Government Not Only Can, but Should Create Jobs! In Government!
The loss of a government job is not a good thing. The taxpayer will save nothing. In fact, the unemployed former federal worker is now on the unemployment rolls. Where is the wisdom in that? by Bill Schmalfeldt
(liberal)
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Would someone please be so kind as to explain what conservatives are talking about when they say "government can not create jobs"?
Of course government can create jobs. They can do it better than anyone else. Not only can they create jobs, but they should create jobs... as many as possible, the sooner the better! If Republicans would get out of the way and let government create the jobs this economy needs, this nation would be on the road to full recovery.
But there seems to be some sort of inexplicable "shame" associated with being a government employe. People on the government payroll are regarded with the same scorn as the right places on those accepting welfare, accused of being a tax leech when the fact is you contribute as much to the taxes that pay your salary as the person in the private sector doing a comparable job.
When the President wants to show "he's serious" about holding down government costs, the first thing he does is place a freeze on federal hiring and cost of living increases. This does nothing to lower the deficit and only makes life harder for the employe who has to get by on the same amount he made last year while the cost of everything has gone up, thereby reducing his net worth harming the nation's economic health in the process.
When Republicans and their mouthpieces on radio and television talk idly about shutting down the government, the ill-informed "ditto head" thinks it would be a good thing. After all, "government never gets anything done." Yet, somehow that pothole on the highway is supposed to be repaired, that bridge over the river is supposed to be maintained, someone is supposed to find a cure for cancer and people are supposed to put their lives on the line to defend the country. All without being properly compensated.
The conventional conservative "wisdom" about government employees earning more than their private sector counterparts is hogwash. Probable Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney told a group at the Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity summit last November that the pay gap between public and private workers must be corrected.
That would be wonderful news... for government employees.
A report issed last year by the Bureal of Labor Statistics said there is a gap in pay between private and government employees.
Despite the oft-quoted-by-conservatives Heritage Foundation study that indicated workers on the public payroll are overpaid by 22 percent, the BLS figures issued Nov. 4, 2011, showed workers on the government payroll are underpaid by 26.3 percent compared with similar non-federal jobs, a “pay gap” that increased by about 2 percentage points over last year while federal salary rates were frozen.
Oh sure, it's a knee jerk reaction for the conservative who doesn't want to look any deeper than the surface or investigate what he's being told by the right wing noise machine. Federal workers are overfed, overpaid, lazy fat cats who shuffle papers, take three-hour lunch breaks and provide nothing of value to society. So why not fire them? Fire them all? That would fix the problem and balance the budget and hasten the second coming of our Lord Almighty, right?
Well, those federal employees aren't just going to vanish in a whiff of smoke. They are going to need jobs in a society that doesn't have enough to go around as it is. They will go on unemployment, increasing the burden on government services and unemployment insurance rates paid by companies. Bridges will go unrepaired. Cures will go undiscovered. Our nation will be undefended, and the deficit will expand.
But what if unemployed people were hired and trained by the federal government to do the jobs that need to be done in America? Fix the infrastructure? Create a high-speed rail system? Find and implement new sources of green energy -- jobs all paid for by the government which, in return, is repaid by the taxes these new employees generate?
Is that socialism? People being paid by the government to perform services for the people that private industry either cannot or will not perform because it doesn't fit in the bottom line? Should the quality of your health care be driven by a profit paradigm? Should the quality of road repair be determined by the cost cutting bean counters at a corporation? Should a hydroelectric dam or windmill farm be constructed by companies that benefit from the continued importation of foreign oil? When did someone change Lincoln's words in the Gettysburg address to "by the corporation, of the corporation, for the corporation?"
People need jobs. Infrastructure needs repair. Cures need to be found for the diseases that plague us all. Must we wait until it's profitable? Or do we use the good offices of government to ensure that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is not a privilege reserved only for the top 1%?
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Would someone please be so kind as to explain what conservatives are talking about when they say "government can not create jobs"? 