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First, what we’ve seen under Obama is a small rise in federal employment, swamped by a larger fall in state and local employment — reflecting the budget woes of the states, and the inadequacy of federal aid in the slump. So you see a small rise if you look only at the feds, but a decline if you look at the overall picture.
Second, most government workers are at the local level, and most of the rest are state workers; the federal government is a small piece of the total. And if you look at what they do,
a lot of them are teachers; many of the rest are firefighters, police, and other occupations we sort of like.
Third, why has government employment grown over time? Because, um, we have a growing population. Here’s government employment as a share of the population:
Yes, government got bigger under those socialists Dwight Eisenhower, LBJ, and Nixon. Since then, however, there has been no trend relative to population.
And bear in mind, again, that the representative government employee isn’t a bureaucrat trampling on your liberty; he or she is a schoolteacher.
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