Illustration by KAL

SEVENTEEN Uncle Sams were seen begging on the streets of Washington, DC, this week. They were a sad sight, with their slightly bedraggled red, white and blue hats and their cardboard signs with the hand-scrawled plea: “I want YOU to give me $12 trillion.” It was a publicity stunt, of course, staged by DefeatTheDebt.com, a fiscally hawkish pressure group. But it captured something important about the national mood.

Unemployment is nearly in double digits. Most Americans think the economy will recover next year, but only 2% think it will make a complete recovery. And many are worried about Uncle Sam's ongoing borrowing binge. Has all that money averted disaster and eased the pain of the recession, as Barack Obama insists? Or did it merely postpone the pain? DefeatTheDebt.com's television commercials leave no room for doubt. A classroom full of children stand as if to recite the pledge of allegiance, but the words are different: “I pledge allegiance to America's debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money, and to the interest, for which we pay, compoundable, with higher taxes and lower pay, until the day we die.”

Many Americans think much of this money might as well have been tied up in bundles and burned. On average, according to Gallup, Americans believe that 50 cents of every dollar the federal government spends is wasted. This is an outlandish figure. Not even the Department of Agriculture is that profligate. Yet even Democrats, who are supposed to believe in big government, guess that 41 cents of every federal dollar is wasted. Republicans think it is 54 cents, and independents, whose votes Democrats will sorely need at the mid-terms next year, are if anything slightly more cynical, putting the number at 55 cents in the dollar.

The hyperkinetic Mr Obama is trying to fix everything from car firms and banks to Chicago's Olympic bid. Yet a poll last month found that most Americans would rather their government did less. Some 57% said it was doing too many things that were better left to individuals and businesses. Only 38% thought it should do more. The proportion who believe that government over-regulates private businesses has also risen from 38% to 45% in a year. And despite the attention lavished on Michael Moore's new movie excoriating capitalism, only 24% of Americans think firms are under-regulated.

Arthur Brooks, the head of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, feels that the real culture war in America today is not about gay marriage or abortion, divisive though those issues are, but about capitalism. Everyone agrees that Wall Street messed up last year, but many are disturbed by the expansion of government that followed the crash. Voters particularly dislike the way the state is using their money to reward deadbeats, says Mr Brooks. They themselves work hard and live within their means. They see their neighbour, who borrowed more than he could afford to buy a fancy house, getting a bail-out to save him from the consequences of his own poor judgment. They see reckless bankers getting bailed out too, and the ill-managed carmakers of Detroit likewise. And they resent it.

There is some truth in Mr Brooks's analysis. The bank and car bail-outs were indeed unpopular. And the fear that the Democrats aim to make government too big, too expensive and too intrusive set off a wave of “tea-party” protests that is still rolling. Democrats have tried to dismiss the tea parties as motivated by racism, because Mr Obama is black. But racism cannot explain why the president's approval rating has fallen this year. As Mr Obama observed: “I was actually black before the election.”

Some of the critics of big government are a bit hysterical. Glenn Beck, a talk-show host, foments panic and then urges listeners to buy gold from a company he endorses. Michelle Malkin, a blogger, has written a bestselling book about the Obama administration called “Culture of Corruption”. This is silly, but the rabble-rousers are popular because their audience has genuine grievances. Many working-class men have lost their jobs. Those who are still employed have seen their wages stagnate and their pensions shrivel in the stockmarket crash. Their health insurance is insecure, but they don't trust Congress not to make it worse.

Working for the man

Meanwhile, they can see that one group of Americans has been practically unaffected by the recession: government employees. Their hours have not been cut, their benefits are gold-plated and they are almost impossible to sack. In good times, few Americans notice these things, but in bad times, the disparity grates. Cops and firefighters can retire in their 40s and draw defined-benefit pensions for life. With overtime, one tenth of the police in Massachusetts made more than the governor's annual salary in 2006, according to the Boston Globe. Including benefits, the average employee of New York City makes more than $100,000, according to Forbes, while some Californian prison guards “sock away $300,000 a year”.

And what do taxpayers get for their generosity? The bad bargains get all the publicity. Union contracts force the postal service to pay thousands of unneeded workers to do nothing. In New York, public-school teachers who can't be trusted to teach but can't be sacked either are paid to sit and do crosswords.

One should not overstate the rage of taxpayers against public servants. Most Americans admire firemen, teachers and cops. They like receiving government benefits, too. And roughly half of them will pay no federal income tax at all this year. The problem is that this is not sustainable. During his election campaign, Mr Obama promised not to raise taxes on anyone except the rich, but with the deficit so vast, the question is not whether he will break this promise but when.





Economist.com/blogs/lexington