Growth in bureaucracy comes at the cost of individual freedom. The U.S. federal bureaucracy and number of regulations – along with other western countries – has exponentially increased since the beginning of the 20th century. The permanent institutional bureaucracy, the [[civil service system]], becomes an unelected fourth branch of government whose primary interests are often career advancement, job security, and avoiding responsibility for failure.
Since the founding of the [[Post Office]], campaign promises of "job creation" by some candidates often means "government job creation," which comes at the expense of taxpayers and the [[private sector]]'s ability to create private-sector jobs, and hence the ability to create more private-sector taxpayers to support government. This is especially true in economic down cycles when advocates of [[Economic stimulus|stimulus]] and [[deficit spending]] create more government bureaucracies to alleviate hard times that then outlive their usefulness, albeit with more government workers still holding a full range of government pensions and benefits, as more prosperous times return. (See also [[Emergency spending]] and [[New spending]]).<ref>In other words, so-called "emergency" or "[[Temporary spending]]" often becomes [[permanent spending]], enlarging the federal budget and workforce. ''[https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/jimhuntzinger/2019/08/29/keynesian-economics-turns-the-whole-economy-into-a-gigantic-ponzi-scheme-n2552369 Keynesian Economics Turns The Whole Economy Into A Gigantic Ponzi Scheme]'', Jim Huntzinger, Townhall.com, Aug 29, 2019.</ref> The growth in bureaucracy comes about by the government workforce and budget growing faster, proportionately, over time to the growth in population, which leads to the gradual impoverishment of people, i.e. the taxpaying public who support a top-heavy bureaucracy.<ref>Economist [[Milton Friedman]] famously observed that "nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." https://twitter.com/reason/status/1168572040904941571?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw</ref>
These newly hired, supposed "non-partisan" civil servants, who owe their permanent jobs to a political party and ideology, then need justification for their continued existence on the government payroll, and turn to [[social experiment|social engineering]] and greater intrusion into ordinary citizen's lives.