The point I was making is that the actions of the elite in this country do not indicate that the government is good at producing high quality goods and services. Do you think that any of the students at Mount Holyoke ever went to government run day care? Barely 1/2 of them even attended public secondary schools. All of the students believe that the private sector provides a better education. I also point out that the government cannot even produce a civil service job that they want.

What the students at Mount Holyoke want is to be in charge of the government as elected officials, staffers (where fewer government rules apply), or as members of the NGO ruling class. I would also guess that every few graduates of Mount Holyoke will ever send their children to public schools.

However you said true government was just, “limited scope, authority over people, enforcing laws, and defending the nation and its interests from our adversaries.” Again however the debate as to what services the government provides versus if government should provide any services at all was pretty much finished (rightfully so I believe) in the mid-to-late 19th century.

If you mean that people believe government should be more than minimally interventionist in people’s lives, yes, I agree — while the modern welfare state was mainly set up by FDR (involving the federal government where formerly state and local government only were permitted to tread), its roots go back to the aftermath of the industrial (and scientific) revolution of the mid-nineteenth century as well as related events of the time such as urbanization.

Is government good when it pre-emptively invades a country halfway around the world based upon false premises?

Is government good when it allows SWAT teams to kick down the doors to people’s houses and injure or kill innocent people in order to pursue a failed drug prohibition policy?

Is government good when it recklessly spends more money than it takes in, putting our country further and further into debt?

Is government good when it ignores the Bill of Rights and our basic civil liberties in order to give us more “security”?

Government is power. Arguing that “government is good” is equivalent to arguing that “power is good.” Sure it’s good…if you’re the one wielding the power. It’s not so good for those whose rights are trampled by that power.

As I said, most of the federal government are federal contractors (66% by your numbers) and the proportion keeps getting bigger. I’m not sure where you are going with this screed, but I know more contractors who would rather be civil servants than the other way around.

If you look at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501782.html
you will see that there are about 2 million civil servants, 2 million non-career government employees, and about 7.6 million contractors.

I would guess that you may find a few Mount Holyoke graduates going consulting work for the government as contractors but you will probably not find any in that 2 million civil servant number.

What level of government should do things is another area of debate. However you said true government was just, “limited scope, authority over people, enforcing laws, and defending the nation and its interests from our adversaries.” Again however the debate as to what services the government provides versus if government should provide any services at all was pretty much finished (rightfully so I believe) in the mid-to-late 19th century.

Do you have any idea how many civil service jobs there are? Practically all of the federal government is filled with contractors not civil servants.

government services

State and local (municipal and county), rather than federal, used to be the rule.

People overwhelming settled on wanting some level of government services over 100 years ago

(Yes, some — public schooling and other public services that later were sought by the Progressives, such as public baths for the masses.)

However, my guess is that anyone attending a Mount Holyoke reunion who has a government job would be seen as a complete failure and a total loser.

The debate about providing basic services stretches back to the mid-to-late 19th century across both this continent and Europe. It wasn’t something hatched in isolation in the brain of FDR. People overwhelming settled on wanting some level of government services over 100 years ago (that’s before TR much less FDR) because the private sector was not cutting it in a lot of areas. It is legitimate to argue what services the government should be involved in and which they should not, or to what degree they should be involved in. This isn’t some novel political theory position. You apparently are of the mindset that no service should be done by the government. That’s a fine position, but one that would be in the minority even among a gathering of libertarians.

Finding the proper balance of government and private services needs to begin with acknowledging the positive as well as negative aspects of both.

Do you see what you’re doing? You are beginning under the assumption that government, or the purpose of government, should be a service agency rather than a true government (with limited scope, authority over people, enforcing laws, and defending the nation and its interests from our adversaries).

(Welcome to the modern welfare state. Thanks, FDR.)

I also would be willing to bet that most of Dr Amy’s students attended attended private schools. The PrincetonReview indicates that 40% of entering freshman at Mount Holyoke attended private high schools.

What else would you expect from a professor who works at a private, elite university.

Something less pathetic than “Government Is Good” [b-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!], that’s for certain! Something like this is what I’d expect from New Deal dinosaur (now the late) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., or a heavily-political northeastern liberal “economist” like Dem Party hack Paul Krugman. (Both Schlesinger and a different northeastern “economist” were militant opponents of any hints at federal reform after the 1994 elections and opposed any balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, for example.)

Prof. Amy’s proportional representation library is actually quite good. (I bought the earlier edition of his book on proportional representation back in the early 1990s.)

He’s a classic liberal college professor — identifying himself and others like him with that much-misapplied word in such cases, “progressive.”

No wonder his new site was selected here on the Moderate [sic] Voice. *chuckle*

What else would you expect from a professor who works at a private, elite university. All of his students are ones who believe that the private sector is worth paying much more for than then public sector alternative. Yet, all of his students are taught that the government is great at producing good and services for the public.

He has an on-line library on the subject here.