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Who creates more jobs: people, companies/businesses, or the government?
People are needed to work, so one point for people.
Companies pay the people, so one point for companies/businesses.
Governments have ways to give tax breaks for companies/businesses that follow their rules, so one point for the government.
It's a puzzle and I can't find all the pieces. I would like to see which of the three groups is most important. I don't know very much upon this subject, so do elaborate in explicit detail. Thanks. =)
David Hamilton 50+
The government is in the business of destroying jobs, and human life. Every law we enact, we enact at the point of a gun... We just don't like to think of it that way. When we made alcohol illegal, we really felt it. We currently feel it with the drug war.
That said, should some laws be instituted at the point of a gun? Of course... Murder, rape, theft, unprovoked assault. If you're using a known poison in a public river... or releasing it into the air despite cheap alternatives for capture... Most of our laws have good intentions, and even justifiably use violence to enforce them. Should everyone chip in for the fire department at a local level? Sure, why not.
Most of the time government isn't there to create a job, they exist to destroy the job, of the people who assault, threaten, and attack you. Occasionally, they help. In general however, if you are looking to the government to create jobs, you are looking in the wrong place. Leaders would probably prefer if you were unemployed, then you'd probably listen to them more.
Rick Ryan 10+
I seriously doubt that. Those same leaders you talk about are usually the people with the most wealth. And they didn't acquire that wealth by performing all the labor themselves that made them wealthy. Many of them acquired their wealth by having other people work for them in businesses where emplyed workers created a profit for the company.
I agree with you that I don't want my government creating jobs, for two reasons:
1. My government does not exist as a "for profit business enterprise". They are there to govern, not run a business.
2. Any job my government creates and mans, the salaries for the employees are payed by my tax dollars. Let the government provide incentives for private enterprise to create businesses that will create jobs, where the employees salaries are paid from the profits of the private sector business.
And I have no problem with my government providing incentives to do that. So what if Microsoft or Apple, or any other mega-corporation gets a break on paying business taxes. Each employed new worker is gonna pay income taxes on their wages. The products sold by the business are going to generate new tax income from sales taxes. Ask yourself how many jobs Microsoft created compared to the government, and who would have generated the most revenues that would have been returned from it from income taxes of the employees and sales taxes from product sales. Every time a "unit" of Windows is sold it my state, it generates 8.9% sales tax income for my state government to use. My federal government would have a hard time creating jobs that would generate the total amount of tax revenues alone from a business the size of Microsoft and many other corporations that some people keep liking to complain about.
Not all PEOPLE in all BUSINESS endeavors may be "honest" or conduct themselves with integrity. But it isn't a perfect world
David Hamilton 50+
When the government subsidizes Microsoft, it does not creat jobs, it destroys competition, without justification.
Derek Young 30+
I would like to believe that governments aren't doing that anymore, at least in America, but it is just my hopes with no proof.
Rick Ryan 10+
Can you cite a verifyable reference for that? Last time I checked, if a law is passed that gives Microsoft a corporate tax break, Apple got to use it too.
And if the government really received the benefit of taking advantage of labor by keeping unemployment high, we'd have a 35% unemployment rate...or higher. Heck...the higher the better according to your theory. Let's go for 50% unemployment. Oh, and the politicians who were in charge at the time could start planning their retirement, because none of them could hope of getting re-elected again. So much for that incentive working. Half of them probably won't get re-elected this time because many voters are already miffed at them for a 10% unemployment rate.
As an aside, it is easy for anybody to blame "Corporate America" or "The Government" as the sole entity responsible for an economic crisis. Those greedy SOB's.
It's easy to forget that all those adjustable rate mortgages "The People" took out trying to get "greedy" by buying now and HOPING to sell in 2 years (to make a killing before the monthly payments were higher than they could afford to pay) had a choice. Nobody forced those mortgages down their throats. The people who ended up having forclosures "just because" the housing market crashed and they couldn't sell the house for profit anymore are just as responsible as the corporations.
And please don't use the argument "The corporations are at fault because they created the market for the mortgages using sub-prime rates!" Yes, that's true. But just because a business offers me a lemon for sale doesn't mean I should buy it.
The people who had to forclose on houses they bought as an investment were NOT investors. They were gamblers. And they lost. They are just as responsible as anybody else.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
there is no need and no possibility to help "job creation" in the free market. jobs and unemployment are problems only when the state prevents businesses from forming or functioning, attach extra price tags to labor and take away profits. in this case, supply of labor will exceed the demand, thus we have unemployment.
Jim Moonan 50+
Your answer is so abstract and at the same time profoundly incomplete in it's logic and rationality. The "free market" you describe is non-existent and unattainable. It sounds so neat and clean a solution, but it is really nothing more than a capitalistic "dangling carrot" offered by the Almighty $$$ Kings to the masses of people who are in danger of slipping out of the middle class and falling into the future majority: the poor.
Please take your elitist, libratarian, AynRandian views, put them where the sun don't shine, and get real.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Jim Moonan 50+
Jim Moonan 50+
Krisztián Pintér 200+
so we have a number of problems, i call for the free market to solve them, and your reply is that free market does not exist? exactly my point. so maybe people can stop blaming the nonexistent free market for the problems we have. and start to blame things we do have. like government interventions to serve interest groups.
Barry Palmer 50+
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Barry Palmer 50+
Derek Young 30+
Gail . 50+
Your government lies to you when it lists job growth or loss in the private sector. Let's say that I own a ship-building company that builds naval vessels for the U. S. government. The entirety of my income comes from government contracts, as do the wages of the laborers I hire. Even so, these jobs are listed as "private sector" jobs and no one tells you that there is a connection. If you remove ALL such jobs from the "private sector" arena, you will see that government is far and away the largest employer. It's a real problem that no one wants to talk about.
Rick Ryan 10+
1. YOU own the company...not the government. By definition, it is a private sector business.
2. The government buys your product(s) (navel vessels) so the government can meet the requirements it is obligated to meet under the Constitution. Namely, provide for an "armed militia" to defend the nation-state's existance.
3. THAT makes the government the "bad guy'?
Are you proposing the government quit collecting my tax dollars to buy those navel vessels and instead the general population pool their own money to buy them directly from your company? Then give the vessels to the government to use for us? That's the only alternative I can see based on your example, and I don't see how it solves any "problem". The acquisition and use of the vessels seems to just take place in the private sector, then they would be given to and used by the same government.
Would you charge the general population the same amount of money for the vessels you charged the government under the "government contract"?
Gail . 50+
I am of the opinion that government should not be deceiving its people. NOthing more was intended to be conveyed in my comment
Rick Ryan 10+
The government didn't "create" any of the jobs being manned by employees in your private sector business. YOU, in the private sector, created the jobs when you decided to start the business yourself. And even more so, the concept of supply vs demand created them. If their was no market (demand) for the vessels, you would have had no motivation or incentive to start your business that produces them (supply). Doesn't matter who buys your product after you make them, as far as reporting employment statistics. The actual number of emloyed/unemployed workers isn't going to change.
Your example of the government buying your vessels can easily be applied to ANYTHING the government buys from ANY private sector business/supplier. The government needs pencils, automobiles, computers, food...EVERYTHING the government "buys" under a contract to be able to do the government's "job". And the government buys these things not from businesses IT created and runs...it buys them from private sector businesses like yours.
So, following your own logic, the government is misleading me when it reports private sector employment statistics for ANY "good" it purchases. Taken to the extreme, I would have to look at every job in existance in every company for every "good" my government "purchased", then only report employment statistics from jobs in companies where I had never bought one of their products.
And anyway, the numbers are all statistics, which everyone should know can always be manipulated to "show what you want them to show". Whichever "part" of my government reports them (one political party), the opposition (party) will take those same statistics and "spin" them a different way. Happens all the time where there are opposing political parties vying to get elected.
It's the responsibility of the individual citzen to decipher the data presented.
Gail . 50+
Rick Ryan 10+
Nobody in the government is manipulating data. I am not being lied to by anybody in the scenario you describe.
When I buy a car from General Motors, I don't become the employer of all the employees working at General Motors. I bought a car...period.
george lockwood 30+