Column Got It All Wrong
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The headline of Scott Mooneyham’s provocative opinion piece “Government Creates Jobs — Lots of Them” (Oct. 26) claims that the government does, indeed, create jobs, “lots of them.”
Although his purpose is to discredit the conservative insistence that government doesn’t create jobs, his only examples are that government money partially funds research that leads to jobs ultimately created by people like you and me.
The headline should have been “Government Support of Education and Research Leads to Some Jobs,” because that is all he says in almost a full column of text.
We all know that. All in all, it’s a weak point supported poorly.
He also says that “the government doesn’t create jobs” is “babbling and myth uttered as truth and wisdom,” and finds it unfortunate that the babblers don’t “dive head first into a sandpit.”
Did he feel that way about those who said, “It’s the economy, stupid?”
Ken Haynes
Vass
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Comments
The_AnonymusProfit 6 months, 3 weeks ago
lol Two Thumbs up
nothingspecial 6 months, 3 weeks ago
The government hasn't had a great track record for its claims to create jobs the past 4 years. Oh, they've created them, just at a huge cost to taxpayers and our children.
For example, the Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs and about 4,600 “indirect” jobs. That worked out to $1.63 million each to produce those 5,510 jobs.
For another example, the federal government has paid 328 million to train folks for green jobs and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program.
SOURCES: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/26/audit-green-jobs-stimulus-program-wastes-cash/#ixzz2AyOY9nQp
marathonman 6 months, 3 weeks ago
I am a retired Federal employee. I have a Federal pension, Federal healthcare and Federal life insurance. Yet, I am one of those who will tell you that our government agencies are out of control; over funded, over staffed, over rated and you support them. We long ago loss sight of what our government, at all levels, should be doing for us. Instead, we have allowed the government to dictate to us all the terms. In many cases the government is operating as a form of welfare by giving jobs to many just to give away more taxpayer money. Congress, too, is over valued and inflated and, again, we have allowed them to dictate the terms. Soon, we will have more government employees than all others. The government does play a role in stimulating growth and development, but the products as a result come back 4 fold in world wide sales and services rendered. Unfortunately, that gap narrowed since the 1990's and we are now hopelessly in a deficit unless or until we reduce government roles of employees and their ability to provide giveaways at, literally, their will.
JimHeim 6 months, 3 weeks ago
If government can't create jobs, why is the military-industrial complex in such a dither about the coming sequestration? Surely no jobs will be lost if government spending is reduced.
Middleman522 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Heim once again you completely missed the point! We're talking about private sector jobs that have nothing to do with decisions made by politicians and their motives! Jobs with companies that people DID BUILD!!
JimHeim 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Middleman - I assume that you think Boeing and Lockheed jobs are not private sector.
marathonman 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Heim confuses subjects and just puts out the lefty lines given by their controlling power. Reducing gomint spending means less welfare, food stamps, SSI, regulations which give unemployment to those who otherwise would be compelled to work.... Yes, Boeing and Lockheed have huge gomint contracts. But they also sell their stuff to other countries and that is when we benefit as a country...or should. If sequestration is allowed to happen, such as in Clinton's admin, we will again have a near defenseless country as those who serve to help preserve our piece are forced to find business elsewhere. And, like Clinton, Obama will say he is balancing the budget.....but wait, there has not been a budget under Obama......holy spendusintooblivion if allowed!
marathonman 6 months, 3 weeks ago
and lefties, do not jump on my spelling...... piece should be peace and countries should be countrys.
Courseaire 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Actually, you got countries correct.
Guy_Forks 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Jim Boeing and lockheed do not solely exist at the government tit. They build much, much more than airplanes and weapon systems.
BAE would be a better example to make your point with.
JimHeim 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Mr. Mooneyham was correct in his column and all of your illogical denials don't change that. Government spending creates millions of jobs and is a large part of the engine of our economy. Every time government issues a contract to repair a highway, build a bridge or refurbish a school, people in the civilian sector are put to work. Simple as that.
Private businesses in Fayetteville are worried about the possible sequester's effects on their income (and ability to meet their payrolls). There's a reason.
DaveyNC 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Perhaps to say that the government does or does not create jobs misleads. In fact, the government, via its commercial activities, does nothing to add to GDP or wealth creation. This is because government spending consists almost wholly of transfer payments. They take from person A (out of favor constituent) and pay to person B (favored constituent). It's fraught with rent-seeking and is terribly inefficient. Worse, government establishes bureaucracies to justify their existence that it then seeks to grow without end.
Can one of you libs on here name for me even one major spending program that has been ended since the turn of the century?
And therein lies the problem. You want higher taxes, I just want to see the government show that it can be good stewards of the money it has and restrain itself before I am willing to cough up more dough.Kill some programs, cut some others back, consolidate others. Get rid of some of the more unnecessary Cabinet level agencies (Energy, Agriculture, Education). Instead, we have Bush creating Homeland Security and this week 0bama proposes the "Dept. of Business", somehow forgetting that we already have the Dept. of Commerce. Quick, can anyone here name the Commerce Secretary without googling it?
These agencies exist mostly to dole out money to the favored constituency of the moment. Get rid of 'em.
JimHeim 6 months, 3 weeks ago
DaveyNC - Try applying your logic to a large government program, say the NASA manned lunar landing project. Are you ready to claim that this effort was just a transfer program with no wealth creation component? You really think all that money just vanished with no positive result? Do you really think that the engineers and technicians (and all of the others needed for that effort) didn't use the pay they got to buy homes, cars, TVs and a lot of other stuff? And that the sub-contractors who built the widgets and other cool stuff that went into the programs didn't do the same?
The only way you can pretend that government spending doesn't create jobs is to ignore the velocity of money, which is pretty easy considering what else you ignore (i.e. global warming, evolution, Obama's birthplace, etc).
LaissezFaire 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Government doesn't create jobs, it creates positions, paid for by the private sector.
marathonman 6 months, 3 weeks ago
The flaw in Heim's arguments is the residue of gomint stimulation and that is the product(s) and services that result to the company from other than government which is wealth creation above anything given in incentive or real contracts from the gomint.
JimHeim 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Okay, let's look at another real-world example. Do you agree that the Internet has spawned the creation of jobs? Simple question.
The Internet was a government project from the start. It was a DARPA idea and was entirely funded by the federal government (many thanks to Al Gore who took the lead in creating the Internet).
It seems to have been the basis of several companies and there are private individuals (I am one) who made serious money as the result of its development.
No private company could have done it. Now, does the government create jobs or not?
Thatcher 6 months, 3 weeks ago
JimHeim-- You made serious money? When? Cheers!
The_AnonymusProfit 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Al Gore lmao.
Sorry Jim your getting powned here.
DaveyNC 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Ok, JimHeim, in order to answer your question about NASA, unlike you I will rely on the commonly accepted definition of things like transfer payments and GDP. So, let's start with those definitions:
Transfer payment:http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/transferpayment.asp
GDP: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/GDP.topicArticleId-9789,articleId-9733.html Note item number 3 in particular.
Wealth: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wealth.asp
Rent-seeking: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp
Ok, now that that's out of the way, no, NASA hasn't created wealth. They have merely shifted it from person A (the taxpayer) to person B, (government employees and vendors). Did some of those people get wealthy? Yes. Did this process create wealth? No. Apple creates wealth; Microsoft, Exxon, GE all create wealth, so long as they remain profitable. They take in raw materials for X dollars and then sell them for X+ dollars. The wealth lies in the +. Government takes in taxes (not raw materials) and redistributes that money as it deems appopriate. They take in X and actually distribute X-, by the time you figure in their overhead. There is no net increase in GDP, therefore no wealth is created.
Thatcher 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Wow DaveyNC! You get it! Great job, and great post! Don't expect JimHeim to understand it. Cheers!
skylinefirepest 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Guys you're beating a dead horse...His honor the liberal poobah Heim will never admit to the fact that if the govmint didn't contract to build roads and bridges then SOMEBODY WOULD!!! Jimmy, how did roads get built prior to guvmint???? Government only provides jobs because they take OUR MONEY and distribute it to the "lowest" bidder??? And Jimmy doesn't realize that we are providing many, many jobs in foreign countries ( a gracious amount of them that actually hate us. ) with, again, OUR MONEY taken at the point of a government gun!! How bout them apples Jimmy???
JimHeim 6 months, 3 weeks ago
firepest - There were precious few private roads before government funded them. Even the railroads were largely government funded.
Show me a successful industrial powerhouse nation without a government funded infrastructure.
The arguments I'm getting would have to improve to make it all the way up to pathetic.
Middleman522 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Heim Oblaima tried to shut down Boeing! Are you kidding me. NLRB tried to shut down Charleston, SC.. Jesus are you that dumb??
skylinefirepest 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Middle...yes, he is. He's such a strong liberal weenie that he would hate big government...if it were Republican led!! But huge, ineffective, spend us into the ground Demo government is fabulous...Dems running everyone's lives is the dream of Heim.
Noluv4thugs 6 months, 3 weeks ago
This is what happens when government gets involved....
Despite the transcontinental success and millions in government subsidies, the Union Pacific faced bankruptcy less than three years after the golden spike as details surfaced about overcharges Crédit Mobilier had billed Union Pacific for the formal building of the railroad. The scandal hit epic proportions in the United States presidential election, 1872 which saw the re-election of Ulysses S. Grant and became the biggest scandal of the Gilded Age. It would not be resolved until the congressman who was supposed to have reined in its excesses but instead wound up profiting from it was dead.
Durant had initially come up with the scheme to have Crédit Mobilier subcontract to do the actual track work. Durant gained control of the company after buying out employee Herbert Hoxie for $10,000. Under Durant's guidance the company was charging Union Pacific often twice or more the customary cost for track work (thus in effect paying himself to build the railroad). The process was to mire down Union Pacific work.
Lincoln asked Massachusetts Congressman Oakes Ames, who was on the railroad committee, to clean things up and get the railroad moving. Ames got his brother Oliver Ames, Jr. named president of the Union Pacific and Ames himself became president of Crédit Mobiler.
Ames in turn gave stock options to other politicians while at the same time continuing the lucrative overcharges. The scandal was to implicate Vice President Schuyler Colfax (who was cleared) and future President James Garfield among others.
The scandal broke in 1872 when the New York Sun published correspondence between Henry S. McComb and Ames detailing the scheme. In the ensuing Congressional investigation, it was recommended that Ames be expelled from Congress but this was reduced to a censure and Ames died within three months.
Durant was to leave the Union Pacific and a new rail baron Jay Gould was to become the dominant stockholder. As a result of the Panic of 1873 Jay Gould was able to pick up bargains, among them the control of the Union Pacific Railroad and Western Union also fell under his control.
Noluv4thugs 6 months, 3 weeks ago
And as far as the government creating the internet goes, read this and form an educated opinion after....Good luck Jimmy boy (on the educated opinon part that is).
Statists claim that government "invented" the internet. As President Obama told an audience, "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money."
In the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz correctly points out that the internet flourished in spite of government, not because of it.
The government did create Arpanet, the world's first decentralized computer network. It was supposed to help the Department of Defense communicate after a nuclear attack. Even then, government scientists relied heavily on inventions by private companies.
Arpanet introduced TCP/IP, the protocol that the internet uses to transfer information. That was useful, but for decades, the government possessed the technology it needed to create the Internet, and did very little with it.
In 1969, Arpanet linked 4 computers. Over the next three years, Email and instant messaging were invented, but they weren't useful to you, because the government's Arpanet linked only 37 computers.
Only as the program was privatized did the private sector make the investments, in money and creativity, that gave us the internet we have now.
Why didn't the private sector develop an Arpanet?
According to Andrew Morriss of The Freeman, two reasons: First, government crowded out the private sector by hiring many talented computer scientists. Second, laws required the FCC to authorize new networks, and "Regulatory barriers to entry, not a lack of entrepreneurial activity, slowed the efforts to build private networks."
In 1995, government fully privatized their network. That's when the current internet started to flourish. Morriss says, "the real Internet grew out of a spontaneous ordering process of the interactions of millions of individual users.... The explosive growth in commerce, for example, became possible only when the government's ban on commercial use of the networks it financed was lifted."
Peter Klein, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, points out that most of the internet went "unforeseen by its original designers - [but was] developed in the private sector." For example, Xerox and Apple developed "a useable graphical user interface (GUI), a lightweight and durable mouse, and the Ethernet protocol."
Yes, President Obama, government invented the Arpanet. But what happened next shows how government fails, but individuals succeed. Government enacted barriers to private-sector research, and took decades before it allowed all of us to benefit from an important new technology. Once it was privatized, individuals - not government -created the internet that we know today.