Where do jobs come from?

If something costs money, it is not a right. No individual has the right to food, clothing, shelter, or health care. All of these things cost money. Money is earned. No one has a right to the unearned.

Because everybody needs food, clothing, shelter, and health care, everybody has to work.

No individual has a right to a job. Jobs are earned by the qualified and kept through productive, hard work. Jobs that require individuals to use their brains generally pay more than jobs that require individuals to use their muscles. Brain matter is more valuable than muscle because the demand for intelligent work is high while the supply of intelligent workers is low. Anybody can mop the operating room floor; very few people can perform neurosurgery.

There is no guarantee that the job you are working today will even exist tomorrow. That is the nature of capitalism…change. Thomas Friedman [The World is Flat] defines capitalism: “creative destruction.” Innovation is a good thing. Unfortunately, for many, innovation in any market can cause jobs to be “outsourced to the past.” Think of all the jobs lost the day gas stations began to erect “Self-Serve” signs. How many millions of workers have been outsourced in the last two decades by microchips? Should something be done to stop this trend?

As the structure of the economy changes many become structurally unemployed. The government does not even factor these individuals into the unemployment rate. It is assumed that they will brush themselves off and get back to work elsewhere within a relatively short period of time. These people, after all, are not unemployed because the economy is unhealthy. They are unemployed because the definition of “productive work” changed. Most find other work. Some require upgrades: They have to go back to school and get training. Whether or not an individual has marketable skills or not is entirely their responsibility. Is there something unfair about any of this?

Ohio congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich thinks so. He finds the reality I’ve described above “shocking and dangerous.” Look what I found on his website:

Saving the Middle Class: A Real—not Rhetorical—Plan
By Dennis Kucinich

It is a shocking - and dangerous - trend in the United States over the last three decades: the plummeting rewards and respect for hard work. As a result the middle class who has produced this magnificent American engine of economic growth is under intense pressure from the governing elites – of both parties. Risk envelopes the life of the average American employee while the casino capitalists at the top prosper.

Democracy and capitalism are at risk in a system where casino capitalists earn a billion dollars or more in a year while wages and savings wither for the middle class. America’s consumer-driven capitalism will die if these Great Depression era trends are allowed to continue.

Fortunately, the American Dream and the middle class have been resuscitated before…

And Kucinich goes on to promise another FDR-type New Deal complete with government make-work projects, economic isolation, free health care for all, free college for all…all of which will be paid for by clubbing to death “those who have benefited most from our economic and legal system” and “by eliminating waste from our bloated, inefficient military budget.” In this way he will “help America resume its glorious journey…[and] correct our current detour towards fear and greed.”

Unbelievable.

I will limit myself to correcting only the most blatant “Economics 101” errors:

1. “…the middle class who has produced this magnificent American engine of economic growth…” The middle class did not produce the engine of economic growth any more than line workers in Flint produce automobiles. The middle class is the result of an economic boon created by the risk-takers, the entrepreneurs with the great ideas. Automobiles—and every job created by the birth of the auto industry—are made possible by that Idea Man, that Henry Ford, who woke up one morning and said: “I’m going to build a factory and mass produce automobiles.” The people who work in the factory wouldn’t even have jobs if it wasn’t for the Idea Man and his financial backers who risk everything. The middle class owes their existence to the “casino capitalist” [whatever that means], not the other way around. The people who assemble automobiles working the line in some factory risk nothing. They have a job. They get a pay check. They only benefit.

2. “America’s consumer-driven capitalism will die if these Great Depression era trends are allowed to continue.” [I can’t even believe this nearly-communist, collectivist-altruist, Ku-sonofabitch has the nerve to even mention saving capitalism. He knows nothing about capitalism, freedom, or justice.] There is no such thing as a consumer-driven economy, capitalist or otherwise. An economy is driven by production, by the producer. It is only by virtue of the fact that each of us works, produces, that we are able to consume anything at all. Each man’s productivity makes his ability to consume possible. Productivity is the cause. Consumption is an effect.

3. “Fortunately, the American Dream and the middle class have been resuscitated before…” The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. It prolonged it. Not once during the decade 1930-1940 did the unemployment rate fall below 14%. In fact, eight years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash, in 1938, the unemployment rate was 19%. In 1939, when FDR was running for his unprecedented 3rd term, the unemployment rate was 17.2%. [U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1961].

Unconvinced? Consider this: The stock market crashes that occurred on Black Monday, October 1987, the dot-com bubble bursting in March, 2000, and 9/17/01 [the day the markets re-opened after the 9/11 attacks] were much worse than the crash in 1929. The 1929 crash doesn’t even make it into Wikipedia’s “Top Ten Crashes,” yet it was 1954 before the stock market had recovered to pre-1929 levels. FDR’s government interference crippled the U.S. economy for a quarter of a century.

When the stock markets reopened on September 17, 2001, after the longest closure since the Great Depression in 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (“DJIA”) stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, to 8920, its biggest-ever one-day point decline. By the end of the week, the DJIA had fallen 1369.7 points (14.3%), its largest one-week point drop in history. U.S. stocks lost $1.2 trillion in value for the week. [Wickipedia]

How did we recover so fast? Less government—cut taxes, deregulation, free trade—i.e. more capitalism.