Purge the Parasites

"From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers, and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew from Yale, and Docter Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine."
--Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby)

Jacob Hornberger observes that, despite fear-mongering to the contrary, laying off scores of federal workers would be very positive for the United States. The public sector is the parasitic sector. To thrive, it must attach itself to the private sector and suck resources from producers.

This results in capital consumption, because resources that could be set aside to invest in productivity improvement projects are devoured by the public sector. General standard of living is worse off because less output is generated per unit of input than would have been produced if those resources were invested in capital projects.

Moreover, people who could be engaged in producing output are instead consuming output when they are employed by the government.

Statists argue that government workers are engaged in productive work. But if that were the case, then they would support themselves rather than needing to confiscate the production of others. Moreover, we would not need to continually borrow ever more debt to fund ever growing government programs. If they were productive, then these programs would self fund.

The economic scoreboard, of course, indicates that this is not the case.

Do not fall for the Statist propaganda. As government gets smaller, wealth gets larger. Standard of living gets better.