Jobs in a free country are created to do something that needs done. President-elect Obama’s proposed jobs program will create jobs to say that we did – a road we have been down before, with awful results that included a $30,000 arificial rock.Last Saturday, Mr. Obama said he will create 3 million new jobs when he takes office – with 80% of those jobs in the private sector. Do the math – that’s 600,000 new government jobs. What are all those people going to be doing, and why does it need doing?
As always, history is instructive. 1970 was a recession year, and the politicians swung into high pander to create the Comprehensive Employment & Training Act (CETA). The program was not designed to do something that needed done, it was designed to make paychecks.
It was supposed to be a temporary $1 billion program – today we would call it a “stimulus” -- but by 1978 it was still there, and costing $6 billion. It would eventually be killed off by President Reagan.
The money was sent to state and local government to spend pretty much as they wanted to. There were many, many famous examples of waste. One cited by Reagan and Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire was a door-to-door census of dogs and cats in a California county. CETA paid $400,000 to have 85 people conduct the survey.
CETA also paid $30,000 to build an artificial rock for rock climbers to practice on, gave $500 a month to a guy in Atlanta to “organize for demonstration and confrontation” and sponsored a nude sculpture class.
In Philadelphia, 33 Democratic committeemen put their relatives on the CETA payroll.
Government certainly has jobs that need doing – catch and prosecute criminals, protect the environment, defend our borders.
The Census Bureau says we had 2.4 million civilian federal employees in 2007, along with 3.8 million state employees, and 10.9 million local government employees – and that’s just full-timers. That’s a total of 17.1 million people on the public payroll, or almost 12% of the 145 million workers in America. Perhaps that’s enough government workers to do the jobs that need doing.
This debate has been going on for a while. Click here for an excellent 1990 essay from the Cato Institute.
2 comments:
Some How our illustrious Govenor and Mr. Obama must think along the same lines more big governorment. This will solve all the worlds problems not just the American problem of near Bankrupcy of the Auto Industry and supplier chain of industies. Another CETA program might be less costly than the ones bandied about with the current thinking of the incoming administration.
Some infrastructure rebuilding seems reasonable. The numbers being bandied about...and they way they are being characterized (3 million jobs, million of "green jobs", etc)...is scary. Most of our best and brightest are already gainfully employed. I'm sure there are plenty of good folks that need jobs and are willing to work. But there are plenty of people with no work ethic just looking to stand in the "bailout stream" as well. I don't mind short-term spending on needed priorities...especially when they have a date certain for expiration. But honorable, realistic oversight and politicians don't seem to go together. Mme Pelosi is already completely freezing out the opposition by doing away with some fairness stuff created in the mid-90s. One wonders just exactly who will hold the money-spenders accountable. I don't trust either party to be honest in and of themselves.
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