Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Which Country Has the Most Expensive Bureaucrats of All?

by Dan Mitchell


I’ve complained endlessly about America’s bloated and expensive government bureaucracies. It irks me that people in the productive sector get slammed with ever-higher taxes in part to support a bunch of paper pushers, regulators, cronies, busy bodies, hacks, and others who have climbed on the gravy train of public sector employment.

It even bothers me that bureaucrats put in fewer hours on the job than private-sector workers, even though I realize the economy probably does better when government employees are lazy (after all, we probably don’t want hard-workingOSHA inspectors, Fannie and Freddie regulators, and IRS bureaucrats).

But sometimes it helps to realize that things could be worse. And based onsome international data from my “friends” at the OECD, let’s be thankful the United States isn’t Denmark.

That’s because nearly 20 percent of Denmark’s economic output is diverted to pay the salaries and benefits of bureaucrats, compared to “only” about 11 percent of GDP in the United States.

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