When fascism came to America it came clutching a bible and waving the flag. On January 20, 2025. When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once. Milarepa “Just as it is k na nown t hat an image of one's face is seen d epending on a mirror b ut does not really exist as a face, s o the conception of "I" exist d ependent on mind and body, b ut like the image of a face t he "I" does not at all exist as its own reality." Nagarjuna "Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Nagarjuna We break from our usual normal content to bring you a post defining what is presently happening to American democracy, freedoms, and liberties. We no longer live in a free democratic republic as of yesterday. We are all at peril...
he chuckles, was just about to come over here and inform you of this very same chart. it ties in with your previous post on the economy.
ReplyDeleteit illustrates the number of employees that are consumers of taxes but are not payer of taxes too.
just for comparison figures the population in 1940 was around 150.6 million comparitive to around 300 million today.
ReplyDeleteso, while the population only doubled in size the number of government employes grew 5 times during this period.
RN,
ReplyDeleteGreat chart. Emphasizes the need to get Americans back to work producing tradable goods.
Tax breaks to industries keeping work here,tax penalties for offshored jobs.
There must be some way to end the emphasis on financialization and focus on manufacturing and trade.
Government is a necessary evil, but it doesn't contribute any productive economic activity. Too many liberals just can't grasp that...
ReplyDeleteHow many hundreds of thousands more will the health care behemoth require?
Griper - Excellent point of comparison. Thanks for putting that out!
ReplyDeleteOso - Indeed there must be. You have pointed out a couple. The biggest problem I see is the cost associated with rebuilding the manufacturing base infrastructure.
Silverfiddle - Agreed,it is a necessary evil. Our founding fathers recognized this, thus the system of checks and balances.
It is now time we check and balance, and take back our government from the hands of the current statists on both sides of the aisle.
Government is as much as anything a gigantic social program. Start making real cuts in defense spending and watch the Nation go berserk.
ReplyDeleteGo ahead and cut Medicare. Good luck. Stop federal funding to local school districts. Good luck. I could go on forever RN. But I think even Griper would agree that there are damn few in this Country that wouldn't raise hell if a program that benefitted them were reduced in any way. Think about that the next time you're at the DMV and waiting in line for an hour.
TRUTH - Don't visit DMV, do it online because the government is so damn inefficient in their offices. Much quicker and less stressful on line. :-)
ReplyDeleteGovernment in The United States was never intended to be a giant social experiment. It was intended to provide a limited structure of laws that would govern people from an ethical and principled basis.
Defense spending should be limited to insuring we are able to protect the citizens from an act of aggression, not support the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower correctly saw and spoke to.
Obviously just cutting Medicare would cause an uproar. However as responsible, and hopefully rational people, we will figure out a way to stop extending and extending, and extending until we are bankrupt totally as a nation.
Perhaps as we continue to pork roll the favorite flavor of the day , and it eventually catches up to us when it is to late, we can all eat gruel, or pork and beans while drinking somebodies homemade lousy wine.
This is a problem, and if we continue to ignore the root cause of the problem(s) my thought is we won't be to far removed from the illustration.
Great Chart. I could sure tell on the freeway that because we got a little snow, and the road was 80% less congested, that there are a Lot of government workers.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere the former Soviet Union is laughing.
ReplyDeleteYa Think They figured it out finally, we on the other hand seem to be moving to where they were.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the read and comment.