All Posts Tagged With: "job creation"
What Is Seen and What Is Unseen: Government “Job Creation”
How can Obama and his economic advisers know what kinds of jobs will position our economy to “lead the world” in the long term? Indeed, how can we expect anyone to know what kinds of jobs will be able to offer such a guarantee of wealth and security, considering the enormous complexity of our world?
10Jun2009 | Larissa Price | 33 comments | ContinuedThe Disconnect Between Political Promises and Performance
What can politicians do to create more higher paying jobs? Politicians must think that most of us believe the answer is: a lot. One of the most persistent campaign promises is the creation of good jobs at good wages. I shall argue that politicians can do quite a number of things to increase high-wage employment. [...]
1Apr2006 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedHave a Canadian Orange
Suppose gasoline became so expensive that getting oranges to Wisconsin raised their price to $3 each. If that price were expected to persist for a long time, there would probably arise a Wisconsin citrus industry with all the trimmings. Orange orchards would be planted near the Illinois border where the weather is warmest.
1May2004 | Russell Roberts | 1 comment | ContinuedMyths of the New Deal
A persistent myth in American history is that Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal created jobs during the Great Depression and helped the poor “forgotten man” who was thrown out of work. Almost every American history text echoes this myth in its pages. Irwin Unger, for example, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book [...]
1Aug2002 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 3 comments | ContinuedSpreading the Work to Create More Jobs
Last month I emphasized that job creation is not a sensible objective for economic policy. The purpose of economic activity is not to do work for its own sake. What’s the point of creating jobs to produce goods or services that consumers don’t want as much as other things that could have been produced? Yet there is a widespread view that having government create more jobs is the best way to promote economic progress. Wrong.
1Feb2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedHurricanes Are Creative Destruction?
My employer, Loyola College, is a Jesuit institution and, as such, encourages its students to participate in myriad community-service programs. In teaching introductory economics, I propose on the first day of class a marriage of economic education and community service. I offer to give students aluminum baseball bats with which they will walk through the [...]
1Feb2000 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | 0 comments | ContinuedCreating Jobs vs. Creating Wealth
Government policies are commonly evaluated in terms of how many jobs they create. Restricting imports is seen as a way to protect and create domestic jobs. Tax preferences and loopholes are commonly justified as ways of increasing employment in the favored activity. Presidents point with pride to the number of jobs created in the economy [...]
1Jan2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 18 comments | ContinuedThe Wealthy Hurt the Middle Class?
Bashing the rich just ain’t as easy as it used to be. With the stock market at record levels, unemployment low, and wages rising, most Americans are busy trying to become rich, not brooding over how much others earn. Most of us are better off, so why begrudge those who, through hard work or sheer [...]
1Sep1999 | W. Michael Cox | 0 comments | ContinuedRecycling Labor
In 1998 Boeing and MCI WorldCom, to mention only two, announced plans for massive layoffs. Boeing actually cut 48,000 jobs. Throughout 1998 there were many announcements of intended mergers—for example, Exxon with Mobil and Chevron with Shell—most of which included plans for substantial job cuts. Total layoff announcements in the United States in 1998 exceeded [...]
1Apr1999 | Charles W. Baird | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Grateful Pedestrian
Yesterday evening I drove to a nearby restaurant. On my way I passed several strolling pedestrians. I did not kill a single one! Please note that I possessed near absolute ability to do so. A quick and easy flick of my wrist on the steering wheel at almost any time on my drive would have [...]
1Jan1999 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | ContinuedSizing Up Downsizing
Christopher Lee is associate professor of economics at St. Ambrose University, College of Business, Davenport, Iowa. Critics of voluntary cooperation through free markets typically describe one aspect of its wealth-creating dynamic as “downsizing.” They allege that such adjustments are, on balance, harmful. The news media, as well as explicit market opponents, use “downsizing” to describe [...]
1Oct1998 | Christopher Lee | 1 comment | ContinuedBurn Your House, Boost the Economy
Lawrence Parks is executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education. Adapted from The Money Review, November 1997. An earlier version of this article appeared in The Free Market. As recently as 50 years ago, classical economists regarded the vitality of the economy as its ability to produce things that people wanted [...]
1Mar1998 | Lawrence M. Parks | 0 comments | ContinuedHalfway to Anywhere: Achieving America’s Destiny in Space by G. Harry Stine
M. Evans and Company, Inc. • 1996 • 304 pages • $21.95 Not all that long ago, if someone mentioned NASA to me, my guilty conscience would scream “Warning, warning, warning,” like that robot from the old television show “Lost in Space.” You see, when it came to the space program, I kept a scurrilous [...]
1Mar1998 | Raymond J. Keating | 0 comments | ContinuedHayek Was Right: The Worst Do Get to the Top
In spite of freedom’s remarkable, global progress in recent years—from the collapse of the Soviet empire to the growth of “privatization”—there is no sign yet of a shortage of statists with silly and destructive schemes. The best explanation of why and how such people get into positions of power is still found in “Why the [...]
1Feb1998 | Lawrence W. Reed | 31 comments | ContinuedFree Trade to Benefit the Many–Not Fair Trade to Benefit the Few
When asked, most politicians claim that they favor free trade. But they quickly add the qualification that it must also be fair trade, which generally means that we should open our markets to another country’s products only if their markets are equally open to our products. This qualification makes sense politically because people are easily [...]
1Oct1997 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Perversion of Economic Development
In a country known for having forged the world’s highest living standard from what was wilderness scarcely 200 years ago, one would think that “economic development” is a well-understood concept. Unfortunately, it isn’t. In recent decades, economic development has come to mean something other than the spontaneous, entrepreneurial phenomenon that built America. It is often [...]
1Feb1996 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomics 101: A True-False Test
Professor Reiland, associate professor of economics at Robert Morris College, owns Amel’s Restaurant in Pittsburgh. Here’s a quiz. Which of the following statements about the American economy during the 1980s are true? 1. From 1982 to 1989, 19 million net new jobs were created in the United States (more than the number of jobs created [...]
1Jul1995 | Ralph R. Reiland | 2 comments | Continued-
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