But ... government is evil

by: Eric B.

Sun Oct 25, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM EDT

Glenn Gilbert in the Oakland Press today:

But if you cannot believe statistics — or at least know how to interpret them — then taxpaying voters are at a loss to perform their important function in a democratic society.

This is pertinent when looking at recent studies concerning how public-sector employment practices and trends compare to those of the private sector in Michigan. We can draw some valid conclusions, but how the information fits together in a larger picture is more difficult to bring into focus.

"Public-sector?" That sounds like government jobs, and we all know that government is evil.

The nonpartisan Citizens Research Council of Michigan says the state’s public sector employment has been trending downward since mid-2005, but that this is not visible looking only at employment levels since December 2007, when things dramatically worsened in the private sector.

The answer is that government is evil, and must be cut above all else.

more...

...snip...

As CRC points out, however, some of the differences are readily explainable.

“Governments do not experience the same downturn in the demand for their services during a recession,” the CRC stated. “In addition to this ‘demand’ explanation, there are several other factors contributing to the stability observed in public sector employment over the business cycle.”

But, government is ev ... uhhh ... uhhh ... you see where I'm going with this. Meanwhile, we turn to the Center for Michigan's actual report, or blog post, or piece of information it has put onto the Internets for all to look at and marvel over.

• Contrary to stereotype, Michigan's public sector is smaller than that of many other states: "In 2006, Michigan ranked 45th among the states with 482 total state and local full-time employees per 10,000 residents, below the U.S. average of 539."
• Since December 2007, the private sector has lost more than 10 percent of all jobs while the public sector — fueled by the growing health care economy and increased demand for higher education — has actually increased by nearly two percent.
• Public sector employment in Michigan accounts for one out of every six jobs in the state and now employs more people here than manufacturing.
• Michigan has nearly as many prison system workers (22,810) as law enforcement officers directly charged with keeping the peace in local communities (24,758).
• The public sector is likely to see more job loss — especially in local government — as tax revenues continue to slide.

That third little snippet was at the core of a Raging Dullard blog post last week that itself was based on a highly disingenuous editorial in the Wall Street Journal complaining about, among all things, how Andy Dillon bent himself to the will of unions in crafting this year's budget. But, it's the last bullet point that's really important. While the public sector is larger today than manufacturing, the vast majority of those jobs are not state jobs, but jobs in local government. That is, when someone bitches and whines and complains and stamps their feet over public employees, mostly the people they're complaining about are the people who hand out parking tickets, drive the street sweepers and snowplows, run local planning and zoning offices, run municipal water and wastewater treatment plants, and a whole host of other things that directly benefit the person doing the bitching. This is to say nothing about firefighters and police officers and, where applicable, professional EMT services. Very few of those jobs are held by professional burrow-crats and other nefarious folk who make it their life's mission to inflict the kind of pain and personal agony you always get when you call DTE's customer service line.

And, from that last bullet point, we get the uncomfortable truth ... most of the job losses we're going to see in the coming years thanks to a ridiculously out-of-touch approach to public employment and revenue are going to be among those people whose work impacts people's lives directly.

Meanwhile, we cycle our way over to Nolan Finley's column from today:

Government won't shut down, but maybe it deserves to. Lawmakers and Gov. Jennifer Granholm, after another sloppy budget process, are finishing up a spending plan that keeps the lights on in Lansing.

That might be considered a small victory, as long as you ignore the fact that this budget is not only an outright fraud, it sets up Michigan for a full-scale economic collapse.

First of all, it isn't balanced. Not even close. It may be $600 million or more short of that constitutional mandate, despite being propped up by $1.4 billion in federal stimulus money. That means Michigan will start a year that may turn out to be worse than this one already deep in the hole.

And it contains not one ounce of reform. Lawmakers chose to slash services and Gov. Jennifer Granholm still hopes to raise taxes to avoid making any substantive changes in how Michigan runs.

No human being in this state has pushed for slashed services more through the powers of demagoguery than Nolan Finley, from blaming school teachers for the budget mess because of their benefits to general insinuation about public employees who didn't like the idea of having the state attempt to balance the budget by reducing their health benefits in a haste. It's very nice, I suppose, to see that he has found bipartisan anger of a failure to enact real reforms, but basically everything offered up by the Detroit News over the last year has been a demand in service cuts based on cutting taxes (no revenue reform that would result in greater revenue for the state, which the Right and conservatives and the Republican Party regard as an overall tax hike, nosiree Bob) supported not by rational argument but based on the fact that when the News' editorial page has looked at public employees, it nearly always say someone it regarded as an enemy.