Just kidding. They're expanding, of course.
Even Arnie, down in California, is ordering that state employees be furloughed 2 days a month. Caterpillar's slashing jobs. So's Micro$oft. The feds?
WASHINGTON — Companies are cutting jobs by the tens of thousands. State and local governments are penny-pinching, too. So what about Uncle Sam? Tough times for him as well?
Not exactly.
In fact the number of federal workers is on the rise.
That might seem strange to the 11 million people in the U.S. who are out of work — and the millions more who fear they soon will be. Shouldn’t Washington pare down too?
But it is unlikely that President Barack Obama will put any of the nearly 2 million federal civil servants out in the street in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. His proposed $800-plus billion economic aid plan, which includes heavy spending on public works, is expected to increase the ranks of federal workers, although mostly at the state and local level.
Obama is calling American workers to public service and has said he wants to ‘make government cool again.’
Some view federal jobs as a great stabilizer, and so an increase is good news. It is good news, if the goal is to increase the size of government and to bring ever more features of private enterprise under governmental control. If there is one unassailable truism in this world, it is this: governments expand.
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