Public Employees

The current economic crisis happened in the private sector, and it is the public sector that is now being blamed. The public and service sectors employees are not big government. Administrations come and go. Public sector employees are both underpaid and under appreciated. They are the unsung heroes who provide the necessary services for all of us. These courageous people go to work no matter who is in office.

The troubles of this economic crisis as seen by conservative economists are a mater of faith and not of science. They accept a market independent of moral responsibility as an unquestioned article of this faith. Failures in the speculation of investments in financial institutions and in market shares of corporate investors can never be questioned. The problem according to this cult does not rest with housing bubbles, ponzi schemes, junk bounds, and stock market jitters. We go from one financial scandal; economic collapse and stagnation to another requiring direct government intervention at least once a decade. Remember 2001 and then again 2008. This has been happening in Britain sense before 1800 and in the US sense before the Civil War. The Great Depression of the 1870's is an example.

Majority of people with retirement accounts, educational accounts and other small investors provide "share capital" to financial companies with little influence on corporate decisions. Profit is the main motivation, not social responsibility, for the corporate CEO's. The philosophies of "no economic reward without social responsibility and no profit without participation in the welfare of the community and people in the community especially the poor", is replaced by maximizing profit with no moral responsibilities to the poor of the planet. With the bail outs and the larger financial and industrial corporations being too large to fail are rewarded for taking risks and yet are constantly protected by government intervention from losses because of these risks. These constant bailouts have to be financed by taxpayers to limit wider economic fallout affecting ordinary workers who did nothing wrong but bear full responsibility for economic crisis. So capitalism is constantly protected from destroying the social capital on which it depends.. Shareholders pursue personal wealth with little wisdom of the lives of people on whose backs wealth is generated, "the poor". Senior management has negligible respect for the grinding poverty of those who create their wealth. Karl Polanyi you were right.

Tell some federal, state, county or city employee, dog tired, over worked and underpaid providing the necessary services for our very survival about your concern about big government. Thanks the gratitude.