A job creation plan

Defense budgets in the '50s, '60s and '80s.

 

Seriously?

How successful was the TVA?

 

Forgive me.

If the government wants to buy/consume/purchase a bunch of stuff -- like defense -- or employee people themselves, they surely can "creat jobs".

Has the government shown an ability to create private sector jobs where they are not consuming the the goods produced by those jobs?

Because we're not talking about creating a new TVA or a defense build up. That's not the conversation.

We're taking about "stimulus", tax rates/breaks, education spending/retraining, "infrastructure", "quantitative easing", unemployment payments, home heating assistance, etc.

Nancy Pelosi has told us that extending unemployment payments creates jobs.

What I see discussed is a lot of spending that will do little or nothing to create long term jobs growth.

 

Do you have any idea how many private-sector jobs and how much private-sector wealth was created over the last 8 decades by bringing electricity ("infrastructure") to the Tennessee River valley?

 

Half as many as by people who returned their phone messages?

 

OK, so the TVA brought a region into the 20th Century.

I'm guessing they would have eventually electrified, one way or the other, so some of that wealth would have been created either way.

But sure, some projects deserve federal funding. The interstate highway system probably spurred more economic expansion than anything else the government has done.

(You'll probably raise ARPANET again, but it's not like ARPANET was conceived as a "jobs program".)

If we're talking about infrastructure one scale of the interstate highway system, lay it on me.

Instead, we're talking about highway exits that will benefit specific developer (and political donors).

Or, we're talking about "high speed" rail from Tampa to Orlando or from Chicago to St. Louis, neither of which will create jobs, or revolutionize how business and commerce is done.

In fact, they'll likely need to be subsidized.

 

You mean in exactly the same way commercial airlines have always been subsidized by government?

Or farming? Or logging? Or dairy production?

 

My wife went into medical coding. Got two years training and great money, until her job was exported the hell to Bombay. Now she has 20 years of medical/clerical and no degree. Not because of her performance, but because India and other places can pay four or more times less. Just like you journalists, if these corporates could get monkeys to do the work, monkeys would drive the economy.

 

Obviously her thank-you-note-writing skills are lacking.

 

Our economy is fluid. Always has been.

I used to be a commodities floor trader. Not a lot of them left.

I'm not unsympathetic to Print's wife, but you have to prepare for this.

20 years is a good run -- a lot more than I had as a floor trader.

 

What about Michelle Bachmann not ruling out a lower minimum wage if she were elected? Yep, that's the problem with this country, high wages to work a sub shop.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bachman-in-fla-says-she-wont-rule-out-minimum-wage-changes-as-overall-plan-to-create-jobs/2011/08/26/gIQAGrSzgJ_story.html

 

They pay the coolies in Bangladesh 10 cents a day and a cup of rotten rice. Gotta compete in the global labor market. Why don't we just forget the "wages" altogether and go with the rotten rice?