Mommy, Where Do Jobs Come From? - Catherine Crier
Catherine Crier Journalist, former judge, author -- "Patriot Acts"
Mommy, Where Do Jobs Come From?
Posted: 1/13/12 09:30 AM ET
Yesterday morning, I listened as Romney surrogate Chris Chocola, Club for Growth, repeated the Republican mantra that government doesn't create a single job. Try shutting down our national security apparatus -- defense, homeland security, intelligence, all the support contractors right down to farmers, uniform suppliers, companies making those million dollar toilet seats... and you'll see just how many jobs the government creates. In fact, if this occurred, there would be a global depression. (I'll save the Adam Smith debate about warfare as the biggest misuse of national resources for another day.)
Given the enormity of this one area of government job creation, we don't have to argue about all those public employees outside the military-industrial complex that seem to be dispensable these days -- the cops, teachers and firefighters, or the scientists and engineers that, thanks to taxpayer R&D, gave us the Internet, GPS and countless life-saving drugs or, gasp, clean air and water. We won't even debate the valuable government subsidies for critical technology, like the microchip that spawned a global economic revolution and produced, literally, millions of jobs.
After the microchip was invented in 1958 by an engineer at Texas Instruments, 'the federal government bought virtually every microchip firms could produce.' NASA bought so many [microchips] that manufacturers were able to achieve huge improvements in the production process -- so much so, in fact, that the price of the Apollo microchip fell from $1,000 per unit to between $20 and $30 per unit in the span of a couple years.
Is America Losing Its Mojo? Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, 1/14/09.
Every single GOP candidate regurgitates this anti-government talking point while, in the very next breath, asserting that as government officials they've created more jobs than anyone else in the race: Newt claims about 11 million jobs while Speaker of the House in the Clinton years; Perry touts his "one million jobs" Texas record while ignoring both the quality of those private sector jobs (most are minimum wage) and the very large number of public sector (government) jobs included in his figures; and Romney wants credit for his time as Governor (although Mass. was 4th lowest in new jobs in those years). As for his 15 years at Bain Capital, Mitt argues that 100,000 jobs were created through his company's investments and expertise, while ignoring analysis from the WSJ that it was a wash, at best, when Bain-related layoffs, bankruptcies and outsourcing are included.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/catherine-crier/mommy-where-do-jobs-come_b_1204180.html