The size of government

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

What really struck me about this chart is the source: The Economist, not exactly left-wing propagandists.

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Updated to add:

What's striking about this chart is how contrary it is to the conventional narrative of Democrats "growing" government and Republicans "shrinking" it. I feel confident in suggesting that if one asked most Americans — or even a narrower selection of Americans who conceive of themselves as “politically aware” — to draw what they imagine this chart would look like, they would not produce something much resembling it.

Republicans talk a great deal about “smaller government”, but when Republicans hold the Presidency (or the Congress) they haven't taken effective action to do it as measured in government payroll. What would it take for this to be clearer to the American voter?

It is presumably naïve to expect our politicians to be clear about the question, but if a chart like this is unfamiliar, haven't our news media failed us?

Comments

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Republicans are the party of Big Government when they're in power, Small Government when Democrats are in power.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

It's a blog post, and the graph is mislabeled:

An obvious objection is that the numbers bundle together federal, state and local. State and local numbers are nothing to do with a president* and any decline is the result of a combination of the economic downturn and balanced-budget provisions.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

State and local governments aren't funded in part by the federal government???

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Legitimate criticism, and shows why dialogue is necessary. OK, who can provide the federal only graph?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's not like noting this is particularly new, unfortunately. Nobody is so difficult to convince of the most elementary truths as the convicted ideologue, more unfortunately.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

The elementary truths here being what exactly? Government employment went down during big recessions?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That government bloats regardless of which party grows it and small government is a Big Lie that works only for the suckers dumb enough to buy into it.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Since many people believe that government has dramatically grown during the Obama administration, this does seem to be worth bringing up, yeah.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Err... the president doesn't hire or fire state or local employees. If they redid this with those factored out, I'd be interested to see the comparison.

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too, definitely. Nevertheless, I think it'd be practically impossible to arrive at any truly meaningful graph or collection of statistics with regard to this.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Not that that will stop anyone from either side from trotting out graphs and statistics evah!

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

It's a bit complicated - as in, the numbers are there, but not in the same format.

The OPM makes the numbers available here (http://www.opm.gov/feddata/historicaltables/totalgovernmentsince1962.asp). Unfortunately, those numbers only go up to 2010. In them Obama shows a marked increase in total size of the federal workforce, increasing by 237,000 total employees - but 152,000 of those were uniformed military personnel. For a variety of reasons, the size of the military is generally not counted in the total size of the federal workforce in other charts, so the rise was closer to 85,000, or about 3.1% of the 2010 year-end total. This is further complicated by the fact that 2010 was a census year, and census employees are counted in that total.

It's perhaps best to compare the size of the federal workforce between census years. We're about 5% up from 2000, but about 9% down from 1990, and only 1-2% up from 1980 in terms of civilian federal workers. So we're not that different from baseline.

Part of the problem with that is that a lot of the jobs are defense oriented. That usually has to be decoupled to make meaningful comparisons, as that number swings up and down a lot. Currently out of 2 million or so federal employees, 750,000 are in defense directly, 160,000 or so are in DHS, and who knows how many are in Veteran's Affairs in one way or another. Because this scales with military size this should be a separate category, but it's hard to separate out.

For a conclusion I would say that the US federal government isn't that big now, and probably will cut down in size somewhat drastically once the war in Afghanistan winds down, as we cut the military back to Bush II levels, and probably the DoD with it (although the DoD has a bad habit of gaining weight without losing it). That will move us almost in line with what we've been for the past decade or two.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I knew that Bush II's number was going to be high due to the wars but I'd be interested how that stacks as percent of GDP.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, looking at the OPM numbers I cited above, the biggest part of the Obama expansion in the first two years was due to an increase in uniformed military personnel. I don't know how accurate those numbers are, but it looks like Bush II really did fight his wars on the cheap (manpower-wise). One of the reasons, I suppose, why the DoD budget keeps ticking upwards.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Please read this
http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/261191.html
and use the next, let's say, 6 hours, to make some amendments. Thanks in advance!

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

My bad. Following up: I take it my addendum was adequate?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I had the impression that by "smaller government", conservatives tend to mean not so much "a smaller number of government bureaucrats", but rather "less government intervention". Whatever that, in turn, is supposed to mean.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

"Less government bureaucrats" is certainly not the only thing that conservatives mean by "smaller government", but it's one of the major things they talk about, yes.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

1. Includes state and local workers, so not exactly a fair indictment.

2. Hence the Tea Party reaction to Bush II.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

2. Silence?

[404.livejournal.com]

How is it fair to judge presidents by how politicians outside the federal government hire? If the NYC city council decides to hire 10k dog catchers, it means that the president A added 10k government jobs, and if NYC sees they can afford to keep only 3k of the 10k, that means that president B cut 7k government jobs.

That's some fine slanted journalism/economics for ya right there.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

The local and state governments receive federal funds as well -- plus the federal government can offer tax incentives for a state...

So if the Federal government is doing its job - then the local states have the *ability* (they dont have to exercise it)
to do more hiring...

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

I think this chart is actually a good argument that our response to the recession has collectively been a Republican one - cut the public sector and let the private sector grow. That's what's been happening with the jobs numbers, after all, if you include all levels of government. It's also a big part of the reason Obama's big scary spending increase hasn't done as much to move the needle - his new government spending was offset at other levels by spending cuts. Fighting a recession with stimulus only really works if it's a net spending increase.