candystripper
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Everything in this Op is JMO. If I use a factoid, and don't furnish a cite for it, feel free to ask if you want one.
'Big Government' as I use that term has its roots in the 'New Deal', circa 1933, spearheaded by Franklin Roosevelt.
quote:
Several New Deal programs remain active with some still operating under the original names, including the: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
The next major expansion of government was known as the 'Great Society', spearheaded by Lyndon Johnson circa 1964.
quote:
While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, and federal education funding, continue to the present.
Social Security, begun in 1935, is the first entitlement program for 'unemployables' as compared to 'make work' programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Entitlement programs swelled to massive size during the next 61 years, giving rise to the phrase 'the Welfare State'.
http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria14_3.html#welfare
quote:
Over the years, Congress added new programs. President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" provided major non-cash benefits to AFDC recipients as well as to other needy persons. In 1964, Congress approved a food stamp program for all low-income households. The next year, Congress created Medicaid, a federal and state funded health-care system for the destitute elderly, disabled persons, and AFDC families. In 1974, during the Nixon presidency, Congress established the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program to provide aid to the needy elderly, blind, and disabled. This program made up the last major component of the federal welfare system.
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By 1994, more of the nation's needy families, elderly, and disabled received federal welfare than ever before. Aid to Families with Dependent Children alone supported more than 14 million children and their parents.
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http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria14_3.html#work
Yes, I recognise that the Welfare to Work Program was spearheaded by Bill Clinton, circa 1990.
However, query how much goverment has shrunk because of Clinton's Program, as so many old entitlement programs still persist.
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To encourage the various states to participate, various federal programs provide assistance and funding for transportation, vocational training, child care, and substance abuse treatment assistance for welfare recipients.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare-to-work
So what has been the result of all this? The federal government increased in size between 1933 and the present by 462%.
Population increased during this same period by only 71%. At present, the federal government employs almost 3 million workers in a vast array of agencies and programs, most of which did not exist prior to 1930.
Examine an exerpt of an article on the topic circa 1974:
quote:
Seen from the perspective of the federal government alone, the statistics are no less dramatic and amply demonstrate the extraordinary expansion of federal services, especially in the last forty-five years.
• Roughly 78 per cent of all federal civilian jobs now in existence have been added since 1930. Approximately 30 per cent have been added since 1950.
• When George Washington took office in 1789, the nation’s population was estimated at 3.5 million; the bureaucracy numbered a mere 340. By 1974 the population had multiplied sixty times; the bureaucracy, 8,170 times.
• Between 1930 and 1950 the population increased by 23 per cent; the bureaucracy increased by 326 per cent.
• Between 1930 and 1974 the population grew by 71 per cent; the bureaucracy, by 462 per cent.
• At the present time there are 2,777,586 employees on the federal civilian payroll, or roughly one employee for every 77 persons in the population. This compares to one for every 375 in 1900 and one for 204 in 1930.
• Surprisingly, the ratio of federal employees to population in 1974 is about the same as in 1950, because the bureaucratic growth of 41 per cent was matched by a population increase of 39 per cent.
• The federal budget for the first two years of government, beginning in 1789, was $4.3 million, at a per capita cost of only $1.22. By 1930, when the budget reached $3.5 billion, the per capita cost was $28. In 1950 budget expenditures totalled $39 billion, at a per capita cost of $260.
• The proposed budget for fiscal 1975 is $304 billion, a figure roughly 8,950 times greater than the two-year budget for 1789-91. The per capita cost is approximately $1,500.
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1974/5/1974_5_65.shtml
quote:
The Republican Party's oft-stated affinity for smaller government has not applied during the Bush administration. According to a recent study, not only is the number of federal civil servants on the rise, but so are the numbers of employees working for government-funded contractors and for organizations that receive government grants. Roll all of those together -- and mix in the numbers of postal workers and military personnel on the federal payroll -- and the "true size" of the federal government stands at 14.6 million employees, said Paul C. Light, the study's author and a government professor at New York University.
That compares with 12.1 million employees in 2002, said Light, who has tracked the growth of government for years and has data for as far back as 1990. The latest increase is almost entirely due to contractors, whose ranks swelled by 2.5 million since 2002, Light wrote in his 10-page research brief.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501782.html
Acording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
quote:
Between 2006 and 2016, government employment, not including employment in public education and hospitals, is expected to increase by 4.8 percent, from 10.8 million to 11.3 million jobs.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm
So, what are the Evils of Big Government IMO? They are myriad; I plan to limit the Op to addressing the impact of this expansion of the poor, but many, many other aspects of Big Government could be examined and criticised just as harshly.
* Most people, and almost all politicians, are driven to maintain their jobs and increase their 'power base'. For politicos and government employees, this translates into expansion of government. Any government program no matter it's nature is difficult or impossible to eliminate or even reduce.
* Government workers and politicos who derive their employment or 'power base' from entitlement programs such as AFDC have a vested interest in expanding the client base: capturing as many people as possible as AFDC recipients and preventing as many as possble from departing the program.
* As a result, the poor have faced new and sometimes insurmountable obstacles in their efforts to move up to the middle class -- obstacles placed in their path by Big Government. The very design of entitlement programs such as AFDC broke apart families, detered marriage, undercut parental authority, and worst of all, prevented many recipients from forming an education and work ethic that would allow them to gain access to the middle class.
* Government programs that administered entitlement programs were riddled with irrationality, uneven client treatment, poor employee performance, and pockets of corruption. It isn't difficult to find news stories about welfare workers who embezzled from the government. The commonly-held belief that 'welfare queens' who had cannily sussed out various ways to increase their income is severely challeneged by extent of the corruption of welfare workers themselves.
* As the tax burden of government rose, resentment among the middle and upper classes towards the poor rose. I'm not saying there was no 'class-ism' in America prior to 1930, but it was vastly exacerbated by the time the 1990's rolled around.
What, IMO, should be done? The government -- most especially the federal government -- should be radically reduced in size, budget, total employees and permissible functions. The government should be scaled as far back as possble, so that it performs only 'true' governmental functions, such as protecting the borders and collecting the garbage.
candystripper
< Message edited by candystripper -- 6/27/2008 9:13:09 AM >
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The Evils of Big Gov't - 
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