Happy Cost of Government Day 2010

Today is Cost of Government Day, a date on your calendar you probably won’t want to celebrate.

Americans for Tax Reform calculated the date Americans collectively have earned enough to pay for all government spending and regulations. This means the average person has to work 231 days, or 63% of the year, to pay his or her share of local, state, and federal spending and regulation.

Pennsylvania is below average. Workers in the Keystone state will have to wait until August 25 before we have enough to pay for the additional expenses of our local and state government.

• The state ranked 40th (1 being the least burdened) in the cost of government.
• In cumulative state tax increases from FY 2003-2010, the state ranked 14th, increasing taxes $1.3 billion, or $101.79 per capita.

In addition to enormous government spending, the report identified a surge in government employment as a key contributor to the cost of government. An additional 230,000 government jobs have been created since 2009, resulting in 24 million federal, state, and local government employees nationally.

August 19th is the latest Cost of Government Day on record. Two years ago it fell on July 16th. As the study points out, “We have lost an additional full month of our income to pay the cost of government in just the last two years.”