Creating Jobs

Government initiated work is interesting. In a sense, working for any governmental body is more like work-fare than working in the open market. It used to be that government employees had low pay but did have security and decent benefits. This has changed. The founding fathers knew that as soon as government workers discovered they could pass acts and legislation that would give themselves money like raises and bonuses, we would all be in real trouble. It seems that we have reached and surpassed the trouble stage.

In my mind the democratic party is the party of government but the republican party is close behind if not on par. I have several friends who work in government and each is in lock-step with the democratic party and quite freely associate all that is evil with republicans. They honestly believe that government work is exactly the same as the most successful entrepreneurial efforts; they produce nothing yet equate their work with those who do create goods. One cannot create services but one can provide services so I can't really use the concept of goods and services. In other words, government does not produce goods and services.

The following is a remarkably simplistic model but it will serve for all practical purposes: Money has to change hands from people who want goods others have and prices are supposed to be determined by availability and need. For a capitalist system to work with any degree of success there must be goods made and delivered. Jobs are created when those with the goods cannot meet the needs of those wanting those goods.

Government workers produce no goods and if one reads The Federalist Papers and other writings from our founders, it is pretty clear that they didn't want government competing with private individuals or companies. They wanted government to keep an environment that would benefit the people with imagination and drive to create goods people wanted. Government was never supposed to be a provider of goods. (For a comparison, private banks, despite excesses, did not fuel our current recession but the government run Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.)

I know some people who worked for the last 2010 census. The government used this to show how many people were being employed and used those statistics to show how government can create jobs. See my post on Census Blues for a view of how the census was run in my area. It is a model of inefficiency, waste and duplication.

So the government can take money from taxes and give it to others for services provided. But it still takes an imaginative mind to come up with goods that fulfill some kind of need. Government does not operate that way.

Where government can work is in allocating funds for the repair and upkeep of infrastructure of national importance. It cannot create the jobs necessary for this though. Work can be funded but that isn't the same thing as creating a job. The job was already there so what the government can do is actuate the use of those job skills for temporary projects like fixes. That is not the same thing as creating a job or "getting America back to work."

Recently, the ever-so-opinionated Chris Matthews on MSNBC mentioned that we have always had an active public sector in government. He remarked that the transcontinental railroads were a product of this public sector. I strongly suggest Mr. Matthews learn his history before opening his mouth. The government did not pay for the railroad construction. It did, however, facilitate land acquisition (through bond sales) and was at the base of one of the biggest fraud schemes during construction. Bonds were sold to purchase land for the laying of tracks, stations and train yards. The building was funded by private investors who came up with the idea in the first place.

There are some indications that what government does is create an environment where jobs are not created. So we are being lied to in many ways and each of these lies keeps us thinking that the government can, indeed, create jobs the same as private industry can create jobs. Such is not the case.

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