IT’S TIME TO MAKE WORK

A friend of mine sent me this graphic of the progress of our jobless recovery, which reinforces the doubts about the way we are spending our way to employment.

We already know from several articles in NHBR that the amount thus far spent per job created (or layoff avoided) borders on the absurd. Last month the state for instance reported that after more than $407 million in contracts, it created the equivalent of 3007 full time jobs. That’s comes out to $135,449.75 per job. Even if all those contracts haven’t been spent yet, and it comes out to only a 100 grand or so a job, I doubt that many people working on the highway this summer or winterizing homes are making even that kind of money.

Maybe we have been going about it the wrong way. Thus far, the spending hasn’t been directly to create jobs, as were a lot programs (like the WPA) during the Great Depression. The idea is that this time we shouldn’t “make work” but instead “target” spending on things like Saving the Financial System, Create Modern Infrastructure, Upgrade Education, Stop our Dependence on Foreign Oil, etc.

To make a “sustainable” recovery we have to spend our way into a new economy, and jobs will be created along the way, or so the thinking goes. This is a more efficient way of spending, supposedly, because the private sector is ALWAYS more efficient than government, no matter what.
But such two-birds-in-one-stone approach usually doesn’t work. First of all, have you ever tried to kill two birds with one stone? It’s hard enough to get one of them. If you try for two, you’ll hit nothing but air.

It reminds me of the trying to get the ultimate smart phone that will be a good phone, mp3 player, mini internet computer, camera etc. Some may argue that the I-Phone does a pretty good job of some if not all of these things. But if you really want to take good pictures, you get a digital camera. If you really want a good phone, you want something that’s not tied to AT&T network, and so on.

And if you really want to spend money to create jobs, you need programs designed to do just that, i.e. the old make work programs, where all the money is spent hiring people, and making up something for them to do quickly. The private sector really isn’t the vehicle for that. Companies don’t want to just put people to work. They want to make money, or do something that will make money in the future. And if that doesn’t create the most jobs right away, then the money won’t get there, no matter how many complicated safeguards you put up.

No, if the government wants to create jobs and put people the work, it should try to do it itself and leave the private sector out of it, for the most part. Some jobs will be created. They will do things that will be absolutely meaningless in making a profit, but may create some nice things that private business doesn’t care too much: free health care to the poor, some shelters for the homeless, fixing up a few parks, clearing some trails, publishing some creative works that will never make any publisher any money. This might may result in a social good or maybe a lot of waste, a lot of “make work.” But at least it wouldn’t cost so much for each job. More people will be getting a regular pay check which they can spend. And maybe that black picture of the United States might lighten up a bit.

You want to make work? That’s what government does best, to many a conservative chagrin. The private sector ain’t interested. They want to make money.

Government should stop relying on private enterprise to do what it wants to do. Stop trying to hitch a ride on the back of business. If you want to do something right, you just have to do it yourself.