David McElroy

The bureaucrats at the UN’s International Labor Organization are worried. They say the world’s economies are heading toward a “massive job shortfall.” Who would have thought that if you destroy the incentives to start new businesses and take risks, jobs would go away?

The problem is that bureaucrats have things backwards. They want policies designed to create jobs, as though jobs are manufactured and come stacked up in boxes. That’s insane. Jobs are simply by-products of economic activity. When you restrict economic activity and make it more difficult for people to be productive, you’re going to get less economic activity — which leads to fewer jobs. What’s so hard to understand about that?

People such as the economic illiterates waving their signs about “green jobs” are just as ignorant about this as the government bureaucrats. They all believe the focus should be on jobs, not understanding that the focus has to be on letting people pursue their own self-interest — at which point the jobs will be there.

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The Obama administration has claimed that “stimulus” spending created or saved 300,000 to 400,000 jobs each quarter while its money was being doled out. Does anybody seriously believe that number? I don’t.

I was already a skeptic — to put it most politely — of such self-serving econometrics, but two things this week have made me even more skeptical.

First, a source who can’t be identified provided me with copies of documents that his company was required to fill out as a vendor on a contract that it was awarded by a school district. It was made clear to the company that it was expected to report that jobs created and saved, so that’s exactly what the report back to the district showed. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 workers had jobs only because of this project, according to the paperwork reported back to the federal government. In truth, nobody was hired just for the project. Nobody would have been fired if the project hadn’t come along.

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I’m sitting in a restaurant listening to a financial genius explain how to fix the economy. There’s a guy near me who says the government simply has to give $1 million to everybody 55 or older — on the condition that the person buy a car and a house. Voila. Economy fixed.

Where do you start with people who know this little, but are certain they know everything — and who believe they’re qualified and morally justified in trying to force their insane ideas on other people?

I think about this question a lot whenever I start thinking of our majoritarian political system. When people say they believe so adamantly in democracy, what I think they’re really saying is that they believe they’re right — and that if people would simply listen to them, all problems would be solved. What’s more, I find that most people honestly believe that the majority really believe the same basic things they believe. I can’t figure out the cause of this delusioin.

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