The Ever-Growing Government Skyscraper: A 100-Story Monument to “We Meant Well”
Picture this: You start with a cute little one-story bungalow. Every six months, you slap on another floor because, hey, why not? More space means more progress, right? Fast-forward 50 years, and congratulations—you now own a 100-story behemoth that’s part luxury condo, part haunted funhouse, and entirely too expensive to heat. Oh, and about two-thirds of those floors? They’re just... there. Empty conference rooms, dusty filing cabinets from the Carter administration, and a department dedicated to regulating the exact shade of beige in government memos.
Welcome to the US federal government, folks. As of 2025, it boasts around 2.9 million civilian employees (give or take a few thousand who are probably on “extended coffee breaks”). And that’s just the feds! Toss in the 19.6 million or so hardworking souls at state and local levels, and you’ve got a workforce bigger than the population of some small countries. All of them valiantly keeping the lights on in a building that stopped making sense somewhere around floor 35.
The real genius? Dismantling the unnecessary parts is politically suicidal. Those upper floors house entire agencies with thousands of employees who vote, donate, and—most importantly—have powerful unions and lobbyists. Try to tear down even one redundant floor, and suddenly you’re “hurting communities,” “destroying jobs,” and “attacking the American Dream.” Never mind that the maintenance costs are bleeding taxpayers dry or that half the building is just regulatory scaffolding holding up more scaffolding.
So we keep adding floors. New programs! New mandates! New oversight committees to oversee the oversight committees! Because nothing says efficiency like a government that grows faster than your student loan interest.
In the end, we’re left with a towering testament to good intentions, bureaucratic inertia, and the universal truth that once something is built, nobody wants to admit it was a mistake. Happy maintaining, America. The elevator’s out again and a crowd of mostly unproductive parasites are stuck on the bottom floor.
