Jobs, Jobs, jobs politicians say. We must put the people back to work, however this is only temporary they say. Merely to fill the “gap” left by the private sector, but I would put this question to President Obama, whats your exit strategy? What jobs will the government provide that can be seamlessly absorbed by the public sector when the crisis is over?
Does the government have the foresight to train employees in area’s of business that the private sector will deem to be viable and productive in the future? Once the government builds their bridges and railroads where do the employees go from there? If the government can figure this all out maybe they can give me some stock tips while they are at it. I mean we all know how the government is a viable, efficient, and profitable entity that can balance a budget, so we will be ok, right?
Again, I don’t think that the government has an exit strategy for this mess. Once they start putting people to work it will be awfully hard (politically) to lay them off and let the private sector try to absorb them. These former government employees will not be trained in the skills they need to be useful in the private sector and they will continue to demand unsustainable wages. The government will succumb because ultimately these employees vote. This in turn will in turn increase the velocity of our country’s downward productivity spiral.
If the government wants to stimulate, I say pour money into mathmatics, science and law enforcment. Perhaps upgrade our rail system but thats it. Let prices come down, let banks fail, and watch productivity go up.
Wendall Wilkie Government Spending, Interventionism, Politics employment, government, jobs, obama, private sector, stimulus
“Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.”
Ah, yes, nary a week should go by without hearing from our good friend Frederic Bastiat. The French economist, who died too early and too soon after his emergence as a economist. Bastiat died at the age of 49, only six years after truly finding economics, as a theoretical study, at the age of 44 (thanks Wikipedia!). In that time Bastiat published some real economic gems. This from his Selected Essays on Political Economy:
“But what relief can the landless find in the proclamation of the right to employment? In what respect will this new right increase the amount of food or the number of jobs available to the masses? Is not all capital employed in giving them work? Will it increase by passing through the public treasury? By taking it away through taxation, does not the state close at least as many sources of employment on one side as it opens on another?”
Fast forward to today and we face a similar, but different problem for the masses. In all of their zeal to get reelected save the economy, the government spending trillions of dollars. Some of these ’stimulus projects’ will help select portions of the masses, but in the end, the only real stimulus will be in the green ink industry. What will the masses be left with? At the very best significant inflation, at the very worst hyperinflation. Inflation always falls upon the masses the hardest. And thus, the masses are being plundered without even knowing about it.
Teacherman Government Spending, Inflation, Politics economist, employment, frederic bastiat, hyperinflation, Inflation, masses, political economy
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