There are 132,500,000 Americans at work today, about 40% of the population. Be warned that is a government calculation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How many of those jobs actually produce goods and services, tangible items of value in the marketplace? And how many people do good things, but are by the nature of their employment a net loss to the gross national product beyond the impact of their personal spending?
Metro Washington, D.C., has one of the highest income averages in the nation. What does metro D.C. produce that is worth buying? Nada! It is a government city, and it is perpetually asking for more government in the form of statehood. Members of PETA would starve to death if they had to eat what is produced in D.C.
On any given morning at 6 a.m., Highway 50 in Sacramento is bumper to bumper as people head to work. At least half the vehicles are work trucks. On the same Highway 50 coming into D.C. from Virginia, the rush hour is later and the vehicles are mostly high-end passenger cars.
Well, 23,092,000 of those 132,500,000 jobs cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are held by government workers, not counting education. That reduces the producers of things to about 109,408,000 Americans working in non-government, private enterprise jobs.
The 109,408,000 statistic is only 33.2% of the population. On the other side of the financial ledger, 52.8 million Americans receive Social Security checks. Add that to the 23,092,000 government workers, and checks are being sent to 75,892,000 people, not counting folks on dozens of welfare programs. It is not that all these people are not contributing, but they do require tax support from the wealth producers, and their contributions come from buying the things other people make.
One out of every three Americans, not counting the 8 to 12 million newly arrived illegals, are responsible for creating all the essentials of life in America.
President Joe Biden is campaigning on his declaration Bidenomics a rousing success, creating more jobs and a booming economy. “It’s working,” he says, and he is proud of it.
OK, but government added 36,000 of the jobs created in January. These folks are not going to build more housing to lower the sales prices, or produce more cars, or grow more food or fix the highways. The reality is without growth in government employment, the Biden economic review would be glum.
Fewer and fewer Americans are shouldering a very large load. Yet, politician of both parties constantly remind us we are terrible people who are defiling the earth, engaged in a greedy capitalist system, are active participants in racial and sexual discrimination, owe reparations to past generations and are generally unworthy.
But if the workers of American phoned in sick tomorrow and stayed away for a couple of weeks, it would be catastrophic! The takers might learn a little respect for the makers.
This is not a one-time phenomenon. During the past 12 months, government unemployment had the second-highest rate of growth across the spectrum of jobs. That amounted to 601,000 jobs at all levels of government. Oh, and don’t overlook the fact we are paying the salaries and the retirement benefits for Ukraine’s government workforce.
Given the tremendous value of private enterprise employment and the amazing wealth of goods and services provided by these people, it is remarkable to listen to the Democratic Party and the Republican Party loudmouths trash-talking taxpayers for not gladly assuming the nanny-state role for the world.
Meanwhile the benevolence of the nanny state preaches that a 16-year-old putting out the trash at a fast food restaurant in California is worth $20 an hour minimum. To cover that, a Happy Meal costs about $20. Barbara Lee wants to be a U.S. senator representing California. She just advocated a minimum wage of $50 an hour. Child-like minds produce childish ideas. The newly arrived illegal is given credit cards, cash, chits for rent, free transport, everything they need, and we ask nothing in return, not even a criminal background check.
Working Americans cannot pay the taxes to support this welfare state burden. That is precisely why the federal government has borrowed $34,000,000,000,000 and counting. That is why the federal retirement fund balance has Treasury Department IOUs instead of money in the till. Ditto Medicare and Social Security.
Speaking of Social Security, a decade ago it was politically untouchable. It also was ignored. Today the median SS check is about $1,700, or $20,400 a year. That Golden State table-clearing job in April will pay $41,600. Seems the 55 million seniors are a disposable population.
Maybe it is time for a new national political party for the working men and women of America. “Debt free” could be its motto and primary purpose.
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