by Don Fredrick, The Complete Obama Timeline, ©2024
(Feb. 11, 2024) — A conservative friend of mine was recently harassed by a leftist who insisted that Joe Biden was the greatest thing since sliced bread, particularly because of all the “new jobs” he is supposedly creating with his “infrastructure” program. There would be new jobs in the expansion of Amtrak, and jobs building new bridges and highways, jobs building electric buses for schools and public transit, and jobs providing all 330 million Americans (and our illegal alien guests, no doubt) with “reliable, high-speed Internet.”
I took the liberty of responding to the die-hard Democrat, as follows:
For the record, it is easy to “create jobs” when the government (the taxpayer) pays the salaries! A president could double the number of jobs overnight simply by signing legislation that makes all employees in the country work with one hand tied behind their backs! Voila! We would have an instant need for more dock workers, plumbers, carpenters, typists, etc.! Symphony orchestras could have one pianist use only his left hand while another only uses his right hand! We would immediately double the number of musicians! (Why didn’t anyone think of that before?)
What the advocates of massive infrastructure projects are forgetting, of course, is that every dollar used to pay a worker for a “new government job” (or “foreign aid” to another country to bribe them to keep their citizens from crossing into the U.S.) is a dollar taken out of our private economy through taxes (or via the hidden tax of inflation). Those new infrastructure jobs are not “free.” They are paid for with jobs lost elsewhere.
If a particular Biden jobs program costs $50 billion, for example, that means $50 billion is taken away from private sector jobs. We see the new job of a steelworker who builds a new government-funded bridge. But we do not see the autoworker who lost his job because $50 billion in higher taxes meant some people could no longer afford to buy a new car. The government puts up a sign that reads, “These bridge workers owe their jobs to Joe Biden!” But no one puts up signs pointing out the many lost jobs—because those lost jobs are spread out across the country and are not as obvious. But they have been lost nevertheless!
Let’s say you decide to spend $2,000 on a new refrigerator. You see the new refrigerator. You see the salesman who sold it to you. You do not directly see the factory worker who made it, but you know he exists. Now consider that by taking $2,000 out of the bank to purchase that new refrigerator you no longer have that $2,000 to spend on something else. Perhaps that “something else” might have been a new sofa. When friends visit they will see your new refrigerator but they cannot “see” the sofa. They cannot see the sofa salesman who lost a commission on the sale that never occurred. They cannot see the sofa maker whose overtime was cut because that sofa was never ordered.
Sadly, far too many people fall for the propaganda that claims government can create jobs. But the government cannot create jobs. It can only shift jobs from one product or service to another. Those who do not understand that should read a book on basic economics. (I suggest Economic Sophisms, by the great Frederic Bastiat.)
This is not to argue that bridges should not be repaired or that potholes should not be fixed. But while individuals are free to spend their income as they see fit (you are free to buy a refrigerator, or a sofa, or keep the money in the bank), the government should limit its spending to that which is necessary, critical, and not prohibited by the Tenth Amendment—the Amendment no one in Congress or the White House realizes exists. We do not need to expand Amtrak. We do not need to buy electric buses for schools or mass transit. We do not need to provide every American with high-speed Internet. We do not need vote-buying schemes that are “funded” by an expansion of the money supply and the higher consumer prices that expansion causes. You are free to spend your money as you see fit. But the government should not be spending our tax dollars with reckless abandon.