Getting Jobbed on Jobs

There’s lots of talk these days about jobs. Many kinds of jobs.

First, there’s the snow job. The best known version of this is that avalanche of an idea that our federal government will “fix” the economy by creating or saving millions of jobs.

“Saving” jobs? Folks in Washington want to take credit for every one of us who happen not to get fired during their reign.

Not that the idea of politicians “creating” jobs makes much sense, either. I certainly don’t want people to be unemployed. But color me skeptical about the ways that politicians go about creating jobs — and the types of jobs thus created.

Spending trillions of dollars to stimulate the economy will indeed produce some jobs. It would be difficult to spend that much money without creating some work for somebody.

But there is a big difference between creating a job where someone produces a product or provides a service that then turns a profit and conjuring up make-​work tasks by handing tax dollars over to some scheme that everyone realizes couldn’t sustain itself in a competitive marketplace.

If we want our economy to rebound — if we aim to rebuild our wealth — then we need productive jobs. Yes, jobs that employees have because of their productivity. Not jobs produced by politicians plunging us deeper into debt and grinding us down further into inefficiency.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.