raising4daughters

The Difference Between 1993 and 2009

BlueOkie - you raise a good question "What will all the government employees do?", but the better question is "If we don't hack government spending dramatically, how can those of us in the private sector possibly continue to carry the weight of government piggies, er, employees on our backs."

The Bush administration re-introduced the era of Big Government, more specifically, Big, Inefficient, Ineffective, and Bloated Government. We don't need more spending, we need better deployment of smaller spending. We don't need more regulations, we need actual enforcement of existing regulations (hint to Hank Paulson, Christopher Cox, Barney Franks, and Chris Dodd).

T. Boone Pickens is fond of talking about the shift of wealth from the US to the oil producing countries. We need another T. Boone Pickens to talk about the shift of wealth from the wealth-producing sectors (manufacturing, distribution, mining, forestry, etc.) to the wealth-consuming sectors (government, education, non-profits, etc.).

The past week shows it dramatically. The piggies' retirements from defined benefit (pension) plans are guaranteed. Heck, they get pushed to the taxpayers if necessary. The rest of us fund our own plans through 401k's, and those haven't faired very well for the past decade, especially the last year.