Government Spending = jobs?

 

That has got to be a punch line to a joke somewhere. Over the past decade our federal government has spend mind numbing amounts of money and made promises of more money (pensions for federal workers, healthcare, social security, etc) all while having to borrow money.  Even better: many states are well on their way to being bankrupt because of their prolific spending and promises (more pensions and other stuff).  All of which leads to me trolling through the news where I found this jewel by CBS news:  Obama's Conundrum: Matching Job Creation and Spending Cuts. The premise is that Government spending creates jobs (Keynesian economic model) and to a degree it does.  We now have a huge federal workforce doing all sorts of stuff.  Stuff they shouldn’t be doing.  Stuff that really should be done by the states, if the states (ie voters in those states) want it done.  Further, the cost of having these wonderful federal employees (or contractors) do their jobs is higher than the private sector.  And how does the federal government pay for all this wonderfulness?  By taking your money.  It also takes my money, and the money from businesses, and from entrepreneurial types that go out and create new businesses that employ people.  For instance: Wal-Mart – it got started as a small store and grew.  In the process of growing it created a huge number of very wealthy people who went out and started other businesses that grew and created more wealth.

The government on the other hand destroys wealth as it grows.  Worse, as it grows and takes more of our money it causes people who have money to look elsewhere.  Even worse many of those people are entrepreneurs who create the very jobs (and pay taxes) the government (Obama) says it wants created.

If The One wants to create jobs – cut spending.  Let people, businesses and entrepreneurs keep their money and spend it how they want.  That will do more to create jobs and get the economy going than any of those stupid stimulus bills, Obamacare, Cap and Trade, or anything else.

However, perhaps I’m not correctly understanding the topic.  When we say “matching job creation and spending cuts” nowhere does it specify the type of jobs being created.  So yeah, if we cut spending then ultimately we’ll end up with fewer federal government employees.  To me that is a feature.  But what do I know?  I’m just a dumb redneck that works 60 hours a week to pay down debt and save up to start my own business.