Deserted City
by James Glaser
July 6, 2010

Yesterday, I went to Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, to buy a door lock. I knew a place that had gone out of business, and they still had door locks for sale. Tallahassee is always a real hassle to drive around in. There is always road construction going on, tens of thousands of students, and the place I had to go to was near the State Capital, which is always crowded with government workers.

Not yesterday, not on July 5^th. Yesterday, all the government workers had the day off. Every summer school class had the day off, too. Banks were closed, many restaurants closed, and all the road construction jobs were shut down. I zipped in to and out of town on roads that were a pleasure to drive on. Nobody was around.

I came back to Madison and stopped at Ben's Towing to see about getting an oil change tomorrow. Ben and his whole crew of about 15 mechanics were working away like every other day. It seems that trucks break down on holiday weekends like every other weekend. Downtown Madison was filled with working people. Wally was at his garden store carrying out 50 pound bags of potting soil, and the lumber company was open, but not the bank, the Post Office, or the County Court House.

That made me wonder just how many people in America work for the government.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, government accounts for about 8% of jobs in the United States. Here's the breakdown using numbers easily accessible on the BLS website (all numbers from 2006 or 2007):

1,774,000 Federal government civilian employees, excluding Post Office
615,000 Post Office
1,172,913 Military enlisted
230,577 Military Officers
2,424,000 State government (excluding education and hospitals)
5,594,000 Local government (excluding education and hospitals)

That's a total of 11,810,490 government jobs.

From what I have been able to read, it looks like President Obama has added about 1.5 million new government jobs since he took office, but I don't know if George Bush added any in his last two years. So I think we can be confident that about 10% of the work force is employed by the Government.

However, then we have to think about all the people employed because of government contracts. Remember the Military Industrial Complex? The people who make the bombs, the tanks, the planes, the ships, the artillery pieces, the bullets, the shells, the uniforms, the trucks, the jeeps, the Humvees, the predator drones, the helicopters, the tents, the cots, the bandages, the body bags, and who knows what else. They have to add up into many millions employed with tax money.

Then there are the public school employees. That would be administration, faculty, staff, and custodial, and all the workers building new or rehabbing old schools. Soon, every one in the health care industry will be working for the government, too. Should we add in all the people working in our jails and prisons? How about the prisoners themselves. They might not be working for the government, but the cost of keeping them locked up costs more than many who do work. What about people on Social Security, and welfare. Aren't they paid by the government with tax money?

Really now, with the way government fudges numbers to make themselves look better, the number of government workers as listed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has to be suspect.

Any way you look at it, government directly and indirectly employees most of America. Oh yeah, I just thought about the people who work for General Motors and Chrysler. Without a doubt, they are now government employees, too.

So, on a day like Monday, July 5^th that is made into a working holiday for government workers, it is understandable that cities like Tallahassee, being a State Capital, and home to two universities, a junior college, and a couple of tech schools, seem almost deserted when all the government workers stay home.

The people working in private business and industry are such a minority, their presences make little difference. I think about that, and yes, I know all the government workers pay their fair share in taxes, but in reality that is tax money paying taxes. The private sector is the only area that the government gets "new" money from. Exports bring in new money, but we have been in a deficit with buying more from foreign countries compared to what we sell for a long time.

How long can we keep this spending binge going? Nobody knows for sure, but most think if we don't expand that private sector of employment it won't be long before it all comes crashing down, and then we will see real deserted cities.

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