Yes, what kinds of jobs should the Government create for us?
ON Thursday, President Obama will deliver a major speech on America’s employment crisis. But too often, what is lost in the call for job creation is a clear idea of what jobs we want to create.
Then of course, Paul Osterman goes on to complain about the wage profiles of the jobs Rick Perry "created", and to pontificate on how higher wages mean happier people and less stressed marriages. Duh.
How about this? How about we just mandate that everyone make $1,000,000 a year. Hell, at 35% tax rate, and 112 million households -- and since 60 percent are married households let's just say 150 million income-earners .... somewhere close to 63 trillion in income taxes. Hey, all problems solved. Sunshine from cucumbers! I say!
If they don't have anything to that we can pay them for, why they can prepare us for a Martian invasion!
I was having a discussion with someone last week, wishing once, just ONCE ... a candidate would say, "No, I am not going to create any jobs. Creating jobs is not the role of the government. My 'jobs plan' is to try to keep the government from making jobs less affordable to business."
Palin would probably be the candidate most likely to say this. This is the thing about her I find most attractive. She gets this. But will she say it?
I think people would jump out of their chairs and cheer.
5 comments:
Leftists really don't use words the way we do, do they? :)
To be fair, I think this is a neurological issue. They're just wired differently. Note to passing liberals: I did not say they suffer from brain damage or anything like that -- no "climate of hostility" here. I just mean that their mental architecture is different from that of conservatives.
For instance, conservatives think of "jobs" as "productive economic activity." There's a good or service that needs to be provided, and someone steps up and actually provides that good or service. No goods and services, no jobs.
Leftists, on the other hand, seem to think in these big abstract, metaphysical categories. To them, it's not "jobs," but Jobs, capital-J, and they really do seem to believe that if someone in authority just thinks up some brilliant Jobs-getting plan, Jobs will spring up like grass in springtime.
What will these Jobs actually do? What good or service will they provide? Leftists don't know or care, because they're not worried about the grubby details of acquiring or keeping money. They're concerned about Jobs, damn it!
The best illustration is the old Soviet constitution, which literally did decree that every Soviet citizen would be provided a job. Because that's what was wrong with industrial capitalism, you see -- not enough Jobs!! If the Proletariat were simply guaranteed Jobs, then Utopia was a foregone conclusion.
They really do think like that. I'm convinced of it. Which is why they feel so aggrieved at presidents, especially Republican presidents, who don't Fix the Economy. Because, after all, the president is sitting on the keys to this vast underground storehouse of Jobs, and if he'd just open that sucker up (instead of rationing them to funnel profits to his Halliburton cronies), we'd all be farting through silk.
I think that's another thing The Progressive brought up in her praise of Cuba. Universal employment.
Yup, everyone was working on that sugar cane, but there wasn't a way of making a penny more if you sat and picked your teeth with a piece of cane, or if you threw your back in to it.
"The only problem was the sugar cane crop didn't do as well as expected."
As if that was just an unfortunate happenstance or a perplexing puzzle -- having nothing to do with the economic model.
By the way, re: "Climate of Hostility", it's good to know you're not planning on doing anything, on the order of, I don't know, taking them out, or anything like that. ;-)
Yup, everyone was working on that sugar cane, but there wasn't a way of making a penny more if you sat and picked your teeth with a piece of cane, or if you threw your back in to it.
Uh-huh. They're doing Labor, you see -- capital-L-- which is what you do for your capital-J Job. It's all entirely abstract. Results have nothing to do with it (obviously not, since the USSR was never a net grain exporter either, despite a) 80 straight years of "record harvests" and "over-fulfillment of the five year plan," and b) the US and other countries being filthy capitalists, and therefore by definition inferior to glorious socialist production).
So, too, with Cuba's other vaunted achievements -- all together now -- "100% literacy and universal health care." You know, I could give this country "universal health care" in about a week. All you have to do is open a storefront in every community called "the government clinic" and staff it with a receptionist. When patients show up with a health problem, the receptionist just tells them that the doctor is busy, that the medicine is on order, and that despite the over-fulfillment of the five-year aspirin manufacturing plan, an unexpectedly bad harvest means that we'll hopefully have some analgesics in by 2015. It'd take a very, very Smart person to tell me how that's materially different from what they've got in Cuba right now. And as for literacy... c'mon, man, if you can't tweak the definition of "functional literacy" so that it resembles whatever they've got in Detroit and the Tennessee backwoods, you don't deserve your degree in Cultural Studies.
Sheeeee-it, maybe I should run for president. I just got our country on par with the Workers' Paradise to the south in about five minutes. Obama's had, what, three years? Chalk that up as yet another thing he's hopelessly incompetent at.
(Isn't it sad when raving reich-wingers are better at liberalism than liberals are themselves? What the hell are they teaching at Harvard these days?)
Severian, there is a reason I wanted you in the blog world, and you've just amply demonstrated why.
:-)
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