Posted by ScottH on 01/05/2010 - 21:46
People often ask, “What happened to all the good paying jobs?” Politicians will usually blame each other and then try to “fix” the problem. I recently came upon the chart below from the fine folks at Chart of the Day.
The conventional wisdom for the evolution of our economy has been that we have moved from a manufacturing based economy into an innovative knowledge economy. That's not quite true. In fact, the decline of the jobs in goods producing sectors of the economy (construction, manufacturing, mining and agriculture) has largely been met with an increase in jobs on the government payroll. We've gone from providing jobs in profit-making private industry to providing jobs in profit-eating government work.
Toward the end of 2007, the total number of government jobs exceeded the total number of goods producing jobs. Welcome to the government payroll economy.
How do we reverse this disturbing trend? Can we reverse this? As our government continues to move towards a more socialist democracy, I am reminded of the famous quote by Margaret Thatcher (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) - “The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
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