Private Sector Jobs - Our Only Salvation

“I will not be satisfied until everyone who wants a good job that offers some security has a good job that offers security”. President Obama said that, speaking recently at an energy-efficient lighting plant.

Whew. I feel better. And more secure. Who wouldn’t want a good job with security? After all, with job security you don’t have to work. You just have to show up. And Obama is setting the bar pretty low - you only have to want the job.  

It seems like a nice sentiment, but it is neither achievable nor desirable. 

There was a time when people had to work to make an effort to get and keep a job. They did that because they had needs and wants.  If you needed food or shelter you got a job that would allow you to pay for food and shelter.  Need a car? Get a job.  Want a better car? Get a better job. Whatever you needed or wanted, working was the way to get it. 

Government likes to give to those who have needs. During the Great Depression the government created jobs through the Work Projects Administration (WPA) and gave them to needy people. During its eight years, nearly eight million Americans received paychecks from the WPA. This was part of the “New Deal,” a huge expansion of the federal government that was intended to end the Depression. 

It failed. As Henry Hazlitt writes in his classic and highly recommended book, “Economics in One Easy Lesson”:

For every public job created by [a] bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. . . . But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the $10 million taken from the taxpayers.  

The Depression was prolonged by government-created jobs and excessive government spending. In 1939, Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary Walter Morgenthau said, “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . .I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . And an enormous debt to boot!” 

As money wends its way through the economy it generally ends up in one of two sectors – government or private. In general, government does not produce. It does not create things and sell them for profit. It does not seek a profit on its employees. It does not save money to invest in a capital project that will generate a profit. Simply put, money that ends up in the government’s coffers does not grow. Only in the private sector does money create more money. Advocates for more government spending claim that each dollar spent by government grows the economy, a “multiplier effect.”  That may be true, but private sector spending has a much greater multiplier. Private spending, savings, and investment turned America into the wealthiest nation in history. Excessive government spending threatens to destroy that wealth. 

Obama will not be satisfied until everyone that wants a good secure job has one.  My fear is that he will keep trying.  The stimulus plan started by Bush and put on steroids by Obama has been an abysmal failure. Obama laughed when he pointed out that stimulus projects were not as “shovel ready” as he thought. His arbitrary and capricious administration has prolonged this recession. Now Obama wants to spend more and tax more. That might work in the short term, but only until the economy collapses further under the weight of an incomprehensively large national debt.  

Government’s role, particularly during this recession, should be to provide the conditions (not incentives) necessary for expansion of the private sector. Get out of the way and leave the wealth and spending to us.