CA Renter wrote: “Most govt employees are the same ones who spend almost all of their income and live paycheck to paycheck.
Guess where all that money goes? Right back into the economy — your private business.
Directly or indirectly, we all benefit from government employment. It’s unfortunate so many people can’t make the connection between private and public employment.”
So, let’s imagine a desert island economy of 3 people. One person fishes well, and catches 3 fish per day. One person collects coconuts, and manages to pick up 3 per day. The last person catches seabirds that land on the island, and catches 3 per day.
It’s easy to see that, with a little trade, they can all make a good living. Now let’s say the bird-catcher negotiates an agreement with the other two to be the island’s government employee, and gets 1 coconut and 1 fish per day, guaranteed, if he spends just 1/3 of the time catching birds, and continues to give 2/3 of his daily catch to the other 2.
When there was no govt, the total daily bounty of the little community was 3 fish, 3 coconuts, and 3 birds. After the reorganization that removed the incentives for some of the people to be as productive as possible, the total bounty was 3 fish, 3 coconuts, and 1 bird = Less.
Sure, the government employee is passing along 2/3 of what he produces to the non-govt emplyees, but they are all worse off for having let a system develop that fails to encourage everyone to be as economically productive as possible.
So arguments that it’s OK if SOME govt employees are not being as productive as possible because they spend their money and thereby spread it to others, simply misses the point. Spending money does not provide goods and services to others. People’s contribution to society should be measured by the open market value of the goods and services they provide to others, not how much they get to spend because they had political leverage to get sweet job contracts.
