Article by WashingtonStateWire. Published on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 EST.
Job Creation Through Administration
By Melvin G. Ashton
Washington State Wire
Please, I’m begging you, let the term “job creation” go. It’s jumped the shark. It’s reached the point that the marketing term “Extreme” reached when Jello jumped on the bandwagon. No, I’m sorry, Jello in any form is not “Extreme”, and “Job Creation” isn’t the solution to anything.
Job creation has become the shield for any public policy that injects inefficiency into our current way of life. When the EPA imposes billions of dollars of mercury control requirements on electric power generation with no measurable health benefit to the population, and spins it as “Job Creation” because people will have to spend time and resources complying, I can no longer make fun of them. As Will Rogers once said, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
At the same time, “Job creation” has become a holy grail for our political crusaders who set out on their quests to set things right. But I have news for you, Knights of the Pork Barrel – it’s not jobs that people want.
If I disabled my lawnmower, I could create several jobs for people whom I would need to hire to cut my lawn by hand, because without the lawnmower I simply couldn’t do it myself. Better yet, if I got the homeowners association to prohibit lawnmowers in the neighborhood, well, now we’re talkin’ REAL economic stimulus! But would the people I would have to hire really appreciate the job? Do people want to do things inefficiently just so they can have a few dollars? I bet that if I just mowed the lawn myself and handed out charitable contributions equal to the false payroll I would create by denying myself access to that technological marvel that we all have in our garage, those receiving the money would be more happy than if they had to spend eight hours on hands and knees with scissors trimming my turf.
To those of us in the American working class, money only matters if you don’t have enough. Beyond providing for basic needs, work is really more about a sense of self worth, about our identity within society. People want to contribute, they want to create value, they want to be respected. A job that produces no value to society may provide a paycheck, but does not provide what real, working Americans want. It’s not the American way.
On the contrary, the American way is to innovate, to do more with less, to push productivity higher and higher. And in doing so, we ELIMINATE jobs. Enter the Automated Teller Machine, the Self Check-out Line, and the 16 gas pumps with one guy in the glass box selling lip balm and cigarettes. It seems to be happening everywhere, with the greatest resistance to automation coming from the public sector. The funny thing is, politicians think that they can prevent this inevitable progression by increasing the bureaucratic demands on the private sector, when in fact that only necessitates further automation.
So can we get over our fascination with the notion of “job creation” and start talking about creating value and opportunity for the people who live here? Because what politicians are really saying when they speak of job creation is that they want people to be paid what they think they deserve, rather than the value of their contribution in the marketplace. There are plenty of jobs out there that people simply feel are beneath them. But not everyone qualifies to be a Policy Analyst 3 at the Department of Bureaucratic Streamlining. Then again, maybe they do.
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