Tag: make-work

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The Wrong Job

I’ve criticized the cash-for-clunkers program; I’ve argued against the notion that government should spend our tax dollars to create jobs.

Now the two come together. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is hiring 1,100 people to process the paperwork associated with the clunkers program.

Will these be long-term jobs? Well, sure, just as long as there is a powerful need in our country for processors of ten-page government forms to facilitate the forking over of $4,500-a-pop subsidy payments.

Maybe these United States can lead the world in such work.

Thank goodness the feds so botched up the program it didn’t cost us as much as it could have. Dealers across the country quit the program early, scared Uncle Sam wouldn’t pay back what they had fronted to customers.

Or, at least, not fast enough. Turns out auto dealerships have certain cash-flow concerns that our solons fail to fully appreciate.

Also not appreciated by Congress is the fact that taxpayers will have to hand over their hard-earned money to pay for all these deals. More billions. Money that taxpayers could have put to more productive use.

Our federal government shouldn’t be in the car business. It shouldn’t be in the car finance business, either, much less subsidizing car purchases.

The only productive jobs our current office-holders should create is by stepping down and giving someone else a chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Fake Grit

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Or maybe not: I prefer it when “cooler heads prevail.”

But as our times get desperate, here comes Tony Blankley with a new book, True Grit.

Blankley calls for a universal draft that would delay college or work for your 18- or 19-year-old boy or girl, forcibly placing them under government control. Under Blankley’s plan the military would get first dibs, but those not forced into military service would be corralled into civilian government service.

This is, well, stupid. One of the federal government’s few big successes has been the all-volunteer military. Forcing people, not suited or interested, into armed service may seem egalitarian, but it undermines the military, which ought to concentrate on winning wars.

Moreover, to force millions more into government make-work programs, again in the name of fairness, will cost taxpayers plenty — and uproot the lives of young people.

Charlie Rangel has been the most persistent conscription pusher. His draft legislation proved so overwhelmingly unpopular that when it was brought up in Congress even he voted against it.

In a review of True Grit at Human Events, Blankley is described as progressing politically from being a libertarian to a conservative to a nationalist.

Sorry, that’s not progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.