[Editorial] Consequences of Big Government

The incumbent administration that has added 48,499 public servants just for the central government over the past four years is planning to add another 12,317 public servants to its payroll this year, which is virtually the final year of President Roh’s tenure. The number of public servants, which reached 957,000 at the end of last year, is expected to surpass the one million mark in 2011, according to the government human resources management plan drawn up by the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs. The swelling size of the central government contrasts dramatically with the efforts of local governments, such as Seoul and Ulsan, which have adopted a layoff program to discipline and discharge incompetent and negligent officials.

Every time the government announces it will increase the number of public servants, it reiterates its goal of improving the quality of public services and solving the unemployment problem by adding public servants in the welfare service sector. However, this can alleviate unemployment only in the short term and will make the ailing economy become less efficient, reducing the total number of jobs in the long run. It is because of this that big government is prone to eroding the vitality of the private sector.

Although President Roh Moo-hyun says, “A big government is fine as long as it does its job,” there is no government in the world that is both big and efficient. Although the government says, “Korea is not a big government in relation to the population,” Korea has the 50th smallest government, bigger than those of the U.S. (17th), the U.K. (41st) and Japan (44th), according to “The Effects of Government Influence on the Activities of the Private Sector,” by the Fraser Institute in Canada.

Meanwhile, the government will also convert some 1,500 vocational counselors working for the job centers under the Ministry of Labor to public servants as part of its recruitment plan. This is because President Roh promised to provide job security for the counselors when he visited a job center in Busan last April. However, some suspect that Labor Minister Lee Sang-soo may have made a backdoor deal with the Korean Government Employees’ Union that was against converting them to public servants to help the president keep his word.

The most harmful consequence of having a big government is the tax burden. When the burden of property taxes recently increased, the deputy minister for economic affairs advised the public to sell their houses and move to cheaper areas rather than seeking public understanding. The Roh administration seems to have no sympathy for the public and businesses who suffer from the burden of mounting taxes.