Government expansion

Unlike most private sector jobs, government jobs do not create wealth, even if many of their functions provide legitimate services or facilitate the flow of commerce. And even the private sector jobs that don't create wealth do not force people to buy their services. Governments fund themselves through mandatory taxes. Ignoring these taxes is punishable by law.

And so a recent Gallup poll calculating the level of government employment nationwide ought to give every American pause. It found that, nationwide, 16.3 percent of all U.S. workers are employed by some level of government, whether federal, state or local. The report makes note of how this has declined in recent years, down from 17.3 percent in 2009. In 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a loss of 280,000 government jobs.

But look at this a different way. It means one of every six people you may meet on the street in this country has a government job. Given that the survey asked people whether they work for federal, local or state government, it's a safe assumption that school teachers, professors at public colleges and administrators, as well as others in private-sector jobs supported by government contracts answered no. So the ratio of tax-supported workers to private-sector wealth creators is likely even higher.

The survey found that Hawaii has the highest percentage of government workers, at 29.7 percent, with Pennsylvania, at 11.8 percent, having the lowest. In other words, in no state does less than 1 in 10 working adults hold government jobs. Utah came in 36th with 15.2 percent.

Most of these jobs are in state governments (6.5 percent), followed by local governments (5.1 percent), and finally federal government (4.4 percent). The rest, only 0.3 percent, did not specify which government employed them.

Conservative activists often target the growth in the federal government while ignoring the growth in state and local governments. The survey shows that, at the least, the growth of those governments deserves more attention.

It is instructive to note that many private sector industries have had to endure massive layoffs and a complete restructuring of their business models (newspapers certainly fall into this category). Recently, Bloomberg Business Week reported that private sector jobs increased only 1.1 percent in the entire decade ending in 2009, making it the lowest decade of job growth since the Great Depression. And even that growth disappears when education and health care jobs are removed. Manufacturing, for instance, lost more than 5 million jobs.