New RNC Chair Michael Steele:
And first off the government doesn’t create jobs. Let’s get this notion out of our heads that the government creates jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job. Small business owners do, small enterprises do. Not the government. When the government contract runs out, that job goes away. That’s what we’re talking about here and those 2 to 4 million jobs that are projected? Won’t happen, trust me.
Can somebody help me here? What am I missing? And how do you contradict yourself within a span of three short sentences?
Update: Look, the statement is nonsense. And it’s not like he just chose his words poorly, he’s said this before. It’s the frame he’s going with.
If we take what he says just on the face of it, then there are a whole lot of civil servants I know who are going to be disappointed to learn that they’re actually unemployed. Same with the people in the military. And Steele is going to have to remove “Lieutenant Governor” from his employment history.
If we just assume that Steele was referring to “contract” work, and saying that those positions will go away when the contract ends, well, that’s the nature of contract work. But I’ll bet there are a whole lot of people who would love to have these fake jobs. Not to mention the fact that government contracts tend to be followed by other government contracts. Or to mention that many small sub-contractors only survive now because they ride on the backs of giant companies that receive tons of government contracts.
Or to mention that a job with a private business doesn’t exactly guarantee employment in perpetuity, as more and more lucky duckies will attest each week.
It’s not like contractors run around with their hair on fire every time a contract ends because they don’t have a job anymore. A mode of business that insecure wouldn’t attract nearly as many people as it does.
But, then, if we define “jobs” as only “those employment positions created by non-contract-related private businesses,” I suppose Steele has a point. And if I define “dogs” only as “weimaraners,” then there are a lot of poodle owners who don’t know what just licked their faces. I know a guy who invented his own language. He’s impossible to talk to. I don’t know what “glork” means. We can’t have a conversation if we’re not defining our terms in the same way.
Fletch
Jeremy
Zack!
joshuastough
pfe115
vkoneonefive
I believe what Steele is saying is that these jobs that the government (Obama and crew) say they will create are not really jobs as they are only there as long as a contract, and not created by businesses (who actually pay in to the economy).
I don’t think his statement was all that eloquent, but it’s not contradictory, especially if you don’t take it out of context.
No, I agree with Fletch. It’s completely bizarre to say that “not in the history of mankind” has government ever created a job.
Fletch is absolutely right, as usual. The WPA comes to mind, among other examples; and, jobs created by government contracts are indeed jobs. What concerns me about Steele’s remarks is the “won’t happen, trust me” part: if it doesn’t happen it will likely be due to Republican obstruction as much as anything else.
Remember, the government is on the backs of the taxpayers. Adding more jobs to it, raises the burden on the taxpayer. It ends up being a net loss when you do this. So I can see Steele’s point.
It doesn’t make him less of an ass however.
So, if I get a newly-created government “position,” (not a job) by virtue of stimulus money, then, as a taxpayer, I am paying myself to work. That means I’m self-employed, so I get a tax break as a self-employed worker, not to mention a small business tax break as a businessman employing one or more employees. Soaking up government money, then getting more back from the government in the form of an income tax refund plus a special tax break (thank you Republicans) since I am a business — essentially, life is free. Sweet.
No JP. Opening a business is opening a business. Working for the government is not taking the risk on yourself, and you can’t get tax breaks for costing extra tax dollars. But yes, many government workers feel life is an easy ride.
What “many government workers” are you talking about? How many? Which ones? Military? Firefighters? Teachers? There really is no generic category of government workers.
Sometimes working for the government is a tremendous risk and represents extraordinary sacrifice. From the medic in the armed forces to the Justice Department prosecutor — making about 1/5 the money they could make in the private sector.
But hey, I am not the one who missed the layered comedy in JP’s post.
I caught the comedy, and after the smile, I focused on the reality of the statement as well. The problem is you use the word “sometimes”, which is about what is left over after you’ve used up many or most. After working with the various levels of government, I can agree with you that “sometimes” there is risk working for the government, but most of the time there is not. Trying to get most government workers to go above and beyond is an excersize in futility. Most motivated people don’t look to the government for careers, as they are willing to take risks and therefor the often higher rewards in the private sector.
Again, adding government jobs is adding drain on those not in the government sector as they’re the ones who truly pay for it.
I am troubled by the generalization that “trying to get most government workers to go above and beyond is an excersize (sic) in futility”. After working with various levels of government myself, I can assure you that most government employees are dedicated to their jobs, and to serving whatever public good their particular position is concerned with. Were I to make generalizations myself, I would rephrase your statement about “motivated” people looking to the private sector to read “greedy, self-serving” people looking to the private sector because that is where the big bucks can be gained with little accountability.
I continue to have problems with either-or thinking. There are many government workers who add real value to their communities. As an example, lowly librarians are one hell of a resource – a resource I used for the benefit of our business when I was an operations manager in the private sector. Of course, there are also government workers who aren’t worth even half their salaries. But I’ve found the same to be true in the business world. In my experience, the majority of people try hard to do a good job regardless of the employer. And, no matter where you work there are deadbeats and, even worse, people who are willing to suck the life out of others to feather their own nests. The question isn’t whether the people in government or private business are good people or bad people. The question is the about finding the correct balance between government and private sector at any given time. It’s a moving target with no one-size-fits-all answer.
Thank you, Larry B– you made my point more clearly than I apparently did.
I was at a post office recently and saw a sign over the door that the mailworkers exited that said “Go out an show the private sector you can be as good as they are”. Therein lies a problem. The private sector pushes to always exceed the competition, not just keep up. But I’ve found many, MANY government workers who merely do what it takes not to get fired, and often not even that. Ever hear of “close enough for government work?”
Listen, you have to get over sensitivities to this. The bottom line is that the government is a cost center. Adding government jobs adds costs to the country. This is not something we should do in a good economy, and DEFINITELY not in a bad one.
Mumbo,
If you think motivated is a negative thing, you are part of the problem. If I have misread your statement (tough to tell the tone in a blog), please correct me.
LOUDelf:
You did misinterpret my remarks. Larry B stated the position much more eloquently than I did. I would nevertheless argue that the potential for abuse with little accountability is higher in the private than in the public sector. History bears me out on this (the Bush administration notwithstanding).
In addition, the government is not solely a “cost sector”. For example, when government contracts create jobs, a Multiplier Effect (e.g., support and retail industries to cater to workers) occurs. In other words, the government, by creating jobs, does not simply remove money from the economy– it often results in the creation of additional jobs in the private sector.
It sounds as though your experience with government workers has been consistently bad. Fair enough. Still, to paint an entire group of people with the same bad brush does disservice to the many who are doing their jobs well.
Mumbo,
Sorry for the misinterpretation. I thought I may have done that.
Frankly, the potential for abuse MAY be higher in the private sector, but this is only due to there being more people and jobs there. It is far easier to fire private sector workers for their abuses, however. I’d like to see your history, however.
Your contention that the government spending can result in private sector hires sounds an awful lot like “trickle-down economics”. No, aside from infrastructure projects that can only be afforded by government entities, the government rarely creates a “Multiplier Effect”, and often ends up cancelling that with inefficient oversight, planning, and administration.
Yes, my experience with government workers has been consistently bad, and as a realist, I prefer to draw on personal experience. I have dealt with all levels of government from town to federal, different departments, functions, agencies, pay grades, etc dealing with sometimes multi-million dollar contracts. And I’ve found the rule, not the exception to be, that if the private sector does it, it gets done better, faster, and at lower cost. I have met and worked with helpful, intelligent, and hard-working government personnel, but they have been few and far between.
Remember, the government needs complex rules and administration to bring in money. In order to spend it, thousands of people have to give input, all while taking out their chunk in either earmark, or just paycheck. Then it then goes back out (got to have administration of that too) to some project. OR, we focus on private sector job creation, which only generates money for the government. Instead of trying to create jobs that further create reliance on our inefficient government, we should allow tax breaks and incentives to small businesses which are your best generators of new jobs in slow times.
hey. elf. put up real statistics or shut up. then I’ll believe you’re a “realist”.
who cares about your ridiculous guesses and anecdotes? take your “sometimes multi-million dollar contracts” back down the dirt road you crawled in on protected by your disease-ridden, home-schooled militia. I’m sure your imaginary libertarian hillbilly paradise needs you.
your absurd aping of armchair ideologue policy isn’t contributing anything to any discussion in the united states of america, from the public tits of which you and your whole family suck.
Don’t hold back, Chad. Tell us how you really feel.
My primary argument with Mr. elf is the assumption that there is a one-size-fits-all answer.
I absolutely love free enterprise and I absolutely agree that small businesses will be the innovators that pull us out of our current tailspin. But MANY small businesses here in Wichita have relied on things like the Center For Entrepreneurship at WSU (government) or Small Business Administration loans (government) or the Business librarians (government) or basic research performed at government supported research labs or short-term government contracts that temporarily subsidize their private sector business growth. I remember seeing a statistic back in the 1980s that every (government) dollar spent on NASA had generated $14 of private sector business activity. Talk about a wealth multiplier! Ask Texas Instruments about that one.
If I have to resort to labels, I would call our buddy elf a silly ideologue instead of a hillbilly ideologue. It’s silly to rigidly adhere to an ideology. Ideology – liberal or conservative – blinds us to some excellent ideas.
Chad,
Please explain how I or my family suck on any public tit? Or any of the other hot air you just blew. I don’t need statistics from a book, when I deal with it first-hand and regularly. But if you want statistics, search the internet for “Big Dig” where you will see a horribly planned waste of taxpayer dollars that was meant to be a “multiplier” and yet served as a shining example of waste and useless government expenditure. Does that work for you oh wise one?
Larry,
There has to be a one-size-fits-all answer when it is so glaringly one-sided. Yes, there are always exceptions, but when you see a consistent pattern of overwelming majority, you can go ahead and call it a rule. I’d really like to see that statistic you quote on NASA, especially when updated to include the last 20 years of crashes, mishaps, and overruns. There’s an example of an agency that could have had positive results, but has become a drain, as is the case with many government agencies (again, a generality, but fitting).
But please explain to me how I am an ideologue, or silly for that matter Larry.
Government is always bad = silly ideology. Admittedly, you aren’t saying that government is always bad. You seem to be saying that government is mostly bad in the vast majority of cases with a few rare exceptions. Maybe I’ve made a snap judgment but those sound like the words of an ideologue.
Thanks, Larry B. I will. And thanks for the number.
And as you, LOUD, are clearly too daft to get that I already explained your tit-sucking, I suppose I have a minute to spell it out more precisely: your education, your roads, your energy your military, your drinking water, your food inspectors, your drinking water, your court system, your police, your firefighters, your parks, your obscenely overcrowded prisons, your energy subsidies and the cost we’ll incur to clean up that mess, and – last but not least – the interest on the national debt your worthless Republican friends have racked up. And that’s just off the top of my head.
And no, the example of the Big Dig does not “work”. It’s just more of your anecdotal BS, of no more practical relevance to this “discussion” than anything else you said. And what of our financial sector these days? Should their pie-eating characterize the private sector?
Numbers, dude. Or take a hike. Or if you insist on anecdotes, cut the vague crap and explain to us exactly how the public sector was a leech on your nebulous “sometimes multi-million dollar contracts”.
And my apologies to Jim Webb for characterizing Elrond here as a hillbilly.
Don’t forget his drinking water, Chaddie.
Again, Larry, I didn’t say always, just usually. So when something usually misfunctions, why would you look to it for a solution?
Chad,
Where are YOUR statistics to prove me wrong? “Sometimes multi-million dollar contracts” come from MY sometimes multi-million dollar projects that I have have worked on with . But where is your relevant contribution other than name calling?
You make an awful lot of incorrect assumption about something you know zero about.
I’m not going to do your mental heavy lifting, or try to explain more to you. If you’ve gotten this far without a clue, you’re beyond help…
If this is mental heavy lifting, I think Obama better send ALL of that stimulus package to the school systems. Oh, I forgot. Ellipses.
I’m going to take a wild guess that these ideological differences are not going to be settled on this blogs…. but just so we are all aware of that…. I do love a good argument, so carry on.
Oh, okay then.
And another thing–the potential for abuse IS higher in the private sector, largely because it is more unregulated and, furthermore, controlled by evil monkeys. I know what you’re thinking: Monkeys? Why is it always the monkeys? Can they even be evil?
Answer: Yes. It is always monkeys and they are always evil. Except the cute ones. Those are especially evil.
Well, the bonobos are often working in the public sector. They tend to be socially oriented, and, let’s be real, are heavily unionized. Can’t ever fire a govt. bonobo. Even if they are fornicating, as they often do, on the job. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are much more alpha male about it. Rupert Murdoch is a chimp – you can see it in his protruding lips. So is my tax accountant.
Are unions the same kind of sexual romper rooms as the bonobo cage at the san diego zoo?
LOUDbrownie – my contribution is the tax money I pay for your drinking water (et al.), whereas your – excuse me – YOUR “sometimes multi-million dollar contracts” “that you have worked on” (“with”) don’t do jack for me. Not to mention the fact that you’re probably referring to some boondoggle for which you were paid a piddling sum to do the bidding of evil monkeys who don’t pay taxes.
I don’t need you to explain anything. I’m just asking you to either substantiate your absurdities or piss off. It’s patently obvious you rely on government work every day even if you malign it. Nothing to prove there. Meanwhile, all you’ve offered is to mutter “good enough for government work” and refer to some imaginary “MY sometimes multi-million dollar projects that I have have worked on with” having been sabotaged by lazy bureaucrats.
If it’s public sector stimulus statistics you want, I suggest you register at Moody’s, look up Mark Zandi and read his report entitled “The Economic Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”. I doubt you will, let alone offer your own. So please either explain your monkey contracts or take a private toll road back back to your elf mafia’s monkey-raped forest. And don’t call NATO when Sauron comes a-callin.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Once there was a village overrun by monkeys. The monkeys made it hard for the village to raise a child, because they set such a bad example. One day, a guy and his assistant showed up. The guy gathered all the villagers together in the village square and said, “I’m in the monkey business, ladies and gents, and I’ll pay you $10 for every monkey you catch for me.”
After the villagers muzzled the local animal-rights activist, they all set off to catch them some monkeys. It was pretty easy at first, and everybody got PAID. As all the slow monkeys were caught and people started to spend their cash on dime bags, business slowed for the guy.
So, he said, “Look. There are plenty of monkeys left. I understand they’re harder to catch, so I’m gonna pay you $25 for every one you catch for me now.” Well, that got people off their ass. Monkeys started to pour into the guy’s monkey cage again and everybody who wasn’t dumb, slow or lame got PAID. As people counted their bills over steak and ale, the monkey trade inevitably slowed down.
The guy, in his palpable greed for more monkeys, was driven to up the ante. “Folks, I know there are more monkeys, as hard as the ones left might be to catch. And I want them. $50 each from now on.” So off the finest, fastest and best connected of the villagers went, securing a tidy sum for the monkeys they could find. Those who managed got rich. They formed a little club and some of them ran for village council, telling the other villagers that they would end abortion and get rid of all the geighs. Once in power, their first act was to fire the market regulator who had been taking 5% off the top of all their monkey trades and probably discouraging other monkey traders from coming to town.
Now it was hard to find a monkey, but at least there was a class structure in place to defend the village way of life. While the privileged few basked in their new-found wealth, everyone else borrowed money to treat their type two diabetes. And one day, the guy said he had to head off to attend to his affairs in the international monkey trade. “However,” he said, “as the monkeys here are now nearly impossible to catch, I’ll give $100 for every monkey you catch as soon as I return.” And off he went.
The guy had barely turned the monkey-less bend, when the assistant headed down to the Monkey Club to present a scheme to the villagers.
“The guy has never been good to me,” he said. “I don’t have health insurance, my wages are low, and I’m pretty sure he’s a geigh abortionist funding your populist opposition party. So I have a deal for you. I’ll sell you back some of his monkeys for $75. When he returns, you can sell them back for $100. We’ll get PAID.”
The Monkey Club members took no time to deliberate. Those that had the money, bought as many monkeys as they could from the assistant, and went home that night with dreams of buying more real estate as monkeys once again ran wild on the streets.
The next morning, the assistant was gone.
The end.
Chad,
You do not pay for my drinking water, and its obvious you nothing of what you speak. The best you can do is attack me with falsehoods and 3rd grade names. If you think that somehow proves one point, again, you’ve proven you lack a clue. I’ve seen the government work, up close and personal to do with both work and personal. Just as in a court, they don’t ask a witness to quote stats, they ask what they saw. I’ve seen, and apparently you haven’t.
As for your statistics, I’ll chalk them up to your comment “BS, of no more practical relevance to this “discussion” than anything else you said.” See? Pretty easy to do. But oh yes, you didn’t offer any stats. And Zandi’s “stats” are estimations, and have been twisted by the likes of Nancy “500 million Americans” Pelosi.
I think they should require drug tests prior to letting people like you post. It would save us all a lot of wasted time watching you sodomize yourself with your face.
A quick note– Eyewitness testimony in court is considered wildly unreliable, despite the fact that it’s still accepted as evidence. This is why they do, in fact, find witnesses to provide evidence beyond simple eyewitness testimony (e.g., statistics, DNA, toxicology reports, and so on). You might consider using a different example as support in your first paragraph there, elf. Just a thought.
Homie, if we required drug tests to determine the eligibility of posters to this site (I assume that you mean those failing would be restricted)–well, then, you know.
Furthermore, while I like the idea of Chad sodomizing himself (or anything else) for that matter, with his face, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more effective to combine that hurl with a “yo mamma” moment: e.g. It would save us all a lot of wasted time watching you sodomize “yo mamma” with your face. See? That’s a fuckin’ burn there, buddy.
Don’t thank me, I’m just here to help.
I concur. I might even need ointment if I got burned that badly. There are few taunts more withering than a well-placed “yo mamma.”
Speaking of which, “yo mamma” was pretty well-placed last night–if you know what I mean…wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
I will hunt you down as soon as I’ve finished crying.
Stop watching me, guys. This face sodomy is private.
So is Elrond’s secret multi-million dollar project to work on (with) bottling his Elven Spring water, tainted as it may be by drug-fueled, public sector saboteurs.