Jobs for all !

      All of the Democratic candidates for President have promised that they will "create" jobs so that anybody and everybody will have a job.  Is there any real validity to this promise?  Can the President, or any government entity, really and truly "create" jobs?  

      As we say here in Texas:  No way, Jose!

      If the government was really capable of job "creation", then all they would have to do is hire a few million people to dig holes, and then another few million people to fill up the holes.  Presto!  You've just "created" several million new jobs.  

      Ludicrous?  Not at all, because hiring hole-diggers and hole-fillers is not significantly different from creating agencies and bureaus and departments and such, and filling them with bureaucrats and other employees with tax-supported incomes who write rules requiring paperwork, or who fill out the afore-mentioned paperwork, or some other worthless activity.

      The key difference between any government job and any private-sector job is: in the private sector, a business absolutely must make a profit.  No profit, and the doors close.  In order to make a profit, a business must market a product that consumers are willing to purchase.  No voluntary consumer is going to pay for something that has no value, such as digging and filling holes.

      But wait, you say - government is more than just paper-shuffling bureaucrats.  Government provides roads and schools and utilities and retirement insurance and other services.  That is true.  But because government need not earn a "profit", there is no practical way to determine if the value of these services exceeds the cost.  When the cost does exceed the value, you have "waste", and no private business can survive perpetual waste.  So how do we know if government is wasting money or not?  Well, the politicians TOLD us that they eliminated all the waste!

      The usual justification for allowing government waste is that "the poor" could not afford these services if they were sold on the market.  What these advocates fail to mention, however, is that you, taxpayer-citizen, pay for all that wasted money that gets flushed down the toilet.  The victims of this waste include the poor and all the other special-interest groups who are supposed to be the beneficiaries.  It would actually cost the poor a lot LESS in the long run if the free market provided schools and roads and such things.

      Anyway, back to jobs.  Government can not, and should not, even attempt to "create" jobs.  The only entity that can truly "create" a job is a private business.  Job creation is directly related to PROFIT.  The more profit a business makes, then the more jobs get created.  They could be created directly, because a more profitable business tends to need more help. 

     Or new jobs could be created indirectly.  As the more profitable owners now have more money to spend, the recipients of their increased spending now need more help.  For example, let's say a business starts making more profit, and now the wealthy owner decides to build a mansion, or a yacht, or buy fancy clothes, or eat out at fancy restaurants.  That means that more home-builders, or yacht-builders, or clothing-makers, or restaurant workers will be needed to satisfy their lavish demands.  Any way you slice it, a strong, growing, profitable economy is better for all than a weak, shrinking, poor economy.

      Yet, the Democratic Party, and all their candidates, NEVER utter a word about trying to expand and grow the economy.  All of their promises of more government spending, free this, free that, more rules, more regulations, more wage and price controls, more taxes, more more more of EVERYTHING government does, is not going to make the economy more profitable.  And in fact, all this increased government largesse and bureaucratic weight will have the exact opposite effect.  Let's be clear:  Democratic Party programs ostensibly designed to "create" jobs will actually DESTROY jobs.

      And hiring a few million people at taxpayer expense for phony make-work jobs - like digging and filling holes or creating more paperwork - does not count.

      Oh and don't jump to the conclusion that I am plugging the Republican Party here.  For all their talk about smaller government and free markets, Republican talk is just that:  talk.  There's a world of difference between saying you're going to cut government size, and actually doing it.  Government spending and regulation increases just as fast - and actually even faster - under Republicans than under Democrats.