Government isn't as big or as bad as many people think

A commentator on MPR the other day said something that bears some thought and action. Talking about the pending shutdown and refusal of the GOP to consider Gov. Mark Dayton's proposed tax increase on the wealthiest 2 percent — who are not now carrying their proportional burden — the nonpartisan commentator said he didn't think people were so opposed to the increase as they were just generally down on government as bloated and inefficient. In effect, they worry that the money simply would be wasted.

I think he is onto something. "Government is bad" has been a part of the national GOP litany for a long time, and perhaps we have simply absorbed it. Democrats and liberals have been so focused on the issue of the day that they haven't addressed this background belief, which ultimately makes progress on issues of the day impossible.

Take the size of government. A good measure of that is the number of federal employees. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the total number of executive branch employees — including postal workers and temporary census workers — stood at 2.94 million during President Richard Nixon's administration in 1970. That amounted to 14.4 federal workers for every 1,000 Americans. In 1982, during President Ronald Reagan's administration, the numbers were 2.77 million federal workers or 11.9 workers per 1,000 Americans. In 1990, the numbers were 3.06 million workers or 12.3 workers per 1,000 Americans.

The number of federal workers has declined steadily since. In 2010, the numbers were 2.65 million workers, or 8.4 workers per 1,000 Americans. So the federal government today employs fewer people than it did almost half a century ago. The number of federal workers per 1,000 Americans has declined by more than one-third over that period.

As for federal taxes, they have declined as a percentage of the American economy (measured by gross domestic product) from 18.2 percent during President Reagan's administration to 16.1 percent during President Obama's first term, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Measuring waste and inefficiency in government is more subjective. Finding an information source everyone would respect is difficult. Part of the problem, too, is that critics of government seem to take as a matter of belief that government is either so bad by nature that it cannot be efficient or that government should be, and can be, perfect. Neither extreme is realistic; the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

It is my belief that we have pretty good government, and that there is evidence available to build that case, and that we must begin building that case. Joseph Nye, a Harvard scholar and good guy (with Democratic leanings), wrote a volume in 1997 titled, "Why People Don't Trust Government." He made a survey of serious scholarly attempts to evaluate government and concluded, "There is ... little evidence to support the widespread impression that government inefficiency squanders huge amounts of money."

One issue is the amount of paperwork that government entails. The law of diminishing returns is at work there: Huge amounts of that paperwork are required as a consequence of laws Congress enacted to "improve" government or make it more efficient or prevent "fraud" and "abuse."

I think Democrats and liberals really need to begin work on building a pro-government case: That it is absolutely necessary; that it improves the life of the people of the United States dramatically; that indeed there is waste (and always will be, as in any corporate or family budget), but the waste is relatively small; and that we should take a serious look at all the paperwork required by "reform" and "fraud prevention" laws, with an eye to scaling it back.

We need to rebuild faith in government in order to get people to accept that we should enact taxes FOR government which at least pay for the services FROM government that reality requires, and that we want but now refuse to pay for.

I've written about the federal government here, but the same goes for state government.

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Jim Boyd is a retired Star Tribune editor who now lives in Grand Marais. He is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.

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