I am confused about the state's budget problem

I used to work as a clerk (it's spelled with a "K", by the way) for my state's welfare department, so perhaps I can shed some insight on the matter.

First, I didn't make anything close to $30K. I made just enough not to qualify for food stamps or benefits (although I quit before Obama took office, so I probably would have qualified had I stuck with the job). I admittedly had good benefits, however, so this made up for the otherwise low salary.

Second, there was a severe staff shortage in my county's welfare department. If one clerk called off sick for the day, then the phones would go unaswered for an entire day. We simply did not have enough people to man the front desk AND do the essential paperwork AND answer the phones. Since the phones were lower on the priority list, they were the first to get cut. If two clerks called out sick, then someone from upper management would shirk off their normal duties to take over the front desk for the day. Mail would pile up on a desk and go unopened for days (although to be fair, we did date stamp it the day it arrived in the office so that nobody was accused of missing their deadlines to turn in paperwork).

The social workers in charge of determining welfare benefits eligibilty were just as understaffed. They handled 800-1200 cases when less than five years ago, they were only in charge of 100-300. And this was before the economy turned to complete shit! Layoffs and massive waves of workers taking retirement while they still could led to this shortage. As a result of there being so much work and so few workers, people did not get their benefits in time. The wait in the waiting room on a normal day was over two hours. The wait on the phone (if we answering them that day) was at least an hour. While I realize that DP'ers are generally anti-welfare, I think we can all agree that it sucks not getting adequate service from ANY government agency considering the amount of taxes we pay. Furthermore, the social worker's starting pay was only $35K. Considering what it took to qualify for the job (college degree + experience), this salary wasn't that lucrative or even competitive compared to the private sector.

It was a very stressful job and morale was very. very low. I'm glad that I no longer work there.

If anymore positions were cut from my office, the level of service would be cut drastically. People would have to wait even longer for service. It would be damn near impossible to reach a human on the phone or in person. If you're comfortable with waiting that long for service when you DO need something from the government, then by all means, call for more job cuts. But don't complain when it takes at least a month for your paperwork to be even looked at by a human.

In order to extract the maximum amount of money from people in a lynch mob style, unchecked majority rule society, the idea is to constantly allocate the dollars at the margin to the 'services' people will miss the most when they are gone. That way, more voters are more likely to cave in, bend over and accept another increase in what they let you appropriate. If all you did was lay off invisibles, people might even get the dangerous idea they are being overcharged for the services they are getting. Not a good strategy for an aspiring statist star. Much better to threaten to let loose tens of thousands of 'criminals' if you don't get your expected loot.