Can Anyone Really Create Jobs?

Interesting that none of these articles ever address the root causes of structural unemployment. Globalization combined with rapidly advancing technology are allowing an ever shrinking pool of extremely talented people to satisfy the world's demand for products. This is a reality that can no longer be ignored. It is not just the majority of Americans that are unemployable, but the majority of the world's population.<p>Technology's leveraging power has become so severe that a company like Apple can reasonably expect to supply the entire world market with smart phones. Another example is SpaceX, which is pioneering the future of space flight with a team of only 1300 employees.<p>Globalization depresses wages for traditional labor, while technology facilitates an extreme leverage for talent. These two forces are enough to obviate the vast majority of the domestic work force. As long as this reality is ignored, the discussion of potential solutions is futile.<p>Further reading: <a href="http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/</a>

I think one bizarreness needs to be pointed out, lest it seems too strange for some people who are used to a slightly more rational universe — all this talk of "job creation" is a lunatic side-effect of our economic system. One might think that millions of homeless and unemployed people represent a huge untapped demand for goods and services; they're humans like any other. But of course, our system doesn't work that way.<p>The notion of systematic unemployment is bizarre. (No matter what justifications were invented to paper over its absurdity with.) It represents idle hands which have nothing to do. The US could have enormous productive output. The infrastructure and know-how is there; it's not like someone dropped bombs all over the place and reduced it to a 3rd world nation. But as a society, we choose not to use these resources, nor do we allocate much of our output to the "lower classes" of people.

I found it humorous that the writer announces his bias by identifying other biases and then doing the same thing himself.<p><i>The current economic downturn has been called a housing crisis, a financial crisis and a debt crisis, but the simplifying logic of the political season has settled on what is really more a result than a cause. We are now, according to nearly everyone running for office, in a jobs crisis.</i><p>Jobs are like money -- they are the end of the process. They are the socres on the scoreboard, but you don't play the game by watching the score. These are metrics of results, not causes. I don't open a business with a chair and a big sign that says "give me money," even though money might be the way I judge success. Likewise, and for exactly the same reasons, you don't sit around trying to "create jobs" Jobs are the result of somebody creating value, they are not a goal in themselves.<p>I hate to say it, but this was a really bad article. I had a premonition of this when I looked at the title "Can Anyone Really Create Jobs?" It's yet another in a long line of political commentary that takes whatever the current problem is and announces that it is insolvable. This reached ludicrous levels in 2008, with lots of articles asking "Is this the end of capitalism?" I don't know how many of these you have to consume before you finally figure out that no, whatever is happening right now, it's not the end of something that's been going on for thousands of years.<p>Americans need to start getting honest about their economic situation, no matter what their politics. If you drop hundreds of billions of dollars paying for government workers that the government cannot afford, you are not simulating anything. Money is just continuing to be spent in the same patterns as before. Likewise, if you cut taxes for the rich, and they continue to spend their money in the same way, you are also not doing anything except to run up the debt. If you are living a house you cannot afford, no matter how much we help you, you are probably still stuck in a house you cannot afford, and the rest of us are much poorer. Simply because an idea sounds good to your political party doesn't mean that it accomplishes anything but buying votes. These facts sound cruel, and I apologize, but some of this commentary is beginning to sound like dispatches from somebody's fantasy land. People are smarter than that.

I didn't read the second page, because the first page seemed to miss the point so badly.<p><i>The most popular types of jobs programs involve state tax breaks or subsidies that seek to seduce a company from one state to another. While this can mean good news for “business-friendly” states like Texas, such policies don’t add to overall employment so much as they just shuffle jobs around.</i><p>Such subsidies can also seduce people from one country to another. And in that sense, they would indeed create jobs.<p>The same argument applies to the industry-specific legislation he mentions later.<p>Finally, he doesn't mention, on the first page, the very straightforward way that politicians can create jobs: by spending money on big infrastructure projects. Those certainly do create jobs, and they have been a common method to do so in a recession.<p>To top it off, lumping politicians in with "everybody else" seems unfair. As argued above, even politicians can and do "create jobs", but it is ludicrous to argue that the founders of Google or eBay or Paypal didn't create jobs. They created tens of millions of jobs that people live off of, in the US and in other parts of the world.

This article makes a very strange factual error: <i>...permanent cuts in taxes and regulation. These policies may (or may not) make the economy healthier in 5 years or 10, but the immediate impact would require firing a large number of America’s roughly 23 million government workers.</i><p>This is not true. You could cut taxes and reduce compensation for 23 million government workers.

Why doesn't the USA charge full rate taxes on individuals and corporations with extremely high incomes - and THEN deduct based on the number of new domestic hires they've done that have stayed for at least a year.<p>Seems super simple enough and then the REAL job creators get the credits they are demanding. The fakes then have no excuses.

It was only about 10 years ago that we understood how to allow the economy to create jobs and operate properly: keeping a steady monetary base, cutting taxes, loosening regulation and ending wasteful gov't programs that crowd out private investment.<p>It's a shame that 1921 and the post-war boom have been buried under theories that tow the line for the managerial-state.