Soccer Dad

Obama's stimulus plan to destroy jobs

Does the following sound good to you?

President-elect Barack Obama signaled on Saturday that he would pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than anything he outlined on the campaign trail, setting the tone for a recovery effort that could absorb and define much of his term.

In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Mr. Obama said he would direct his economic team to craft a two-year stimulus plan with the goal of saving or creating 2.5 million jobs.

A basic understanding of economics, however, is necessary to grasp that there is no free lunch. For every job "created" by government, an unidentifiable job will, tit-for-tat, be destroyed in the private sector.

The images of earnest men and women put to work allegedly by HRDC flood the propagandist Canadian national broadcaster, the CBC. The multitudes thrown out of work because private economic activity have been crowded out by taxing or borrowing to finance job programs remain invisible. So, too, does the destruction of jobs and reduction in investments, purchasing and overall wealth that ensues when money is taxed away from Canadians and funneled to the HRDC's patronage playground. Investors suffer the same fate and are much less likely to take employment-generating risks with their capital. Government borrowing simply serves to reduce capital available to the private sector. A further diminution of assets occurs when government expands the money supply and causes inflation in order to finance job creation schemes. [...]

The reason government job programs destroy jobs also lies in the fact that much of the money extracted from taxpayers does not go to the wages of job recipients, but to the elaborate bureaucracy of consultants and planners who administer the programs . . .

Crossposted on Judeopundit