21st Century... There will be no more money. If you can turn this "effort" into a self-perpetuating enterprise...good for you, us and 'the farmers'. If they (the country folk') don't want to pay for the 21st Century like the rest of us... Let it die on the vine.
It died on the vine.
At that time, Labor & Statistics data showed 70+% of the 'working' citizenry in that & surrounding counties...deriving their sole/primary source of income as government employees.

How do you think that county votes, politically?
They will vote for their paychecks.

Eventually, there will only be 'the rich', that are not government-employed...as the government will suck all that remains...just to pay itself.

Dead nation. Dead concept.

('Might work if - Anyone & Everyone working for the government loses the right to vote, for as long as they are government-employed, and/or eligible for government employment...)

A lot of government actually is "make work" as there are heaps of redundancy in records. The technology is there to have a global record that could follow you around for everything. It would be really convenient if all you had to do was show your ID and have that data follow you for whatever you need done. But does it ever get implemented? Every time you do something government related you have to fill out another damn form containing the same information that's already on record somewhere else. So there are a lot of clerical jobs to keep tabs on that redundancy.

As for manufacturing? It just didn't go overseas to avoid worker safety and environmental regulation, a lot of it was automated out. The businesses did everything they could to eliminate redundancy.

Thing is, if you actually make government efficient and automate the records, where will those people work?

As for some other things, it is needed. Social services, defense, land management, etc. Some stuff like monitoring/upkeep of infrastructure is actually understaffed.