Are There More Government Workers or Manufacturers in the United States?

Are there more people employed in the U.S. as manufacturing workers or as government employees? A good question, and one I probably couldn't have answered until today. The Fabius Maximus Blog has an interesting graphic for us that shows a disturbing trend. Look at it, then come back and finish reading. I'll wait. (They won't let me show it here.)

See the graph.


I don't have any brilliant analysis for you (I'm a medievalist and won't try to be an economist) but this is shocking to me. I would rather see Americans building things than working as bureaucrats, paying their own salary with ingenuity instead of with our taxes.

What do you think? Should we cry "communism" or embrace it as progress? Notice the quickly rising red line indicating the way government jobs have grown, in ten years will the red line be twice as high as the blue line on a chart like this? When does it stop, and what happens when the government grows until it can't grow anymore? Maybe I shouldn't think about stuff like this.

Discuss. What does it say, to you?