By Derek Price
The Cullman Times
CULLMAN — On Friday, the Obama administration released its figures on jobs “saved or created” by the government’s stimulus package. They came up with the number 650,000, but what’s it matter? We’re talking about a completely fictitious calculation.
That’s because it’s just not possible for the government to create jobs, much less save them.
Now, I realize all the teachers, police officers and firefighters reading this may take issue with my assumptions. After all, they get a paycheck from the government, and someone decided to hire them to do their jobs. But hear me out.
The entire issue, as I see it, comes down to where the government gets its money. The government isn’t in the business of selling widgets, so it has to get its cash from somewhere, and that somewhere is called a tax. It’s taking money from me. It’s taking money from you. It’s taking money from all over the private economy and moving it somewhere else, spending it on something presumably more important than what we would blow it on if it were allowed to stay in our wallets and purses.
And this is where things get interesting.
Just like the government isn’t really creating revenue, just taking cash from one place and moving it to another, the government likewise isn’t really creating jobs. It’s just taking jobs from one place — the private sector — and moving them to the public sector to perform a task that’s more important.
Think about it. If we were allowed to keep all our money, we would spend that money on things that would create more jobs. If we bought things, it would pay for manufacturing jobs. If we bought services, it would pay for people to do those services. If we kept it in the bank, it would create more jobs for investors and bankers and more loans for individuals and businesses. Wherever we put that money, some jobs are going to be created.
The only question is what kind of jobs we create. And that’s where government comes in.
Thank goodness the government has decided to pay for police officers, teachers and firefighters instead of us in the private sector paying for people to clip our toenails and wash our dogs. Thank goodness for the military and the space program, the interstate highways and public universities, because none of those things would exist without government to set them as priorities for our own safety and to advance our own species.
But to say the government created those jobs? I don’t think so. They just took the jobs away from toenail clippers and dog washers, shifting them from less important to more important areas.
It’s defining the importance of those jobs that gets us all riled up, becoming either a Hannity or a Colmes depending on how we see things. Do we want the efficient but brutal free markets to decide? Or do we want the wasteful but equitable public sector to get those jobs?
For me, it all comes down to math. Those 650,000 jobs came from $150 billion in stimulus spending, according to the White House’s numbers. That works out to a whopping $230,000 for just one job “created.”
Sounds to me like the Obama administration shouldn’t be bragging, even if they were capable of creating jobs from nothing but the vapor of Washington’s wisdom.
Derek Price is editor of The Cullman Times. Contact him at editor@cullmantimes.com.
