From The Enterprise Blog:
In 1871 … only 51,020 civilians worked for the federal government, of whom 36,696 were postal employees. The remaining 14,424 constituted the national government for a country whose population exceeded 40 million.
Ratio = 784
Today?
Population: 310,000,000
Federal Employees (2008): 2,768,886
Ratio = 112
Add in State and local employees (2008):
Government Employees = 3,818,577
Ratio = 81
And remember – Government employment has only gone UP the last two years; those ratios are really worse.
Kinda makes you wonder HOW the heck did we ever survived without Big Government way back then (at a cost of < 5% GDP estimated)
I’m hoping that this experiment works out well…
