How long before the parasite consumes the host?

Obama claims his stimulus is "creating or saving" X number of jobs, but when you look at the new "jobs" being created, almost all of them are in the public sector. That's not sustainable. The public sector is in a parasitic relationship to the private sector, which is the only sector capable of creating wealth rather than consuming it. Creating more public-sector jobs while private sector job growth is flat or negative is a bit like eating your seed corn.

Unfortunately, the problem is not confined to the Obama administration. This NYT piece shows that virtually no private-sector jobs have been created since 1999. The only job growth has come in the government sector. Only 121,000 private-sector jobs have been added in the last 10 years (for an annual growth rate of 0.01 percent in a universe of 109 million such jobs).

Can you see the problem here? The government has no money or resources of its own except for what it takes by force from people in the private sector. Government growth can be sustained if the private sector is also growing, preferably growing faster. One could argue that was happening during the Reagan and much of the Clinton years. But having government grow faster than the private sector on which it depends is inherently unsustainable.

Our empire may be in the process of suffering a slow implosion -- or maybe not so slow.