Rush Limbaugh Say Police, Fire-Fighters,Teachers ‘Do Not Grow The Economy’ Do You Agree? (VIDEO)

Thanks for clarifying, but if you confine the analysis specifically to public servants such as postal workers, Teachers, policemen, and firefighters, then the analysis does not hold up in most communities. The pensions for teachers, police, and firefighters are not that large, and don't even make up the income discrepancy quite often. Most of the overpaid bureaucrats, are agency members in patronage positions of government regulatory agencies or other parts of the bureaucracy, such as the SEC, EPA, CDC, FCC, IRS... We could cut the spending greatly, whist reducing the amount of corrupt policies coming to bear, by doing nothing other than simply replacing those who are there for no reason other than the politics of their patrons, with people who are actual experts in the field, who'll be happy to work for the pay the position actually warrants, but God forbid an actual environmental scientist ever be let into the EPA's policy making process. Or any experts be allowed to run these agencies rather than friends of politicians for that matter; it's not like these agencies were created to allow for politicians to have expert advice in policy making... Oh wait a minute...

My point is, patronage positions and redundant bureaucracies produce ALMOST ALL of the jobs which even approach, much less exceed the average take of the private sector income, and they skew the average to be such that Government employees make more than the private sector on average. So why are the people who allegedly want to gut all these patronage jobs... going after police, teachers, and firefighters, instead of going after said patronage jobs when it comes to economic crunch time? Because at the end of the day, most firefighters, teachers, and policemen getting discharged only increase the margin by which the government sector out-earns the private sector.

They two kinda have to emerge simultaneously. If the economy emerges without the police force growing with it, organized crime fills in the void and the introduction of adequate police forces becomes irrelevant(or they end up fighting an uphill battle), but if the police force is hired, without adequate support, there is no guarantee the jobs to support it will come. A planned community needs to provide both in the initial stages of development, and police forces need to be expanded as the population and economy expand. The relationship is cyclical. The economic support endows the public servants, but the public servants facilitate a safe environment for the economic support, so you're right on the causality. I guess my entire point is it's a symbiotic relationship. It's true that places that have not been hurt as bad have not fired their civil servants, but also, places which refused to cut down on the number of policemen, teachers, and firefighters, when things got rough are the places which got more job growth when things picked back up... Cities that didn't cut back are in debt now, but many of them are now paying it off, while those who cut back in order to avoid excess debt are in debt anyway, unable to hire enough civil servants, and without enough jobs to provide a tax base.

There are lots of other factors to consider as well. Upbringing and work ethic, the sort of home life people have. These things affect crime rates, learning retention, and even how often fires happen(accidents and arson alike), so when both parents are having to work more than 60 hours a weak to support the household they aren't around enough to instill either morality or work ethic. Now you'd think they'd learn it by example but just as many children will come to despise work as something that divides families, which is part of the reason(admittedly a small part of the reason for most) why many people are flat out refusing to work for minimum wage, they want something they can live on with 60 hours a week being the total workload of the household, not the average, which is more likely to be the case, seeing where jobs are going as of late. But all of those are separate discussions, and they ultimately point back to the economy. One can argue that the family is the basic unit of the economy. So an economy that does not provide for the well being of families will be a weak one.