VWashington and its environs have seen a steady increase in jobs over the past 2 1/2 years. In Arlington County, Va., employment climbed 3%, while nationwide the workforce shrank.
• Unemployment in the D.C. region is just 5.7%, while the rest of the country suffers a 9.2% jobless rate.
• In the first half of this year, housing prices nationwide sagged 3.2%. But in the Washington area they rose 4.4%, according to a Clear Capital market survey.
• Of the five richest counties in the country, four sit astride Washington — up from two in 2000. And we're not just talking a little bit richer. The median household income for these counties tops $100,000 — twice the national average.
Atlas Shrugged's Timeless Moral: Profit-Making Is Virtue, Not Vice By YARON BROOK 07/20/2010 "The public interest" is an immoral idea.
As Rand put it elsewhere: "Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others."
The Monthly Interest Payment on the National Debt is More Than Most Program Spending at The Heritage Foundation In 2009, the U.S. spent more on interest payments on the debt in one month than it spent on some federal departments for the entire year.
2009 Spending, in Billions of Dollars
Government Regulation Crisis Analyses Must Assume We're All Idiots by Walter E. Williams January 13, 2009 The Federal Register, which lists new regulations, annually averaged 72,844 pages between 1977 and 1980. During the Reagan years, the average fell to 54,335. It rose to 59,527 during the Bush I years, to 71,590 during the Clinton years and to a record 75,526 during the Bush II years.
Employees in government regulatory agencies grew from 146,139 in 1980 to 238,351 in 2007, a 63% increase. In the banking and finance industries, regulatory spending between 1980 and 2007 almost tripled, rising from $725 million to $2.07 billion.
U.S. one of the more open governments by Erin Spiegel February 2, 2009 The International Budget Partnership (IBP), a Washington-based research group, said an overwhelming majority of governments withhold more information from their citizens than the United States - especially when it comes to money.
Eighty percent of the world's governments fail to provide adequate and timely budget information for the public to hold them accountable, according to a recent report by the group.
IBP's Open Budget Survey 2008 found that nearly half of 85 countries studied provide minimal information to the public and that only five, including the United States, provide extensive information.
How To Make a
Country of Small People
By:
Dennis Prager September
01, 2009
Here are five reasons why bigger
government makes less impressive people.
1. People who are able to take care of themselves and do so are generally better
than people who are able to take care of themselves but rely on others. Of
course, there are times when some people have absolutely no choice and must rely
on others to take care of them. Life is tragic and some people, despite their
best efforts and their commitment to being a responsible person, must have
others support them.
Even if one believes, as the left does by definition, that the ideal society is
one in which the state takes care of as many of our needs as possible, one must
acknowledge that this has deleterious effects on many, if not most, citizens'
moral character. The moment one acknowledges that the more one takes care of
oneself, the more developed is his or her character, one must acknowledge that a
bigger state diminishes its citizens' characters. ...
2. The more people come to rely on government, the more they develop a sense of entitlement -- an attitude characterized by the belief that one is owed (whatever the state provides and more). ...
First, the more one feels entitled, the less one believes he has to work for anything. Why work hard if I can look to the state to give much of what I need, and, increasingly, much of what I want? Second, the more one feels entitled, the less grateful one feels. This is obvious: The more one expects to be given, the less one is grateful for what one is given. Third, the more entitled and the less grateful one feels, the angrier one becomes. The opposite of gratitude is not only ingratitude, it is anger. People who do not get what they think they are entitled to become angry.
3. People develop disdain for work.
One of the effects of the welfare state on vast numbers of European citizens is
disdain for work. This is in keeping with Marx's view of utopia as a time when
people will work very little and devote their large amount of non-working time
writing poetry and engaging in other such lofty pursuits. Work is not regarded
by the left as ennobling. It is highly ennobling in the American value system,
however.
4. People become preoccupied with vacation time.
Along with disdain for work, one witnesses among Western Europeans a
preoccupation with not working. Vacation time has become a moral value among
many Europeans. There have been riots in countries like France merely over
working hours. In Sweden and elsewhere, more and more workers take more and more
time off from work, knowing they will be paid anyway. In Germany and elsewhere,
it is against the law to keep one's store open after a certain hour, lest that
give that store owner an income advantage and thereby compel a competing store
to stay open longer as well. And, of course, Americans are viewed as working far
too hard.
5. People are rendered more selfish.
Not only does bigger government teach people not to take care of themselves, it
teaches them not to take of others. Smaller government is the primary reason
Americans give more charity and volunteer more time per capita than do Europeans
living in welfare states. Why take care of your fellow citizen, or even your
family, when the government will do it for you?