The following was originally posted at www.fiscalaccountability.org:
We’ve said it over and over again – the Administration’s job counting metric of counting "jobs saved and created" is bogus, and the "stimulus" has failed. But it can’t hurt to say it again, especially in light of the President’s speech at the Brookings Institution later this morning, in which we can expect him to call for more "stimulus"-like measures without calling them that. And he’ll likely tout the "progress" that has supposedly been made, when reality paints a different picture with unemployment now significantly higher than before the "stimulus" was passed.
Thomas Sowell discusses the President’s flawed approach to job creation on Townhall today.
He argues (along the lines of what we, and many others, have been pointing out):
What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use.
But government creates no wealth. Ignoring that plain and simple fact enables politicians to claim to be able to do all sorts of miraculous things that they cannot do in fact. Without creating wealth, how can they create jobs? By taking wealth from others, whether by taxation, selling bonds or imposing mandates.
However it is done, transferring wealth is not creating wealth. When government uses transferred wealth to hire people, it is essentially transferring jobs from the private sector, not adding to the net number of jobs in the economy.
If that was all that was involved, it would be a simple verbal fraud, with no gain of jobs and no net loss. In reality, many other things that politicians do reduce the number of jobs.
Unfortunately, none of this is resonating with the Administration, and we can expect more of the same Keynesian experiments:
Constant government experiments with new bright ideas is another common feature of Obama’s "change" and FDR’s New Deal. The uncertainty that this unpredictable experimentation generates makes employers reluctant to hire. Destroying some jobs while creating other jobs does not get you very far, except politically. But politically is what matters to politicians, even if their policies needlessly prolong a recession or depression.
Leadership in the House of Representatives is expected to stuff parts of their "jobs initiative" aka "stimulus II" into one of the remaining appropriations bills later this week or next.
Are you ready for more "hope and change"?