Nevada's gift to the United States, Harry Reid, is giving another Senate-floor discourse on economics to us. He says that private-sector jobs are not what is important. What is important, according to Harry, is government-sector jobs.
http://nation.foxnews.com/harry-reid/2011/10/19/reid-private-sector-jobs-have-been-doing-just-fine-oh-and-its-bushs-fault
I am no economic expert, but I was a government employee, so my view might be biased. It seems to me that the government (or any government) can create as many government jobs as they want. If 25 million people are unemployed, government can create 25 million new jobs by simply declaring that we need more people to run the photo-copiers in Washington (or maybe the shredders). Or perhaps, we need enough census-takers to canvas every home in America to ask Americans and illegal aliens what toothpaste they use for the next ten years.
It can be done.
Salaries and benefits? That's what the US Mint is for. Besides, we can always raise taxes, right? Make the rich pay "their fair share".
On the other hand, my twisted sense of common sense tells me that it is the private sector jobs that count. The government doesn't have to make a profit. It gets its money from us, so they can have all the overhead and salary they want. A business can't think that way. They can only hire as many workers as will ensure a profit. They need to recognize at what point they can no longer to hire additional workers.
I know I'm not making any sense, but that's just the way I look at it. I still cling to that old outdated idea that the private sector, small businesses, and big businesses are what really drives our economy.
But what the Hell do I know? Besides, Harry Reid is a United States senator.
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4 comments:
Hmmm! Harry says that the government jobs are more important that private sector jobs. Didn't Marx consider the central government more important than the private sector, or private property for that matter?
Thanks Harry! We know exactly who you are. I hope that the dummies in Nevada who voted for him, find out soon.
Squid
It is not really a question of "public sector" or "private sector." After all, the work currently done by the "private sector" CAN be taken over be vast government controlled enterprises.
More accurately, someone has to produce real goods and services, so that people can eat, have decent shelter, clothes, vehicles to drive... all the paper money in the world won't buy what isn't being produced.
In our country, we generally don't let the government do this production work, so it falls to the "private sector." But, this production, and the employment in it, does have public impact, so we have labor protection laws, consumer protection laws, and laws against insider trading.
Government revenue cannot come from government employees taking in each other's laundry. On that point we agree.
However, if we have 25 million people out of work, and the "private sector" doesn't see anything to gain by hiring them, and if some sector of the population has gotten 90% of the increases in net income over the last 15 years, then perhaps we could tax some of that income, hire the 25 million unemployed and then...
...do a little better than the limited imagination of Gary Fouse, by putting them to work building real things that people need but that the private sector isn't delivering, such as a new electric distribution system (the old one we have is falling apart), highway resurfacing, in my seldom humble opinion -- high speed rail, etc. We could beef up the Coast Guard too.
Taxpayers get a tangible return for their money, people get valuable employment experience so the "private sector" won't refuse to hire them because they've been out of work too long, oh, and we can cancel a good part of the welfare budget, because anybody able bodied will be working.
(Squid, when is the last time you actually read anything by Karl Marx? Or were you referring to Groucho?
Reid was just re-elected a few months ago, mostly because his opponent was a certified doofus named Sharon Angle. Sal Russo & Associates dba Tea Party Express may have single-handedly preserved the Democratic majority in the senate.)
Siarlys,
When was the last time you read Saul Alinsky?
Squid
About twenty years ago, I read Alinsky's excellent unauthorized biography of John L. Lewis. I would like to get my own copy, but I remember a good deal of it.
I never read "Reveille for Radicals," because I entered early adulthood among people who critiqued Alinsky for thinking a vague sort of "community organizing" could replace the LABOR movement, and, for reasons Gary has expressed, although not looking at the same facts through Gary's eyes, it can't. Community organizing methods can be useful, but how much money people have in their paycheck at the end of the week is still critical.
E.g., I am NOT in favor of subsidized housing, I am in favor of wages high enough so people can afford to buy their own housing, something fit to live in. Subsidized housing for low-wage workers is a taxpayer subsidy of the employer.
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