Is the USA still truly the worlds #1 economy?

I don't think we are all that far apart and can agree on a lot. You obviously are aware of the evils of government unlike most on the left. We both want the same ultimate result. How to get there is the question. How to best rape the public seems to be the goal of both government and much of private industry, often in collusion. Your concern is unfair taxation while mine is the ever growing army of people employed (almost said working for) by government which is close to half of all employment, most of whom receive wages and perks in excess of those who pay for it. It's not hard to see that this is the road to ruin when those who contribute nothing to the pie want ever larger slices of it.

Agreed about too many Gov. workers, don't know where the #s come from if they are all Fed. or not & if armed forces are included, I believe it was Reagan(could be wrong) that started including them in the employment #s, whoever it was it made the #s jump way up but naturally didn't change anything. I do think I heard where they were made to contribute more toward their pension fund, soon the Gov. will be the only one left with a pension. Mine was always a % of my wages as well as my Med. Ins. which I now pay on retirement, little things they sneak in the contract. The reason the post office is doing so poorly is because Congress has them building the pension fund up for so many years in advance but I'm sure theirs is financed.

I was counting all government, county, state, and federal. You can see where this is going though as more of the electorate relies on government and votes accordingly for those who promise more and more with an ever shrinking productive economy. Eventually you reach the point of the Russian factory worker who said "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work". That's when they got out the guillotines in the France of 1790.

Franco, once you start counting all of Gov. then your getting into relative ability & that's a tough nut to crack. I have a good friend that works as a stupidvisor for Allegheny County, Pa., the guy that got him his job died years ago & some of the people under him won't do anything because they know they now have more pull than him.