Happy Cost of Government Day

For the last 7 1/2 months your labor has belonged to someone else – the state. You have slaved away for the majority of the year to pay for the bailouts, subsidies, vote buying, earmarks and redistribution schemes that make up the majority of spending by governments at all levels, in addition to the price of burdensome regulations. Today, August 19, is the day you have finally payed off your share of the cost of big government.

Every year, Americans for Tax Reform calculates Cost of Government Day, or how long it takes the average American to earn enough to pay off the financial burdens imposed by government. In 2010, it took 231 days of work. That’s 8 more than last year, and more than an extra month from 2008, before Obama took office.

The Cost of Government site provides a detailed breakdown, along with the full report by ATR. The report includes a lot of information, including a breakdown by state. The earliest COGD occurs in Alaska, while the latest is in Connecticut.

The factor which not as many people see, but is captured nonetheless by COGD, is the economic burden created by government regulation.

Not only are the federal bureaucrats enforcing these regulations excessively overpaid, but what they are paid to do also does harm to the economy. The average American works 74 days out of the year to make up for these dead-weight losses.

What will the cost of government be next year? If Congress returns for a lame-duck session to pass destructive cap-and-trade and card check legislation, you can bet that Cost of Government Day will arrive even later next year.