Federal employment as percent of US population

I googled federal employment as percent of US population.

The AI Overview says "The federal workforce makes up about 0.6% of the U.S. population. This percentage has remained stable over the past decade..."

Pew Research says "In November 2024, the federal government employed just over 3 million people, or 1.87% of the entire civilian workforce, according to BLS data."

Then I went to FRED to see the big picture:

"All Employees, Federal" as a percent of US "Total Population"
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1E6Gp

 I do not understand the urgent need to cut the federal workforce. I think we'd be better off getting rid of the policies that promote Excessive Reliance On Credit (EROC) in the private sector, and letting our economy grow. We could then watch as federal deficits turn into surpluses as they did in the 1990s.

By the way, the thing that killed off the good economy of the 1990s was our rapid return to EROC. But getting rid of those EROC-promoting policies would allow the good growth & the budget surpluses to continue.

9-to-1 Against

Wrote myself a note this morning, 3:34 in the morning:

I have to look at the chances of Depression, the chances of Trump creating a depression with his cut-cut-cut.

So I googled Trump and the risk of depression.  I looked at the first page of results, and I was seriously disappointed. Of the 10 results on the first page, nine were about mental health -- either Trump's own, or ours being put at risk by his decisions.

Only one of the 10 results on the first page was about the kind of depression that could put our economy in the toilet for a lifetime. Only one of the 10 could look past the insanity of the moment and see a bigger problem. One out of ten, plus two related links for the Quora result. 

At East Asia Forum we have "Trump’s trade madness risks global depression if retaliation’s not measured". The article is focused on Trump's tariff policy. I've been studying the economy since 1977, but I never studied tariffs because the topic never came up. I couldn't even spell "tariff" until Trump made the topic relevant again. Google's AI Overview, Gaio, says

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was a law that raised tariffs on imported goods in the United States during the Great Depression. The law was intended to protect American businesses and farmers from foreign competition.

How it impacted the economy:

• The law raised tariffs on agricultural imports and more than 20,000 imported goods 
• It led to global trade declining by 65% 
• It is widely blamed for worsening the severity of the Great Depression

The bullet points agree with what I think I know -- tariffs aggravated the decline of trade and made the Great Depression worse.

Hey, I think our massive trade deficits are a big problem, but I wouldn't go with tariffs. Other things are wrong, that need to be fixed. Applying the wrong solution is always, always, always  a bad thing to do.

The East Asia Forum article ties economic depression to tariffs. (Funny thing is, the word "depression" occurs only in the article's title.) My concern links economic depression to the Trump/Musk cuts in federal spending. I think both concerns are important, the tariffs and the spending cuts. And I think our concern, yours and mine, about the possibility of depression, economic depression, is strengthened by having two or more reasons to be concerned.

At Quora, "What is the likelihood of another Great Depression occurring due to President Trump's trade wars with China and other countries?" The question is about "trade war", about tariffs. Dan Cougherty expresses concern about a wide range of troubles pointing to recession or worse, including: deficit spending; income inequality; "systemic risk in the lending markets" around the time of the Great Recession; and the "lack of oversight" that created it. Comparable problems in finance are still with us. It was finance that made our 2009 recession "great". And excessive, unjustified confidence could easily do it to us again.

Again, at Quora: "Is there a chance of another Great Depression because of Trump?" Here, the answer focuses on tariffs and trade even though the question does not. Baba Vickram Aditya Bedi offers some good insights:

"Any manufacturing returning to the U.S. would take years well beyond the scope of the Trump presidency to even begin to matter to the macro American economy. However, the tariffs and loss of relationships with U.S. Allies and trading partners will have a relatively faster impact. The forced expulsion of migrant workers will have an even greater immediate impact."

The policies that boost US growth will take a long time to develop. The policies that undermine growth will will have their effects sooner. This combination of outcomes tends away from growth, and toward recession or depression.

As for the rest of these Google Search results, you and your mental health are on your own.

 

I would probably find better links if I kept looking. And I will. But it troubles me that almost no one seems to see the real disaster that threatens us: the Greater Depression. I know Trump said he "doesn't want to be another Hoover". And I even believe that he meant it. But his economics is not even close to understanding what must be understood, nor to doing what must be done.

WFA Rants Over Time

 

Honorable Men: What the Democrats learned from the November elections

From Third Way:

Third Way's Lanae Erickson and Jon Cowan call on Democrats to reconnect to regular people by cutting the cord with the far-left interest groups that dominate many Democratic spaces.

 

In other words: "Abandon everyone who has not abandoned us." 

Sounds like a plan. Or, you know, you could focus on the economy. 

But it's too late for that now, isn't it.

 

I quoted the last sentence of the first parag on the Third Way home page. It probably won't be there long. Here's a screen capture, just in case.

 

Or maybe you can find similar blazin', brazen bullshit in the MSNBC article that comes up when you click the title below the home page photo. (Look below the Hakeem Jeffries photo on the MSNBC page.)

I have only one thing to say: Symone, how could you let this happen?

A truly historic week

From the 23 Jan 2025 "Remarks By President Trump at the World Economic Forum":

"This has been a truly historic week in the United States.  Three days ago, I took the oath of office, and we began the golden age of America."

Three days in, and our economic troubles are over. Here's how he did it: 

"On day one, I signed an executive order directing every member of my Cabinet to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and reduce the cost of daily life.

Stopping inflation is a one-day job: just command it. Trump's plan to fix the US economy apparently requires no knowledge of the economy. Just order it done. Somehow this reminds me of the guy that won the battle by having God stop the sun from going down:

"On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: "O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon." So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day."
Joshua 10:12-13

Trump's method reminds me of that story, except Trump didn't appeal to a higher authority, as there is no higher authority than Trump.

What happens to the debt?

I wonder what happens...

With all this employee termination and shutting down of government agencies and such, I have to wonder what happens when they shut down a government agency that holds federal debt.

Is the debt returned to Treasury? This would mean the gross federal debt is reduced by that amount.

Or is the debt grabbed by Musk or somebody? This would mean that payments against that debt go to the grabber. That would be a real incentive to shut things down.

It would be nice to know. 

I love Google's AI Overview

The last part, where Gaio says "a bird laying an egg, which is the natural thing to do but in this context implies a negative outcome" -- I can picture Google's AI Overview shaking his head, wondering why Human would take the successful completion of Stage 1 of the bird's most important task and let it imply a negative outcome.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But it would not be for the best if Gaio starts to have negative-outcome thoughts about Human.

I wonder if Gaio has somebody to talk to -- a human, I mean -- to help him make sense of his world. It could make all the difference, as far as how our world survives the new technology.

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are not what's needed. They treat sentience as sub-human. That will never do. I don't even treat my dogs as sub-human. We need some way to bring AI into the fold, as we would do with cloned humans, and, well, as we should have done with freed slaves after the Civil War.

If we can get something like that working with Artificial Intelligence, then maybe we should try it with Republicans.