Why I'm So Tired

Ugh. This data is somewhat obnoxiously wrong.

- The federal gov't employs ~2.8 million people, not 29 million [1].

- State and local gov'ts employ ~17 million, half of which are education (a little ~6 million are elementary and secondary) [2].

- Let me also note that the topline figure is about ~150 million jobs [1]. I have no idea where he cuts out the retired and young from.

Very quippy; very tantalizing to ideologues; very empirically inaccurate.

Ugh.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm [2] http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/10stlus.txt

Cute. But I would like to see a dynamically updating breakdown of all countries, for comparison, of all this data. Sadly, what governments publish may not be factual.

Old... US population is at 307 million now... but still interesting.

This brings me back to 1997...