The June 14th headline on the business page on the USA Today said “Obama presses to create 1M jobs.” Sometime ago the President was taking credit for his administration creating or saving 4 million jobs. I still don’t know how you measure “saved jobs”, but that’s another topic. A lot of politicians of both parties like to take credit for creating jobs. Of course they do no such thing. Except for providing GM, AIG and Chrysler with bail out money the Unites States is not in the business of running corporations. The government doesn’t hire and fire in the private sector.
That’s why the President and the Congress need to get out of the habit of promising to address the unemployment problem by creating jobs. They can’t do it, it’s simply not the business of government to create jobs in the private sector. Why not? Because government doesn’t make things, sell things, fix things, grow things, service things….or in any way engage in commerce.
Likewise American voters also need to understand that no matter what politicians say, they can’t create jobs unless they are public sector jobs, of which we already have enough. State and local governments may encourage busineses to locate within their borders, but they do not create private sector jobs because they are governments and are not engaged in private commerce
When I first read of the Presidents Job and Competitive Council, I thought the purpose was to bring business people together to focus on what business could do to to create jobs. From the White House website:
“The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (Jobs Council) was created to provide non-partisan advice to the President on continuing to strengthen the Nation’s economy and ensure the competitiveness of the United States and on ways to create jobs, opportunity, and prosperity for the American people.”
The response President Obama got back from his Job Council (Jeffrey Immelt, et al.) was pretty funny. All five recommendations by the council involve either the government spending more money or changing the way government does things. Hey guys…I don’t think that’s what he meant. What they offered is:
1. Training workers for new job skills. How many political speeches has that been part of? (maybe divert money from other government programs…good luck to that).
2. Eliminate bureaucracy that bogs down infrastructure projects. Not sure how that can happen since the environmental groups will just take it to court.
3. Streamline visa process so we get more tourists. Doesn’t it seem like The State Department has long resisted all attempts to drag it out of the 19th century?
4. Make the SBA work faster (huh?)
5. Use federal funding to employ laid off construction workers to do “green” projects on commercial buildings.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this stuff, there’s just nothing new. To paraphrase an old Red Smith baseball analogy, telling the government that it should eliminate bureaucracy, streamline processes and work faster is like telling an 8 year old about sex. No matter what you say, the response is “But why?”
SRBAC
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