The United States of Ponzi

OK, the title of this little opinion piece - "the United States of Ponzi" - is not exactly fair.
To Ponzi.
First, some of my beloved history. In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi was convicted of running what we now have come to call a "Ponzi scheme,'' although he didn't invent it. Simply put, a Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation in which investors are recruited to put up money in expectation of some phenominal return on that investment, a return that is paid out from the money of subsequent investors who are recruited to put up more money. Nothing is earned or produced; it's simply money changing hands - with a considerable amount skimmed off the top for the guy organizing the scheme - until eventually either the originator skips town with the bulk of the money or finally the scheme collapses because it is unsustainable and the scheme implodes (and law enforcement arrives, as in the case of Bernie Madoff).
Another version of the Ponzi is a pyramid, although experts would say while there are similarities, there are also significant differences. For example, in a Ponzi, one man does all the recruiting, while in a pyramid scheme everyone who is recruited becomes a recruiter, because the fastest way to a profit is to bring in new people, from whom you earn a percentage of the profit they make from the people they recruit, and so on and so on.
A Ponzi scheme claims to be paying off on a return from an existing investment, while a pyramid explicitly claims that money is made from new recruits who buy into the pyramid.
And a pyramid scheme will typically collapse much faster because it requires exponential increases in participants to sustain it, while a Ponzi scheme can survive by persuading existing participants to simply "reinvest'' the money they've already "made,'' eliminating the need for new participants.
What's the point?
Perhaps you read or heard, as I did, that today in the United States there are nearly twice as many people working for the government than in all of manufacturing. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, famring, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.
That's scary.
It's scary because the people that work for the government don't really produce anything. Oh, they produce services, but they are not services that are offered on the free market. They are services that are primarily paid for through taxes, meaning whether the services are good or not, efficient or not, necessary or not, they are still paid for.
In a free enterprise system, someone providing inefficient or unecessary or unwanted services or products would not be expected to expand their business and hire new people, and certainly not reward that expanding employee base with yearly raises.
It strikes me as a scheme, kind of like a pyramid. More and more people are brought in, and are rewarded by being paid from money that they pay back into the government through taxes. Except, of course, there isn't enough money collected to pay all those workers, so more money has to be collected from non-participants, which often causes those non-participants in the government pyramid to suffer to the point that they need to go to work for the government.
But at some point, not producing goods means the pyramid will collapse. In 1960 there were twice as many people in manufacturing in this country than in government service. But we have moved from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Instead of taxes going to make life better for all, more and more of our taxes are going to pay for government employees, who perform services in a non-competitive arena which produces little income and apparently no profit (given the current level of governmental debt).
Is it any wonder that so many states and cities are having trouble paying their bills?
I read where every state in America today except for Indiana and Wisconsin has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Wyoming and New Mexico lead the way, with more than six government workers for every worker involved in manufacturing.
Somewhere along the way, we've forgotten that government is only supposed to do those things that we can't do for ourselves. Government is supposed to provide for the common defense, enforce the law, and respond to disaster. But over time, we've come to think that government is supposed to take care of us - feed us, clothe us, educate us, make people like us, make us successful, fulfill our dreams for us.
That pyramid that appears on the one dollar bill, that is one of the symbols of our country?
The pyramid is supposed to represent strength and durability. And it is uncapped to suggest that the country  isn't finished, and the "eye'' is supposed to represent the "Eye of Providence,'' or God - just as the Latin motto over the symbol "ANNUIT COEPTIS" means "God has favored our undertaking.''
It wasn't supposed to represent a scheme.