Make Work : Another Labor Drain!
By Ted Lang
Useless work, such as building things and then knocking them down just to keep everyone busy and drawing a paycheck, kind of demonstrates the worse-than-useless legalistics of the United States Congress and our warmongering president. First they blow up Iraq, and now we’re rebuilding it! Most people know that the majority of wasteoids in Congress are lawyers, and most of us are also aware of the low value accorded to that profession in both the Bible and Shakespeare. It reminds me of the example my grammar school teacher offered. Half the lawyers in Congress and the state legislatures create prohibitive laws and restrictive regulations, and the other half earns fees to help people get around these freedom-stifling laws and restraints.
The key to the value of money is the human labor it is supposed to represent. And the key value of human labor is the usefulness or consumption utility it provides. If work produces output that has little or no consumption utility, what is the point in doing such work? Moreover, what precisely is the monetary value of such unnecessary work? We have progressed from a simple barter and agrarian society to a highly technological society where the specific benefits of each worker’s effort in relation to that of all other workers is hopelessly blurred. This places increased emphasis on the value of money.
In a truly free market, one guided by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” the give and take of the free market assigns value to both money and work. But a third factor uses the threat of violence to cut itself in on the fruits of labor of free men and women. And that interfering freeloader is the state. And the state is controlled by liars called politicians.
Politicians contribute nothing. They provide no value to either work or money. They connive, extort, swindle and steal. When one immediately assumes these truths about politicians, the problems we as a society are experiencing are quickly understood. Let’s look at how politicians sabotage the invisible hand of the free market where producers and consumers create wealth and freedom, which are quickly and constantly being siphoned off by the ever-expanding state operated by corrupt politicians.
First, to buy votes, they explain everyone has a “right to work.” That’s nonsense! In a just society, everyone should have the right to do as they damn well please, as long as one does no harm to another and another’s property. People should have the freedom of choice, and if they choose to work, should be allowed to work at whatever makes them happy, or productive, or wealthy. With freedom, people enjoy either entrepreneurial or occupational self-fulfillment.
But the state interferes by demanding occupational licensing, fees, standards, requirements, a minimum wage and of course taxes. Now in America, successful businesses, investors and working individuals are punished based upon their success. They are persuaded to “give” more than their fair share if successful financially, but then politicians unfairly redistribute the booty plundered. What’s the point in “giving” your fair share if politicians redistribute it unfairly and unjustly?
Supposing there are those that can work, but refuse to. Is it “fair” to give them state aid funded by working taxpayers who are self-supporting and earn their own way? Why should those who don’t want to work be treated equally along with those that can’t work? And when the state “asks” us to give, aren’t they really flashing a badge and pointing a gun at us, and taking what we earn for our families and ourselves?
Congress has mandated minimum wages and taxes that have made it difficult for American corporations to make legitimate, competitive profits compared to their counterparts overseas. Taxes and minimum wages are always going up. Corporations are more mobile than individuals and families. The global economy has not only been spread out corporate-wise via such one-sided “treaties” as NAFTA, but corporations are taking advantage of the absence of minimum wage laws in Third World Countries as well as the absence of environmental restrictions, licensing requirements, labor union and job safety standards, and the like.
The absence of these laws and taxes enables large corporations with global connections and interfaces to send real work out of the country. American corporations are now caught up in the outsourcing scheme, fully supported by our greedy politicians who not only contribute nothing to our wealth, but also help themselves and major corporations steal and export our jobs as well.
And as productive, value-added work and manufacturing jobs are being transferred out, we the people here stateside are “fillin’ out forms and standin’ in line” as Billy Joel has mused in his “Allentown.” Bethlehem Steel has recently shut down. Congress and its politicians have created laws making free enterprise here in America extremely unprofitable. Even protective tariffs are wrong-headed because they block corporate motivation to drive down costs and improve efficiency. They have, instead, motivated American corporations to turn their collective backs on the American worker. Anarcho-capitalist economists urge US not to worry, that this is just a transitional adjustment of the global economy. But is this shift away from what was once the greatest economic jewel of mankind to the global economy driven by the natural forces of the invisible hand of the free market, or the badge, gun and iron fist of our own government?
And of course, our politicians aren’t alone in this guilt. Multi-national corporate giants and corporate giant wannabes have manipulated politicians to do their bidding. In recent years, the status-driving overkill for parents was to send their kid to college. This has been usurped by the insatiable greed of institutions of higher learning. It didn’t matter if a kid didn’t want to go to college, or if he or she might have been happier with a less stressful factory production job. Wanting to learn a trade, or wanting to work in the production factory of a mighty corporation, or simply joining the military, earned the stigma of youthful failure, or the failure by a youth’s family to adequately prepare him for a corner office or a professional career.
Yet, colleges and universities, as well as the entire education establishment, have failed America as well. Of what value is “a degree in business?” What is that? Of what value is a degree in accounting? Of what value, for that matter, is a degree in law? Don’t we have enough lawyers, lawsuits, and certified public accountants? With all our CPAs and lawyers, we still had an Enron! With all our laws, rules, regulations, CPAs and business degrees, we still had a Global Crossing. Why has this happened, and why haven’t all the laws and rules protected US? The answer is simple. There are too damn many rules, regulations and laws.
All these rules, and laws, and regulations create “make work!” To simply fill out a tax return, Americans are increasingly turning to “tax professionals.” That’s terrific, for the “tax professionals!” It’s been said, however, that if you took your tax returns to 41 different “tax professionals” you’d wind up with 41 different tax returns! So even when our corrupt government generates rules, laws and regulations, the resultant “make work” generates questionable and unreliable output. Is there any difficulty in understanding, therefore, that government-generated “make work” produces not only no value in the scheme of the free market economy, but also restrains and wastes valuable resources as well and opens the door for criminal activity?
Consider all the “new jobs” created by government “make work,” occupational licensing, regulations, occupational testing, continuing education qualification requirements, and the whole array of government “make work.” A New York City resident has to file a city income tax return, a state tax return, and then the federal tax return to comply with government badge and gun regulations. How much time does this take for the beleaguered taxpayer? Six hours? Sixteen hours? And is the taxpayer being paid for his labor to prepare evidence against himself so government can unfairly redistribute his earnings? How much will he have to pay a CPA to have his taxes prepared for him? How stupid is it to force free men and women to hire someone in order to comply with laws no one understands?
Journalist, author, and former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, writing for WorldNetDaily, offers some employment perspectives in his February 23rd article. He cites the work of consultant Charles McMillion in his article, “An index of American decline.” He writes, “Each February, McMillion methodically pulls together from the Bureau of Labor Statistics his grim annual index of the decline and fall of the greatest industrial republic the world had ever seen.”
Buchanan goes on, “Since Bush’s inauguration, 2.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have simply vanished. By industry, the job losses are heaviest in computers, where 28 percent of all the manufacturing jobs that existed when Bush took office are gone, semiconductors where we have lost 37 percent, and communications equipment, where job losses have reached 39 percent in just three years.” Buchanan cites the losses in auto manufacturing, an industry that has suffered most by the direct and incompetent bumbling and meddling by our Congress of Criminals. Not one of these shysters can change a sparkplug, pull a starter and rebuild it, or change an auto transmission’s gasket and screen, but through the magic of legalistics and the trickery of politics, they long ago started the auto industry on its horrible decline.
Buchanan laments, “Not so long ago, Detroit was the auto capital of the world and the United States was the first nation in the production of televisions. Now we don’t make televisions any more. And our trade deficits in cars, trucks, televisions, videocassette recorders, automatic data processing equipment and office machines added up last year to $218 billion. We retain a trade surplus in airplanes and airplane parts, but, because of competition from Airbus, that is shrinking.” But the Congress of Criminals and Unser Fuehrer are taking care of that just as they took care of the auto industry. We’ve got Herr Direktor Thomas Ridge und his Transportation Security Aces working the airline industry – won’t be long for that sector either!
But check this out: “After airplanes, our No.1 export in terms of a trade surplus is…soybeans,” writes Buchanan. Soybeans?! “Corn is next, followed by wheat, animal feeds, cotton, meat, metal ore, scrap, gold, hides and skins, pulp and waste paper, cigarettes, mineral fuels, rice, printed materials, coal, tobacco, crude fertilizer and glass. Airplanes aside, the United States has the export profile of an agricultural colony.”
Buchanan observes, “There are bright spots, however, in the bleak jobs picture painted by McMillion. State and local governments added 600,000 workers in three years.” Perhaps these are real jobs instead of just more government “make work” jobs based upon administering government rules, laws and regulations. Perhaps they serve our society by fulfilling important consumption utility needs and providing value-added to our economy. I just wonder how many of these positions are in the field of unemployment compensation and counseling.
Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.
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