Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Re: what happens in a recession

This may astound a lot of people...
TB — (archived)

But sheer quantity of jobs is not the primary indicator of a healthy, advanced economy.

A slip? Any jackass knows cutting government fat will cut the jobs associated with it. I'm not sure why this is being treated like a revelation. Like I've said before, you could hire a million people to dig holes and a million more to fill them up. Those are "jobs." Are they useful ones? Who would pay for something like that? Other than the government.

Taking money away from people who are doing useful things and giving it to people to do useless things - or nothing at all - makes the latter people happy enough, but doesn't create new wealth and takes wealth away from people who could do something else useful with it.

Obama is going to stand up at his speech and declare that he will "create" all kinds of jobs. The kind of jobs that involve doing things nobody else wants to pay people to do. "Create" meaning "suck the money away from productive people and dump it on political allies, cronies, and union members who will kick a nice chunk of it back to the Democratic Party." Look at where most of the stimulus ended up.

There are twice as many government employees now as there were back in the early 1970s. What wasn't getting done back then? Nothing's coming immediately to mind...

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