The Recession Has Been Wonderful…If You Have A Government Job

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” said Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel at the beginning of his boss’ term in office. And, indeed, Emanuel and his fellow big-government liberals haven’t let America’s recession go to waste. They’ve used it as an excuse to expand the size and scope of government at every turn as Rich Lowry notes:

The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today. At the beginning of the downturn, the Transportation Department had one person making $170,000 or more a year; now it has 1,690 making that.
The New York Times reports that state and local governments have added a net 110,000 jobs since the beginning of the recession, while the private sector has lost 6.9 million. The gap between total compensation of public and private workers has only widened during the downturn, according to USA Today. In 2008, benefits for public employees grew at a rate three times that of private employees.
Public employees have developed an inverse relationship to the rest of the economy — as it shrinks, shedding jobs and cutting salaries, they draw on a never-ending taxpayer bounty. It used to be said that the Great Depression wasn’t so bad, if you had a job. The Great Recession has practically been a boom, if you have a government job.

Lowry also notes something I’ve pointed out before as well. All these government rescue efforts that have drastically increased the size of government have also been quite beneficial to unions who have been steadily losing ground in the private sector.

Public employees can thank the union label. In 2009, for the first time ever, a majority of union members worked in the public sector. Unionism has been a long, secular decline in the private sector (down to 7.2 percent of all workers), but increasing in government (up to 37.4 percent of all workers).
These public-sector unions are flush with cash, politically connected, and unabashedly self-interested. They are an active and growing conspiracy against the public fisc. The states where they are most powerful — California and New York — lumber toward insolvency. The federal government follows not far behind, on the kind of diet geese enjoy prior to becoming foie gras.

In short, the government efforts to “rescue” us all from this recession have mostly benefited…the government. And public worker unions.
Meaning that it’s never really been about “rescuing” you and I. It’s never been about helping us be more prosperous (which the government could accomplish, for the most part, by getting the heck out of our way). It’s been about lining the pockets of the political class.
The answer to America’s economic woes right now is less government. Not more.