(2019), but also this is an opinion piece that makes a lot of claims without any evidence beyond the libertarian ideology of its author.
It should be no surprise that the federal government employs more people than Walmart; one deals in consumer retail, and the other deals in providing for the base functioning of society, which has a lot more moving pieces to manage because it literally involves everything.
>"Government needs to be nimble rather than creating perverse incentives for higher compensation for work that could be done in more productive sectors of the economy."
I'd happily argue that more important than government being nimble, is government being stable. Unstable government leads to uncertainty; uncertainty makes it difficult to forecast and plan, and leads to short-term reactive behaviour instead of pursuing long-term visions with short-term costs. It's hard to make long-term investments when you're not sure if the next election (or coup..) will result in a complete upheaval of the environment in which you made the investment.
>"Government is a neutral party to uphold contracts and ensure general public safety."
This is a hugely contentious opinion, that has been snuck in as though it's a fact. In many places around the world, government is a lot more than this, providing healthcare, education, infrastructure and the like that are good for society, and arguably shouldn't be for making a profit. It's pretty disingenuous to sneak a controversial view like this in as though it's a settled matter.
I'm not sure if you're saying this is a good thing or bad thing. I've worked closely with police and military and the front line folks of these and similar "operational" departments should be the least of people's concerns with respect to government spending imo. Like much of the rest of government and the broader public sector, its the growth of the administrative layers that's where the real waste is occurring. Money that could provide more front line services that could be valuable is instead going in to administrating them.
I just checked because I'm more familiar with Canada, eg [0] where senior military officers have grown in number while number of members have fallen, and I see that the US actually has caps on number of generals that have prevented the same growth.
The figure includes nearly 2.1 million federal employees, 4.1 million contract employees, 1.2 million grant employees, 1.3 million active duty military personnel, and more than 500,000 postal service employees.
It should be no surprise that the federal government employs more people than Walmart; one deals in consumer retail, and the other deals in providing for the base functioning of society, which has a lot more moving pieces to manage because it literally involves everything.
>"Government needs to be nimble rather than creating perverse incentives for higher compensation for work that could be done in more productive sectors of the economy."
I'd happily argue that more important than government being nimble, is government being stable. Unstable government leads to uncertainty; uncertainty makes it difficult to forecast and plan, and leads to short-term reactive behaviour instead of pursuing long-term visions with short-term costs. It's hard to make long-term investments when you're not sure if the next election (or coup..) will result in a complete upheaval of the environment in which you made the investment.
>"Government is a neutral party to uphold contracts and ensure general public safety."
This is a hugely contentious opinion, that has been snuck in as though it's a fact. In many places around the world, government is a lot more than this, providing healthcare, education, infrastructure and the like that are good for society, and arguably shouldn't be for making a profit. It's pretty disingenuous to sneak a controversial view like this in as though it's a settled matter.