On shrinking government

As a onetime member of [state] government “human workforce” who became a budget cut 15 yrs ago—and spent over 7 months unemployed thereafter—a couple things I think of every time I see comments about needing to ‘cut government’ like a recent Post headline on “Elon Musk’s ultimate goal” to replace people with machines:

Never forget that when people talk about “shrinking government” those are real people—with families, rent, and student loans—they want to discard.
Not for nothing, those real people and their families (and, yes, their landlords and loan payments, too) are also a major part of the economy, not just in & around DC but across the entire country. The US Federal Government is the largest single employer in the world, and state and/or local governments are the largest employers in many areas. Those employees buy things, from eggs to washing machines to houses.

I’m no economist—honestly, I took ECON 101 25 years ago and that’s about it—but it doesn’t seem like it takes a PhD to realize shrinking government, in a very real way, will shrink our economy.

(Also, a reminder that government employees get to go on unemployment just like anyone else who gets laid off…which means this mess is about to be flooding not only job markets but unemployment lines, again.)

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@online{swiderski2025,
  author = {Swiderski, J. I.},
  title = {On Shrinking Government},
  date = {2025-02-14},
  url = {https://jski.net/posts/on-shrinking-govt.html},
  langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Swiderski, J. I. 2025. “On Shrinking Government.” February 14, 2025. https://jski.net/posts/on-shrinking-govt.html.