An Open Letter to Democrats on Jobs

An Open Letter to Democrats on Jobs
Ben Shapiro
Wed, Oct, 06, 2010

Dear Democrats:

I write to you today because I am concerned that you do not understand what jobs are (other than Bill Clinton-type jobs, which are another category entirely). What else am I to gather from your constant refrain that the private sector is somehow to blame because it is not creating enough jobs?

It's a claim your candidates make over and over again. In California, Barbara Boxer runs ads against Carly Fiorina suggesting that Fiorina is unfit for the Senate because "as the CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina laid off 30,000 workers." Ominous music more appropriate to a horror movie underscores the ad's final contention: "Carly Fiorina: Outsourcing jobs. Out for herself."

Jerry Brown's allies in California engage in the same sort of mudslinging against Republican candidate and former eBay head Meg Whitman. "The record shows that Whitman is a one-person weapon of mass job destruction," scoffed California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski. In Florida, too, your allies in the media seem to think that anyone in the private sector who cuts jobs demonstrates evilly exploitative intent. "[Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick] Scott earned a reputation for cutting staff, consolidating operations and closing hospitals," tut-tutted the Orlando Sentinel.

Democrats: either you are stupid or you are liars. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are stupid. I will therefore use small words and short sentences.

I do not have the obligation to give you a job. You do not have the obligation to give me a job. No one has the right to hold a job.

All productive businesses have two goals. First goal: serving customers. Second goal: creating profit for financial backers. Neither of these goals, you may have noticed, is the creation of jobs. Real jobs are a byproduct of serving customers and creating profits.

Government cannot create real jobs because government does not care about serving customers or about creating profit. Government cares about enriching itself and bribing voters to feed its own growth.

Because government jobs need not serve customers or create profits, government jobs never disappear. They are self-serving and require no rationale other than their own existence.

Justifiable government jobs are those that serve a proper function of government: universal rights to protection of life, liberty and property. Since these functions cannot be fulfilled by the private sector, government must provide jobs in performance of these functions. The only necessary government jobs, therefore, are: (1) military jobs, since the entire country must be protected to preserve its existence; (2) law enforcement and disaster prevention/management jobs, since the country must be protected from crime and disaster to preserve property rights; (3) judges, since the judiciary must be impartial; (4) legislators, since legislators are supposed to serve their constituents and are answerable to them.

Because government jobs are jobs that are unnecessary and/or useless and/or overpaid, and because money for those unnecessary/useless/overpaid jobs must come from somewhere, government jobs destroy real jobs. In essence, growth of government jobs creates unhappier customers and less profits, poverty and poor service.

Full employment is not an economic goal. It is a byproduct of utopian economic growth. When full employment becomes an economic goal rather than a byproduct, everyone lives in poverty, unhappily employed by the government -- as in Cuba or the USSR.

The private sector has never destroyed a real job. The private sector has made certain real jobs obsolete, lowered wages for certain real jobs, and even outsourced real jobs -- but because the private sector is answerable to the needs of the market, every demand must be supplied by a real job. The only way to destroy a real job is to destroy the ability for suppliers of real jobs to meet demand for real jobs. And the only mechanism capable of destroying that ability is government, which can tax suppliers of real jobs into oblivion on behalf of government jobs, regulate suppliers to prevent them from meeting demand, and shut down suppliers to punish political adversaries.

I know it's difficult for you to follow that logic, Democrats, because you've been taught for so long that a job is a job is a job -- that digging a useless hole in Montana is the same as becoming a private sector pediatrician. It's time to wake up. For too long, your simplemindedness has destroyed the same jobs you purport to care about.

If you insist on foisting your flawed, fatuous economic principles on the nation, we will have no choice but to apply private sector principles to your jobs. In other words, we'll dump you on the street without hesitation. That's certainly the best way to restore profits and serve customers.
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