Taxes in US are very low

[UTChE96]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[mop]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[YoLaDu]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[UTChE96]

The data is pretty strong that suggests the collapse of the housing bubble and domino effect on the financial sector and eventually the rest of the economy was the main culprit for the current economic woes. I do agree that it is a very complex issue. At the end of the day, it is the confidence of consumer and business owners thats helps spur economic growth. Both are very low right now. We need to change that. Cutting taxes alone will not do that for sure.

 

[mop]

honestly, i don't see how taxing too little can ever be blamed unless it is coupled with spending too much. it seems patently obvious to me that if we always spent less than we took in revenues we would always be fine. am i missing something? (that is a sincere question not sarcasm).

 

[mcbrett]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[Oilfield]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[mcbrett]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[Uninformed]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[mcbrett]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[theiioftx]

Bottled water is too cheap outside of airports. I just paid $4.50 for a liter at JFK. Let's raise the price of water everywhere so Ozarka can pay their bills...

 

[Uninformed]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[WhitmanSampler]

This surprised me, and I'm not sure what to make of it, though I'm sure the partisans can give us many interpretations, but it appears that the bulk of growth in government jobs is in state and local government, not federal. In fact, there appears to be a decrease in per capita federal employment.
The Link
(sorry, I don't know how to copy the chart...maybe somebody can help)
The loss of manufacturing jobs is indeed terrifying, uninformed. My fear is that this trend is an unavoidable consequence of an unavoidable globalization of manufacturing.

 

[Oilfield]

WS, that chart only goes to 2006>

 

[Uninformed]

ws,
I am confused by the graph you showed. Why is there no change from when we stopped the draft for the military or for when there were wars? Why is there no change for when temporary census people were hired? When I went to the individual data sets for the US gov't it showed only civilian employment. Military emplys 1.5 mil on active duty and 1.3 mil in reserve.


Here is some info from another site:

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in 1990 total government employment — including all branches and uniformed military personnel — was 5.23 million. By 2009, that number dropped to 4.43 million. If we exclude military personnel, the number fell from 3.128 million in 1990 to 2.84 million in 2009.

After years of decline, those work force numbers did begin to rise in 2008.
To get a more current read, we turned to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has preliminary figures as recent as November 2010.

According to BLS data, total federal government employment was 3.103 million in January 1990. Preliminary numbers for November 2010 are 2.837 million.
Even if you don't count postal service workers, the story holds true. In January 1990, the figure was 2.273 million excluding those employees and in November 2010 it was down to 2.195 million.

"The reality is that the federal work force got much smaller between 1989 and 2009, almost entirely driven by deep cuts following the end of the Cold War, " said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University. "The Defense Department work force fell from about 1 million civilian employees in 1990 to roughly 650,000 by 2004 and has inched up by 100,000 or so since. That was a big 'peace dividend' that allowed Bill Clinton to claim that the era of big government was over."
But there's a catch, and it's huge.

While official work force figures have gone down in recent decades, use of government contractors has exploded, especially in the defense sector after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In fiscal 2000, the government spent $208 billion on contractors. In fiscal 2009, that figure was up more than 150 percent, to $540 billion.

What does that mean for the work force? Well, if you consider government contractors federal employees and view grantees — like universities — as employing people on behalf of the federal government ("Nuclear labs are run by universities, but are clearly federal agencies," said Light), the numbers have rocketed.

"I think the true size of government is going up — often for good reasons such as the need to reduce backlogs in key service agencies ... and increase the number of inspectors needed to execute the rules on deep-water drilling, workplace discrimination, etc.," Light said.

The problem, Light says, is that the total government work force number including contractors is elusive and difficult to calculate. He said the only way to get a proper sense of it is to take existing data on every government contract transaction and run it through a model used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Light did that in 2006 and found that the "true size" of the federal government work force was 14.6 million employees, including civil servants, postal workers, military personnel, contractors, and grantees. More than half of that total was contractors.

In 1990, Light says, the true size of the federal government was 12.6 million, meaning that by his definition, the federal work force had increased 2 million by 2006.

"BLS and OPM are fixated, as is the Republican Congress, on the number of federal employees, and have no way to count the hidden work force," Light said. "Unfortunately, no one really wants to know the answer. It's a big, big number that would inflame public anger and is generally avoided by both parties."


The Link

 

[mcbrett]

In reply to:

---

---