195.
That's how many countries are recognized by the UN in 2022; divided between them are almost 8 billion people. That's a huge number of humans to spread around, the majority of whom live in poverty, suffering from hunger, disease, and deprivation... nearly 5 billion people don't have indoor plumbing!
But nearly 24 million residents of planet earth can be found living very comfortable lives in safe and well protected places called government workforces; over 4 million people are employed by the federal government alone.
To put that into perspective, the number of people employed by governments in America... local, state, and federal, surpasses the total population of 140 other countries. The federal government employs more people than the total population of 67 sovereign nations. The annual federal payroll is $136 billion... only 59 countries have a GDP larger than that!
Many of those places have food shortages... large numbers of needy, impoverished people line up for hours to receive meager handouts of the most basic staples. Afterwards, they return to places called home, hovels with no floors, no running water, and no toilets... they must relieve themselves in the bushes. Crime is rampant and murders are plentiful; many people are poorly educated, sick, malnourished, and hopeless.
Sadly, that's the fate of those born in third world countries... but wait! The former paragraph describes the lives of far too many people living right here in America.
Food banks are finding it difficult to keep up with the needs of a growing number of people reduced to poverty by ever-increasing inflation. Countless people are homeless, mentally ill, and addicted, many to opioids, including fentanyl, which continues to flow across an open border... it's estimated that in America today, there's enough fentanyl to kill the entire population of the country 7 times over!
The solutions to every one of those problems... and a whole lot more, are the responsibility of government... local, state, and federal. And yet, the problems only seem to get worse. Why? Well, according to politicians, all of America's woes can be attributed to a single culprit: There aren't enough government employees.
But have no fear, that's about to change... congress just passed a law authorizing 87 thousand new IRS employees, doubling the agency's workforce. Many will be armed and, according to the job description, must be prepared to use deadly force. That'll make 174 thousand IRS employees, more than the population of 43 of the world's countries, territories, protectorates, and/or principalities... a workforce, emphasis on "force," greater than the armies of all but 22 countries on the planet.
When there's a knock on the door and someone announces, "We're with the government and we're here to help," it would be wise to bar entry. When it's the IRS, you might as well just open up... they'll break down the door if you don't. The government needs more money, your money, because solving America's problems will require an even larger government workforce...
Armed, of course... and prepared to use deadly force if necessary.
