While tooling down 95, happily, drowsily on my way to yet another wonderful day in American education, I noticed a construction sign, one of many that have popped up since the stimulus bill. (I won’t get into the daily disruptions the excess of road work have caused, namely longer and more frequent traffic jams, nor into how roads dug up, rebuilt, and repaved only a few years ago are now again being repaved.). The sign read, “Putting America to work.”
I laughed out loud when I read it. Really? I’m still incredulous. Let’s look at this on two levels.
One: Let’s just say for the moment that no nefarious, sinister, or in any way utterly disheartening meaning is behind this sign. Let’s just say that hopefully whoever is in charge of constructions signs on 95 merely has an awesome sense of humor and is attempting to brighten my otherwise dull commute or had an inferior education and doesn’t understand the import of his words.
Two: Those behind the stimulus don’t understand what they’re doing, or worse, they do understand and still proceed with it. Whether or not the stimulus bill was a good idea, and whether or not it achieved its goals (or anything close to them) is debatable and not what I want to get into right now. What I do want to address is this: The government does not create jobs. The government can not put America back to work.
A business creates wealth and jobs. For example, an enterprising individual Joe American is walking through his local Sprawl-Mart and notices the plethora of Twilight related products. Immediately he recognizes a consumer need and an untapped space in the economic market. Once this Twilight craze dies down, or at least once people who’ve been buying this crap realize that what they like is really moronic vapidity successful only at tugging at one’s heartstrings thus making the consumers of the Twilight crap to appear transparently shallow, lonely, misguided, empty, and open to any and all mindless amusement that comes down the road, there will be a massive and urgent need for large anti-Twilight incinerators. The world’s landfills will not be able to hold the unbelievable output of cheap trinkets (the books included) that the Chinese were able to achieve in their quest of global domination via supplying Americans with silly shit. So Joe American sets up his business. He receives a business loan, hires employees, leases trucks and office space, and builds his first anti-Twilight incinerator. Joe American has just created jobs and wealth for the overall economy by introducing his product into said economy.
Then what Joe American foresaw on that wonderful day – the demise of the Twilight empire – comes to pass. He is inundated with posters, keychains, books, pencils, tshirts, bed sheets, towels, underwear, temporary tattoos, iPod sleeves, whistles, razors, hats, bracelets, watches, cereal boxes, DVDs, and so much more that he immediately finds his business understaffed and flushed with cash. Joe American has created more jobs and more wealth.
The government, on the other hand, cannot do what Joe American did. Take, for example, the highways. A lot of the stimulus money went to highway work. Let’s say a stretch of 95 from Woodhaven Road to Broad Street needs to be repaved. A job that large cannot be completed with the current number of highway employees. So PennDot (I think that’s who would handle the hiring) hires X number of people. These people work, they get paid, and they spend the money on food, entertainment, cars, dryers, washers, TVs, etc. and etc. Seemingly, wealth and jobs have been created. Money has gone back into the economy and allowed to do what it does best: keeping the engines running.
But hold on a second. While Joe American’s business can last as long as his product/service is demanded (and admittedly, my silly example, though sadly never to come true, would last only as long as Twilight related products existed. Which, now that I think about it, could well be forever), the government’s money, and its ability to create more (not print more), is finite. It is finite because it relies on the taxpayer. And what a taxpayer has to give depends on the economy. If the government wants to bring in more money, it has to raise taxes. It doesn’t offer anything in return, thus creating wealth or a job, but rather takes what would otherwise be spent directly into the economy. When the stimulus money runs out, those “created” highway jobs will run out and all that can be shown for the money spent is perhaps a short-term uptick in the economy and newly paved roads (which will need to be repaved again in ten years, or when the next stimulus bill passes).
It’s been said that the government is there to do what the people can’t do for themselves. National defense is a good example. While I think the saying is too general to have any real meaning regarding the economy, I will for this discussion take the saying at face value. Perhaps the government and its spending is needed to lurch a country out of an economic ditch. But like many things in life, the economy (of a country – any country, of a state, of a city, of a business) is cyclical. And if ingenuity, dedication, and hard work are present in the work force, which they are in America’s, the economy, and the people, will recover. Yes, people will suffer, people will lose, but as much of American history tells us, they will rebound.
We don’t need anyone in Washington to put us to work. We put ourselves to work, and for just once, I’d like to see our dear representatives help us do that instead of pandering to us in our time of need. But then again, I’ve always been a dreamer.
Bellicose Blatherings 
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