« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

Congressional Black Caucus Job Fair Ignores Reality

By: Jeff Cooper (Diary)  |  August 19th, 2011 at 12:18 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The Congressional Black Caucus ignores the reality that the number of available jobs for people willing to work is staggeringly small by comparison.  They also ignore the political reality: government can’t create jobs.  The CBC can hold a thousand job fairs, if they wish, but a fact remains: employers aren’t hiring.  Until the CBC decides to end their objections to cutting business taxes and reducing redundant regulations, efforts such as these job fairs will be seen as simple grandstanding.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not anti-job fair.  I believe job fairs are useful; they highlight the problem of unemployment in America.  Coincidentally, a line of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people waiting to apply and interview for a few jobs demonstrates decades of political interfering in the affairs of private business and the economy.  If government truly wanted to “do something” about jobs, they could pass a Constitutional Amendment that separates private business from the state, allowing a truly free market to exit, though I wouldn’t hold your breath.

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • Jeff Cooper

    You certainly have the freedom to submit, conform, and become part of the herd, if you choose to do so, Steelgeneral. If you wish to sacrifice your individual liberty to decide what is best for you for the benefit of society, by all means, go ahead. However, how does freedom exist in your Utopia when a person or group is compelled to act by threat of force? “Make the rich people pay more in taxes,” so say liberals. Why?

    I am laughing at your final statement above: “It baffles me, especially if you lost your job, that you really think the rich are gonna give you jobs. Why? you?re way too expensive to them.” Conservatives look at government jobs and say the same thing. The difference is that in your version, the private company is responsible to pay the new hire. When government “creates” a job, everyone is on the hook.

  • gawken

    just read their “wish list” of desired legislation..

  • thesteelgeneral

    Really?
    Aha, you believe that policeman is not a job? Teacher? Wait, a teacher at a public school is not a job, but a teacher at a private school, that IS a job?

    you people really need to let go of this fiction, that “government can?t create jobs”.

    If so, what about the folks at NASA? And … wait for it …. THE ARMY, NAVY and USAF??
    These aren’t jobs?

    Us army corps of engineers, US Park services, these are ALL jobs, government jobs at that.

    But, I gotta say, I do love it when I hear some ideologue declare that policeman is not a “job”.

  • gekster

    You have to have jobs that creates wealth, or the jobs you mention can not be paid for.

  • conservativecurmudgeon

    The Government does not create jobs. It re-allocates resources and creates moneytary dislocation.

    A private sector job involves voluntary exchange, where additional value is created with each exchange: I could sell you a pound of coffee, you get the value of 80 brewed cups of beverage, for example. This is what creates additional assets in the economic system. This, of course, doesn’t include the jobs all along the chain of exchange and supply, such as coffee growers, coffee millers, coffee ocean shipping agents, packagers, roasters, truckers, and on and on and on.

    In order for ANY hiring of any sort in the Government Sector to take place, the money to pay the people hired must first be INvoluntarily confiscated, without any additional asset being created in the exchange. This act alone creates NEGATIVE equity.This is exacerbated because the money doesn’t go directly from the pocket of the person who had his money confiscated into the pocket of the teacher, or the firefighter, or what have you: It must be sluiced through a maze of tax collectors, bond counsels, compliance officials, regulators, and payroll clerks, each taking a piece of the spoils.

    If wealth could be creted simply by taxing and reallocation, then, let’s go to 100% taxation, 100% government employment, and then we should all be millionaires. Right?

  • westcoastpatriette

    Especially the third paragraph.

    It just irks me to hear the left defend big gov with that justification- that government expansion “creates” jobs. Ugh!

  • thesteelgeneral

    @gekster:
    it’s good to hear that you still refer to them as “jobs”. Which is my main point. How does any of what you said make them into something which isn’t a job?

    @curmud
    “jobs all along the chain of exchange and supply, such as coffee growers”
    You really need to study up on economics 101. Tip: all jobs along this chain ADD VALUE to the coffee and therefor are jobs even in the narrow sense you see as jobs.

    “In order for ANY hiring of any sort in the Government Sector to take place, the money to pay the people hired must first be INvoluntarily confiscated, without any additional asset being created in the exchange.”
    WRONG. Point 1, in any civilised country the payment would be largely voluntary, cos those people would be smart enough to realize that taxes are necessary. Taxes are a sign of civilisation, because taxes is what we, as a group, do together. This should not be hard to see.

    Point 2. You have been falsely taught to believe that the services provided by government are without value. Government (and that means ALL of us, not just job exporters, eeer I mean Koch bros. eer I mean of course: The Wealthy) provides us with a physical infrastructure of roads and bridges, and a less tangible infrastructure of laws and an infrastructure of security, the police and fire dept. It’s not like the Koch Brothers would have been able to make their billions in a country like present day Somalia, without any infrastructure. They needed a number of things, like educated people (primary education paid for by we the people), roads to transport their goods (also paid for by me, the taxpayer) and project developed land to put stores and factories on, with energy and water.

    Compare: the renting of a bus to go on a church outing. That’s the same as taxation. The difference is of course, that you and/or right wingers incorrectly see the government as evil, while you implicitly see your church leaders as good.

    You people really need to distinguish between stuff that good to spend money on, like roads and bridges (which Obama wants to do but which Repubs blocks cos it would give him a “win”) and other stuff, like giving tax cuts to Billionaires (which encourages them to hire more people …. overseas where they’re cheaper)

    And sure, the maze of tax collectors etc. should be as efficient as possible. But it can’t be zero. Which is what you people think it should be. The US has long ago reached the point where government is so underfunded, it has ceased to become efficient.

    Let’s assume that before Reagan there were 10 taxcollectors. They did the work and they managed to catch their fair share of tax evaders, otherwise lovingly known as criminals.
    Now, there’s only 2 taxcollectors. There’s too much work for them to operate effectively, so every body avoids paying taxes, ESPECIALLY THE ONES WHO CAN HIRE LAWYERS to find loopholes: the aforementioned job exporters.

    @wcp
    It just irks me to hear the right defend Big Corp with that justification that Corporate expansion ?creates? jobs. Ugh!

    Every corporation tries to reduce the number of workers. Especially in our services based society, workers are the biggest cost. So, the goal of every corp is to lay off as much workers as they can.

    Not saying they shouldn’t or whatever, I’m just tired of hearing that mantra that companies are angels who by definition do “good” and that government is by definition “evil”

    Govt is stuff we do together. You can disagree to as to WHAT we should do together: you people wanna buy big Tomahawks and blow the crap out brown people you know nothing about (WMD? still not found) and I wanna allocate towards Americans so that they can healthy. That’s all well and good. Just don’t try to pretend that my way is “wasteful” while yours isn’t. Last I checked, the Iraq war ran at a HUGE TRILLION dollar loss.
    And healthy Americans have the ability to go out and create stuff. The 45000 (according that bastion of communism, privately owned Harvard) that die each year from lack of health care? Not so much. kind of lost that opportunity.
    Oh well.

    The difference between me and you is that I, by and large victimize the poor. You victimize the Mega Rich, like the Koch brothers. Do you really think that the mega rich are victims? That it would hugely affect them personally if they paid 39% instead of 36% in taxes? Oh wait, will they then start to FIRE people? Well, how patriotic is that? If they aren’t even willing to take a profit cut for you, why do you support them then?

    It baffles me, especially if you lost your job, that you really think the rich are gonna give you jobs. Why? you’re way too expensive to them.

  • gekster

    The jobs you pointed out consume wealth, they do not create it.
    Running an off tangent post does not take away from what you posted, the one I replied to.

    And after reading the rest of your posts, from the Robinhood first one till this one, it is plain you are not here to promote conservative values, which is what this site is for.
    Your lefty slip is showing.

    As far as needing a Robinhood, what do you think Obama is, if not taking from the rich and giving to his voters.