Your Government Owes You a Job

The Nation ^ | April 23, 2014 | Raúl Carrillo

[driftless2]

"pay people to work"

Doing what? Digging holes and then filling them in again? A great pct. of non-workers are lazy, shiftless people who you'd have to whip to get any work done. And then the "work" you'd get would most likely be very substandard. I like the idea of punishing people who don't like to work for a living...by making them starve.

[tbw2]

Instead of a make work program, make those living in Section 8 housing spend part of their time maintaining it like picking up litter. Require those who collect SNAP to spend time sorting and distributing freebies, like food coops that give a discount to those who sort food into boxes and distribute them.
Instead of government becoming an employer, use those already one benefits in some form or fashion.

[kjam22]

Unionized and guaranteed retirement benefits starting at age 48.

[andy58-in-nh]

Yet another Ivy League genius, lacking any comprehension about the simplest of economic concepts. He’ll soon be working for the Obama Administration.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Would a job guarantee just create dismal make-work? No. Even ultraconservative idol Bill Buckley admitted there’s always something to be accomplished. New Deal employees built dams, bridges, roads and parks. Similar efforts have succeeded in Sweden and South Africa. Congressman Conyers has proposed creating enough public works for full employment, targeting decaying, unsustainable infrastructure.

A shovel is a useful garden tool. But when there is a big excavation job to do and a bulldozer to do it with, digging with a shovel instead of operating the bulldozer does not satisfy the motivation for having a job - which is to convey dignity. The dignity of a job flows from the dignity of the boss. And the dignity of the boss flows from his responsibility for the money he pays for the job. The responsibility of the boss for the money he pays flows from the fact that money is credit, in the sense that

"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . . who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . . 

Ultimately the money the boss pays is and must be scarce; if the boss simply writes meaningless IOUs for the payment, the job is and can only be “just dismal make-work.”

And that is the fundamental reason the government can’t create jobs by fiat. To impart dignity, a job must have an extrinsic purpose. The minute you start out from the premise of giving Joe a "job,” Joe is already being patronized - and your purpose is already defeated. Start from the need, find a way for Joe to fill it, and you have done something. Joe is a solution looking for a problem. If Joe is a problem and the solution is to put him to work, “just dismal make-work” follows as the night follows the day.

There is scant difficulty in finding things to do whose value is not zero.
The great problem is to find things to do which are seen to be actually worth doing.

[MaxMax]

Lay-offs is the rational answer. Gov can only grow so big and with the promises
of lifetime retirement for minimal effort the Gov cannot keep raising taxes to cover it.
And the Feds cannot keep printing money to cover theirs. It's an ugly bubble and we'll
all suffer in the end. It's UN-AMERICAN!

[EternalVigilance]

"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, 1850

[HiTech RedNeck]

Everyone has a right to an opportunity. When the market isn’t hag-ridden, the opportunity will be there.

[HiTech RedNeck]

This is plunderful.

[DH]

I agree that an “opportunity” is important.

However, in this day and age “opportunity” means your chance to trip up a prospective employer so that you can have the “opportunity” to sue him to have the “opportunity” to live the high life for the rest of your life.

Opportunity is the chance to show a prospective employer just why you would be a good employee. It’s not an opportunity to force a prospective employer to hire you in fear of a legal torpedo with the word “racial bigot, faggot hater, and all other types of social vermin” on it.

In my original post I stated the word “earn.” A large portion of today’s potential applicants for a job “DEMAND, EXPECT, OR think that based on color or sexual choice, they are given the right to the job by the Supreme Court of the United States......and they are right.

I am an employer and I see it everyday.

[RWB Patriot]

Would love to have a conversation with this guy about why, if the government can just guarantee stuff, it doesn’t guarantee a nice retirement whenever we want, rather than just a job.

Probably won’t take him long to start stumbling.

[kearnyirish2]

“Lay-offs is the rational answer. Gov can only grow so big and with the promises of lifetime retirement for minimal effort the Gov cannot keep raising taxes to cover it.”

That certainly has been Chris Christie’s response in NJ (and the taxpayers voted him back for a second term comfortably). In the past the state would bail out the insolvent urban toilets; under Christie the state stopped that. The layoffs were a good start, and I believe we’ll be seeing more shortly...

[PGalt]

Thanks for the ping/post to this great thread of comments.