Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Jobs Come From Profits

... it's really that simple. They don't come from anywhere else. They don't come from government programs or government mandates. They don't come from good wishes or kind thoughts. They come from profits.

Government jobs come from money taken by taxes from the profits of individuals or businesses. Private jobs come from businesses who have more money to spend because they made a profit.

When a politician claims they will create jobs, all they are saying is that they will take profits away from someone and spend that money themselves. The first unspoken claim is that they know how to invest profits better than the people that made the money in the first place. The second is that the fruits of your labor were never yours to begin with and they have the right and authority to take it away from you.

While some government spending, such as the construction of the interstate freeway system, has made higher profits possible, that spending did not create jobs. It made them possible. In the end, it was still the generation of profit by private enterprises that created the jobs. With the federal government spending $3T+ per year, it's hard to see just where additional spending is going to lead to a new version of the interstate freeway system.

Any politician claiming they are going to create jobs is a charlatan.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't be such a sourpuss, Senor Gato. I'm lookin' forward to gettin' one a them greencollar jobs. Why, before ya know it, I'll trade in my Sig for a caulkin' gun and be out there caulkin' the Widder Jones' winders. The phrase "drawin' a bead" will have a whole new meanin' in Obamastan.

Anonymous said...

I'm curious where they're going to find all the employees for these bold new industries. The One promises thousands of new jobs in Big Wind, but I didn't know we had that many qualified windmill engineers just waiting for a job in their chosen field (and if they're already employed somewhere else, how is this program "creating" jobs?).

Look at the job ads for the DC area. If you have an SCI clearance you can get a government job in one of the new bureaucracies that were stood up with little thought to qualified staffing.

Maybe The One's plan is to have thousands digging holes for the new transmission lines, WPA-style.

There are lots of variants on the "broken windows" theory of resource redistribution that apply well here.

K T Cat said...

Anon, you dummy, those hole diggers will be employed digging pits for the underground windmills. Do I have to explain everything to you?