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I think we're using different lenses. The WorldBank stats you reference are very restrictive, being limited to central government employees in the 90s. But toda

by mkempe 13y ago

I think we're using different lenses. The WorldBank stats you reference are very restrictive, being limited to central government employees in the 90s. But today's actual government cost is more than that. If we look at recent OECD and local numbers for what one would more expansively consider the "public sector" the proportions are much higher in e.g. Sweden [1] and Greece [2]. Further, I would suggest that to measure the full impact of government on society, one should include the pension costs of retired public sector employees (one of the major driver in the PIGS crisis in recent years) as well as public works contractors (e.g. hundreds of millions of dollars for recently failed IT projects in the US). One could also argue that the cost of mass unemployment caused by government policies should be factored in as well (e.g. contrast Spain and Germany). [1] http://www.oecd.org/gov/pem/OECD%20HRM%20Profile%20-%20Sweden.pdf http://www.oecd.org/gov/pem/OECD%20HRM%20Profile%20-%20Swede... [2] http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/seesox/pdf/IordanoglouPatronageandPublicEmployment.pdf http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/seesox/pdf/IordanoglouPatronageandP...

notacoward 13y ago
"Different lenses" is a cute term for cherry-picking. Using Sweden as an example is bad enough, since they're well known for having one of the most "social democratic" governments in the world. Using Greece is even worse, and I shouldn't even need to explain why. It's like using Iceland as the only data point in a discussion of bank regulation, or Ukraine in a discussion of nuclear safety. Also, the numbers for local government (including US states) are likely to be even worse for your point. I challenge you to show that the numbers measured across the whole world (not just OECD and certainly not just two outliers) have changed significantly. It's probably quite reasonable to include pension costs. You also forgot to mention the salaries of government contractors (especially military). On the other hand, the numbers we have are already limited to people in the workforce so adjusting separately for unemployment would be double-counting. Nice try. When all reasonable adjustments are made, the results might show a slightly greater advantage for government workers, but still very far from your wild claims about government workers getting super-rich off the backs of the rest of us. Those remain utterly unfounded, and the burden is still on you to provide more than a few shreds of pseudo-evidence.

by mkempe 13y ago

notacoward 13y ago

"Different lenses" is a cute term for cherry-picking. Using Sweden as an example is bad enough, since they're well known for having one of the most "social democratic" governments in the world. Using Greece is even worse, and I shouldn't even need to explain why. It's like using Iceland as the only data point in a discussion of bank regulation, or Ukraine in a discussion of nuclear safety. Also, the numbers for local government (including US states) are likely to be even worse for your point. I challenge you to show that the numbers measured across the whole world (not just OECD and certainly not just two outliers) have changed significantly. It's probably quite reasonable to include pension costs. You also forgot to mention the salaries of government contractors (especially military). On the other hand, the numbers we have are already limited to people in the workforce so adjusting separately for unemployment would be double-counting. Nice try. When all reasonable adjustments are made, the results might show a slightly greater advantage for government workers, but still very far from your wild claims about government workers getting super-rich off the backs of the rest of us. Those remain utterly unfounded, and the burden is still on you to provide more than a few shreds of pseudo-evidence.