Dead-weight Ratio - A Metric For Our Times.

The gut feeling you have that things are going wrong in society has never had a better measure than  that described by William Baldwin as the  Deadweight Ratio - the ratio of Government,semi-government employee and welfare recipient  numbers to those in the private sector.  It measures how many mouths each private sector worker has to feed and it is unsurprising that California is near the top of the list!

The structural problem is that government has too many mouths to feed. It’s possible to quantify that problem. The result is a metric that I call the Deadweight Ratio. It tells you how many beneficiaries of government spending there are for every private sector job.
Every state has one set of people contributing to the coffers­—namely, private sector workers—and another drawing from it—namely, government workers and welfare recipients. In healthy states, the contributors outnumber the users. In unhealthy states the reverse is true.

California is in trouble. For every 100 people employed in the private sector it has 113 people drawing benefits. A person working at Disney or Intel or a fast food franchise is carrying his own weight plus that of one other person—a teacher, say, or a Medicaid recipient or a retired prison guard.

Many factors contribute to California’s budget crisis. The state has a big university system, an influx of needy immigrants and an expansive notion of how involved the government should be in people’s lives.

Up to a point, the private sector is willing to carry government employees and welfare moms on its shoulders. Beyond that point, it is not, however worthy the recipients of government largesse are. Employers leave. The jobs go to other states or overseas. That leaves what’s left of the private sector in even worse shape.

Some figures from US states show a wide variance :        

		State & local
	Contributors	government	Medicaid	Deadweight
	workers	recipients	recipients	Ratio
	thousands	thousands	thousands
Mississippi	877	222	750	120.7
New Mexico	635	167	501	117.9
California	11918	2137	10511	113
Arkansas	973	199	692	98.9
Louisiana	1566	333	1097	98.6
Arizona	2045	363	1456	96.1
Maine	506	91	350	94.4
New York	7272	1387	4955	93.5
West Virginia	621	130	392	93
Alaska	244	69	121	91.2
Oklahoma	1253	291	719	90
Alabama	1541	329	919	89.7
Vermont	256	50	158	88.1
Tennessee	2257	388	1447	87.5
South Carolina	1509	308	892	86.4
Kentucky	1499	293	834	82.3
Michigan	3311	589	1856	79.6
Washington	2315	475	1163	78.4
Wyoming	216	67	78	77.1
North Carolina	3244	642	1646	77.1
Georgia	3271	570	1685	75.6
Delaware	357	60	185	73.9
Texas	8829	1684	4170	72.7
Idaho	497	108	213	71.7
Hawaii	505	93	217	70.7
Ohio	4365	713	2067	69.1
Massachusetts	2815	398	1403	68.6
Illinois	4890	774	2323	68.5
Missouri	2258	398	1002	68.2
Florida	6256	989	2842	66.6
Rhode Island	410	52	195	65.1
Oregon	1344	273	513	64.9
Indiana	2405	401	1023	64.4
Wisconsin	2348	399	990	64.2
South Dakota	335	68	123	64
Iowa	1241	242	470	63.1
Montana	351	77	111	61.2

Kansas	1092	238	353	61
Maryland	2162	367	753	59.9
Pennsylvania	5019	662	2090	59.4
Connecticut	1406	232	530	59.1
Minnesota	2255	388	786	57.2
Nebraska	795	154	241	55.7
Colorado	1900	344	554	53.3
North Dakota	313	73	69	53.1
Utah	1017	182	291	52.9
Virginia	3108	536	863	52.3
New Jersey	3296	582	954	51.9
New Hampshire	537	93	144	49.1
Nevada	982	138	247	43.5

Graphing these figures over the last few decades would be a real eye-opener!