All those good paying, stable government jobs won't make things better. Today, about half of all American workers are employed by, or selling some product or service to local, state or the federal government, or they are getting some transfer payment. Think about it. Is someone in your household or family in that situation?
Two generations ago, federal employees had stable, but not well-paid careers. It was the trade off that came with what used to be called "Civil Service." People sacrificed earnings and even the right to vote to be "civil service" workers and serve their country without political interference.
One generation back, politicians created a new constituency by repealing parts of the Hatch Act to allow federal employees to vote and promised to raise the compensation in exchange for votes from their new constituents. Big government supporters became entrenched in congress.
This generation of government employees are like an aristocracy, or a ruling class. Their compensation is more than the private sector now. They never have efficiency gains and are unproductive. Improved efficiencies and productivity are important elements of economic recoveries. Recoveries can only happen when unproductive activity is replaced by efficient activity.
Profit is a reward the comes from efficient production or sales of goods or services that are in demand within a free market. Government demand is not a free market demand because the buyer isn't using the reward from any profitable endeavor to pay for the product or service.
Now, I know all of you government employees, retirees, contractors and people working for businesses that depend on government contracts for your jobs won't like what I wrote. I can understand how people seek stability and defend their government work as doing something of "service" to their country. But, if you step back away from your own position and take a holistic look at economics and history, you'll see that the major contributing factor in the fall of the Soviet Union was the inefficient economic model of a massive government bureaucracy to build and maintain a military. The malinvestment in government, by government, made no investment money available for businesses that could be productive in creating a consumer and non-military industrial economy. It is that productive, market economy that creates wealth, not government.
The US is very close to that same situation that the USSR was in.
I feel badly for all of you who have lost your jobs. I'm glad that I'm not young or have a house full of kids now. There is something to be learned from even the worst financial situation, and that is that you should have, and must, save money. If you've been in the workforce for ten years, you should have enough savings to last you 1 year without any reduction in standard of living. You should have 2 years of annual salary saved if you're forty years old. If you don't have that savings, then you had better learn your lesson and pledge to yourself that you will never, ever not save again.
