Job Creation
Published on Monday, February 15, 2010.As every HR professional probably has, I have been listening to and considering Obama's job creation plan very carefully.
The bottom line is that it is simply not within the government's capacity to create meaningful new jobs. The government can create the illusion of productive activity by creating temporary, unproductive positions in which people are paid with money taken from people who are being productive, but only the market creates jobs that are required to meet consumer demand, which create new wealth and trade production. The money we've already paid in taxes to take care of road maintenance and bridge building has obviously already been spent by a wasteful government, so now they're borrowing money which will have to be paid back in the form of higher taxes, so those types of jobs, although in some cases helpful, aren't creating wealth, and they are temporary.
In response to Obama's "green" strategy: If "green" products and services, whatever they are, were in demand, the market would be meeting that demand, so "green" jobs are also an illusion. This is government's attempt to play the part of producer, but it's a joke. The administration seems to think that by calling make-work jobs "green" it will somehow add value. The State can get out of the way, if they want to help, and not add regulatory and tax burdens to the free market. There's a fundamental problem with the State when it attempts to control economic activity and create growth by interfering in the market and attempting to spur and guide production by "creating jobs".
When the State attempts to adjust economic growth upwards because slow growth is politically damaging, it places political wishes above economic reality. If the State has this kind of power it would have found the right combination of interventions by now, after decades of tinkering, to maintain permanent full employment and steady economic growth.
You don't stimulate the healing of a recuperating patient by adding unnecessary layers of bandages and hiring more unnecessary doctors and nurses, even if the bandages are green and the healthcare workers will like you for giving them the work. The patient doesn't heal faster and the cost of treatment only skyrockets.
Labels: politics