Seattle Parasite-To-Resident Ratio

In SEATTLE, the parasite-to-resident ratio (public-sector workers per population) is one to 56. To give you an idea of how big a government workforce Seattle labors under consider the bankrupt Detroit, at one to 61. I find this a remarkable statistic for Seattle. What it tells me is that despite the drag that is “the Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector”—an oink sector, in places, comparable to Detroit’s—there are other variables even more powerful, which, against all odds, overcome the economic drag imposed by the unproductive, “public” sector.

Washington State’s prosperity is a function of the quality of the state’s productive sector. The state attracts a highly productive cognitive elite that works in the high-tech industries of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and other great companies.

Public sector workers, of course, are net wealth consumers; they do not produce wealth. They do vote themselves exorbitant salaries (averaging $81,488 in Seattle) on the backs of the productive (one of whom is my own).

A breakdown of parasite-to-resident ratios in other cities, many worse than Detroit, is courtesy of EPJ (read my weekly column, also on the Economic Policy Journal).