From Pine View Farm

Jobs Con Job 1

Alan Caron points out an uncomfortable truth. A snippet:

I feel sorry for the frustrated working people who put their faith in this shameless showman, President-elect Donald Trump, because he promised to bring back the glory days of manufacturing. Here’s the secret that politicians don’t want you to know. The president – and for that matter, government as a whole – doesn’t have much to do with creating jobs. They can help, on the margins. They also can cause damage by getting behind the wrong things.

But the notion that campaign promises can revive the 20th century economy belongs on the pages of the National Enquirer at the supermarket checkout stand. It’s nonsense.

For every one manufacturing job we’ve lost to trade deals and government actions, we’ve lost seven to eight to machines, computers and robots. Governments don’t control technological progress, new inventions, time-saving devices and brilliant breakthroughs. Heck, government is usually the last place to employ those things. And technological progress is what’s costing us jobs. The sooner we understand that, the better off we’ll be.

What’s missing from the “jobs” equation is this: The wealth created by this “progress” is not being shared; it’s being hogged.

And, as George Orwell told us, some pigs are more equal than others.

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1 comment

  1. GS

    December 11, 2016 at 7:35 pm

    Some nobody businessman from Maine:

    “For every one manufacturing job we’ve lost to trade deals and government actions, we’ve lost seven to eight to machines, computers and robots.”

    Ah, the usual Tom Friedman tripe/meritocracy and globalism triumphant nonsense. Of course he’s right about Trump not being able to fulfill his promises, that he’s all bull. That doesn’t excuse be called out when peddling a different flavor dressed up as “reality.”

    If robots and a.i. have been taking over everything we’d be seeing a huge jump in productivity. Actually that’s not the case and Dean Baker at CEPR deals with the fiction about once a week. Productivity is stagnant and has been for awhile. There’s no sign of an upward tick.

    “The president – and for that matter, government as a whole – doesn’t have much to do with creating jobs.”

    This too is nonsense. Baker’s new book goes into great detail on how precisely government enacted policies created the rigged system we have now. At the same time he says government can undo that. In fact, it is government that shapes the “market” of our country and, therefore, yes it can create jobs as opposed to sustaining a rent-seeking economy which we have now.

    ” Governments don’t control technological progress, new inventions, time-saving devices and brilliant breakthroughs. Heck, government is usually the last place to employ those things.”

    This is particularly laughter-inducing although it would seem many people think it’s true.

    https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm

    “The National Science Board (Board) observes with concern the indicators of stagnation, and even decline in some discipline areas, in support for U.S. R&D, and especially basic research, by these two essential patrons and participants. A decline in publications by industry authors in peer reviewed journals suggests a de-emphasis by U.S. industry on expanding the foundations of basic scientific knowledge. More specifically, research contributions by U.S. industry authors in the physical and biomedical sciences through publications in peer reviewed journals have decreased substantially over the last decade.”

    Oops! Just the opposite of what he said. It’s US industry that doesn’t support science and technology like it used to.

    Which brings us to the final bit of rubbish, Alan Caron’s contribution IS “work” that’s essentially just rent-seeking. As “communications” it provides nothing substantial or of social value other than a vague recommendation that everything be downsized because of waste. Yet he receives money for it while advocating for shrinking everything in government, not just social programs but also “military, contracting and administration.”