The Shrinking Public Sector is a Good Thing

I get hoarse repeating this, but I have yet to see conservatives really grapple with the fact that month after month we see a labor market that's basically treading water primarily because government employment is shrinking rather than keeping pace with population growth. Had we had government employment growing along with the population, this would still be a weakish labor market recovery, but it would be a real recovery with the unemployment rate falling bit by bit each month. Such a scenario might even boost general optimism and spur a greater level of business demand and new housing construction. But even without the optimistic "multiplier" progressive story, simply the direct impact of government hiring would be a slow-but-steady recovery.

I'm at a loss to see how increasing spending to create private sector jobs while the economy fails to produce REAL jobs would be a productive effort...

So what's the conservative story about this? The conservative story about the Obama economy seems to be that an overweening state is holding the private sector back. But the reality is that the public sector is shrinking. This shrinkage is exactly what conservatives claim to believe will spark growth once they bring the era of Kenyan Anticolonialism to an end. But it's already happening in a modest way, and has been happening for a year and a half, and it keeps not delivering any private sector magic.

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/10/07/338851/the-shrinking-public-sector/

I'm not surprised to see people still calling for increases in government spending and public sector jobs. The trouble is that the government can't justify those increases when revenues fall and people demand lower taxes. Keynesian economics always fails to create longterm sustainability in economies. Increasing the tax burden on a constantly decreasing taxpayer base, a result of increasing unemployment, can not support calls for more big government. The country is going bankrupt, many states are already there. Why should the government consume resources that are inefficiently used, while burden increases on private sector jobs continue to suffer under increasing government regulations and taxation...