A nation of takers …

Need good fodder for discussion at tonight's cocktail party or Sunday's BBQ? Here's a topic I highly recommend, especially to those of you who might be seeing legislators in Carson City.

Stephen Moore in the WSJ writes:

"If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government."

You can see the whole story here. But, of course, anyone can see the real-life whole story by just looking around at public employees who retire in their 50s at near 100% of their working pay with completely paid-for health-care.

It's crunch time, ladies and gentlemen. Either things get back in balance or the entire unsustainable system falls over.