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Friday, July 20, 2012

Jobs From Forced Charity - The Socialist Way

It appears, based on the economic philosophy he has been outlining in recent weeks, that President Obama believes that jobs based on economic transactions, exchanges, trade and so forth do not matter, have no significance. This has a very serious foundation, to which I will turn later in this short discussion.

Wealth creators produce jobs from engaging in such exchanges, mutually beneficial trade or commerce. If my neighbor hires my child to mow his lawn, he gets a mowed lawn and my child receives a few bucks in compensation. My child also may be said to be employed – in a small way. Thousands of such exchanges, from tiny to huge, constitute the free market. And they create wealth, various economic benefits and advantages for all those engaged in them and this is also where jobs are born! People aim to prosper by improving on their lives through the upkeep of their household, their businesses, their health and fitness, their recreation and so forth. All of these involve creating jobs. The wealth produced – incomes, return on investments, profits and the like – enable people to go shopping for goods and services. And so it goes, around and around, wealth creation leading to job creation.

But our president finds wealth creation to be a low-level economic objective, one may assume something selfish, whereas job creation is worthy, especially if it isn't linked to this depraved goal of becoming prosperous, wealthy.

What is left to create jobs? Government spending, that is what. Spending taxes taken from citizens on projects that do not make any private market agents rich, such as building up the infrastructure, giving away subsidies, paying out welfare and so forth. Now, these are worthy ways of creating jobs since they come from handing out resources with no expectation of any returns. The investment in such public works isn't marred by that dubious motive of private profit or income. No. It is handed out by the disinterested government and its public servants. It isn't their own resources, anyway, so they can be free of any selfish involvement, any concern about getting benefits in return.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Government jobs for defense, space programs, roads, bridges, fire police, military I can support welfare and other socialist ideals not so much..