“...the costs of government employment reach beyond the mere number of [employees].  A large number of government employees also means that a significant share of individuals are basically performing far less productive work than if they were in the private sector.  After all, in the private sector, greater productivity, creativity and efficiency get rewarded, while such incentives are distinctly lacking in the public sector.” – Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s “Small Business Survival Index 2006”

“Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody....” – Lawrence W. Reed, “Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy”

And let me add that government has nothing with which to pay anybody except what it first takes from somebody.

Every single government employee in our state -- the Governor, the legislators, everyone who works for the Department on Aging, the Administration Department’s Facilities Management Division and Printing Division and Budget Division and Personnel Services and Purchases Division, every employee of the Agriculture Department’s Grain Warehouse and Plant Protection and Weed Control Division and Weights and Measures Laboratory and Water Resources Programs, every clerk in the Attorney General’s Barber Examiners Board and Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board and Board of Accountancy, everyone who works at the Department of Commerce’s Ag Marketing Development Division and Community Development Division and Business Development Division and Commission on Disability and Film Services and Foreign Labor Certification and Small Cities CDBG Program – every single one of those people, and many, many more, are paid with money that has been taken away from someone.

When your small business produces a gadget I want to buy, and when I trade some of my money for the gadget, and when you take some of that money and pay your employee who assembled the gadget and use the rest of it to buy more equipment to make more gadgets, we are all enriched.  Our trade of money for gadget was mutually agreeable, your trade of money for your employee’s time and effort was consensual, and you willingly give money to the equipment manufacturer in exchange for more gadget-makers.  There are no losers there.

Taxes are another matter.  Few of us would argue with paying taxes for police protection and to hire people to build roads and lay sewers.  But when I open the telephone book to the blue-edged pages and see Correctional Industries – Federal Surplus Property, the Cosmetology Board, the Assistant Commissioner of Learning Services, the Deputy Commissioner of Fiscal and Administrative Services, Health and Environment Media Relations, Tobacco Use Prevention Program, Office of Injury and Disability Prevention, Health Care Stabilization Fund, Surface Maintenance Management Office, Kansas Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund, Kansas Development Finance Authority, Boiler Safety Unit, Board of Mortuary Arts, Auto Dealer and Salesperson Licenses, Disability Determination Services, Traveler Information, and the Transportation Department’s Bureau of Public Involvement – I realize that there is nothing consensual about the money I pay in taxes to support all the people represented here.

The Small Business Survival Index 2006, published in October 2006 by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, lists Kansas as 5th worst in the nation for the number of bureaucrats as a percentage of the state’s population.  At the time the report was printed, Kansas had 6.62 full-time-equivalent state and local government employees per 100 residents.  We were exceeded by only New Mexico (6.64), Alaska (7.79), the District of Columbia (8.35), and Wyoming (8.59). 

On December 27, 2006, an article by the Associated Press appeared in the Topeka Capital-Journal.  From November 2005 to November 2006, the number of government employees in Kansas grew by 2.3 percent, or 6,000 people.  There are now more than 266,000 government employees in Kansas.

According to my very hasty calculations, unless New Mexico and Alaska and Washington DC and Wyoming have hired a bunch more bureaucrats, we may very well now be in first place.

Or last place, depending on how you look at it.

-- END --

Sharon DuBois is the president of Senior Ease (www.seniorease.com), as well as the editor of KsSmallBiz.com.

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