The Jobs Are Out There - says ...

Hilda "Documented or Not" Solis.

via HotAir

Labor Secretary Solis did a piece for USA Today a couple days back that's worth reading for it's absurdity. Ed Morrissey over at HotAir does a good job breaking down one part of her opinion piece. I'm going to cut up some of the rest.

Maybe it's because I when went to college I had professors and instructors who lived under the USSR and who had plenty of first-hand knowledge of the "there is work and the fields are ripe with glorious wheat, comrade" that my surplus Soviet BS detector goes off pretty quick.

Mine says: детектор дерьма

She starts of with some anecdotal equivalent of "glorious worker of the revolution" BS, and degenerates into more BS.

The big question: Are things getting better? To answer that, we need to look back more than a year ago, when the economy was losing a staggering 800,000 jobs a month. Our actions, most notably the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, stopped those losses.

The ARRA is a gigantic payback of favors to democratic districts and non-existent districts. It didn't work and cannot work, but a lie told often enough becomes truth.

The Recovery Act saved millions of American jobs — keeping health care providers in hospitals, teachers in classrooms, and police and firefighters on the beat. But the benefits weren't just in the public sector. During the past eight months, the economy has averaged 95,000 new private sector jobs.

Check this: from the Bureau of Labor & Statistics. See that unemployment going up, see the job loss? That "new private sector jobs" number is BS. There's a net loss, but Solis is selling the "we created some". If the factory goes out of business due to new EPA regulations and 1000 jobs are lost, but the pawn shop hires another few employees, an ACORN office hires a few employees to distribute other people's money, and a check cashing place open up, creating 50 jobs total - Solis reports "50 new jobs created". The net number of jobs in the community is -950, but the "new private sector jobs" is 50.

Sure sounds better than "unemployment keeps going up because Keynesian economics are bullshit and we're driving you down the road to serfdom".

Still, at 9.6%, the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high. So as we stem jobs losses, we must also accelerate growth in every sector of the economy — from health care and renewable energy to advanced technology and manufacturing.

"This is the glorious way of the future, comrade! Green jobs and health care for all and advanced technology!" Except they're not stemming job losses if they made 95,000 new private sector jobs and unemployment still went up. Why? See above.

The government does not and cannot create real jobs. If the Department of Labor wanted to make unemployment go away tomorrow, it could hire every unemployed person at $1/day to dig a hole today and refill it tomorrow. Unemployment would be zero. The Department of Labor could have the Treasury Dept. print enough money to make every one of those jobs pay $100/hour if they wanted. It would collapse the economy overnight.

These health care/green jobs/high tech jobs that are "made" by government aren't natural. They're created by government subsidy.

Well what does that mean? It means that government is taking YOUR tax money and applying it to something that some bureaucrat likes. If Govt. Flunky 1 decides he likes govt. running health care, he takes your tax money and applies it to hiring a (govt.) health care worker. Would that job have naturally existed? Maybe if the market would support it, but probably not.

Govt. Flunky 2 then takes your tax money and applies it to a green job he likes. Would that job have naturally existed? Maybe - but its wage rate would be set by the free market - not artificially manipulated by government. The green job itself would only exist if the technology is marketable and a net gain.

When Flunky 1 and Flunky 2 take your money, they first pay themselves for their department. And their department is always indispensable. Read Hilda Solis' statement here:

One of the ways this administration is accomplishing that goal is through smart investments in the American workforce. We are ensuring industries that we know are growing have workers prepared through high-quality training programs that we know are working.

Translation: "We are important. Without us, the American workforce would not be able to compete. Our smart investments in the work force drive it and we prepare workers for work. Government is important."

The private sector cannot survive without government. Consume. Watch TV.

Solis proves my point right here with her next anecdotal success story:

For instance, during a recent trip to Nevada, I met a plumber who spent half of his life mastering his craft at a company from which he hoped to retire. Then, the recession hit — hard. Despite having a job that people of my father's generation thought was recession-proof, he found himself unemployed.

Anecdotal story of glorious worker? Check.

Socialist Realism. It's popular with leftists who've never read Kolyma Tales or Ivan Denisovich.

He didn't want to tell me his problems. Instead, he talked to me about how he was leveraging opportunity — specifically a training program made available by my department — into a new career. Although it had been years since he was in a classroom, this seasoned tradesman was learning a new trade. Soon, the classes had opened the door for him to the high-growth renewable energy industry. Today, he is a solar panel installer. He loves his job, and his family's finances are back on track.

He didn't want to tell his problems - because he's a glorious, noble worker!

Now, leveraging opportunity through the DoL's program is what, exactly? It's you, the taxpayer, paying for his training. Why are you paying for his retraining? So he can become a solar panel installer. Why that? Because it's a subsidized green job.

Hey Comrade! We have green jobs!
MS Paint is not the ideal vehicle to use to write in Cyrillic, especially at an angle. And when your Russian's rusty.

The government is taking your money and training someone to take a job that the government is funding. Even if you don't pay taxes directly, every business that pays taxes has to make up for the taxes imposed on them - which results in prices of the goods you buy every day going up. You don't escape the taxes.

Is that green job economically feasible? Is it a net gain to a business? If yes, then a business would train him and hire him. If no, then he wouldn't be hired.

If Govt. Flunky 1 or 2 decides that it's a "good job" and it makes him feel good, then Govt. Flunky Committee will take your money and put it into making a job that's a net loss. If the training, job, and program are all a net loss, they don't care - because the Govt. Flunkies aren't accountable to anyone - not even the laws of economics (until govt. collapse). They get paid until they retire, and they can give away your money until then. Driving you out of business with regulations and taxes just means that Govt. Flunkies are still needed to "save" your job... that they just destroyed.

Remember from above: Bureau of Labor & Statistics says we had a net loss of jobs, but Solis congratulates herself on the 95,000 new jobs she "created". She keeps her job, and you need her to get you a new one. The expansion of the state is the cause of the problems the individual has, yet the state portrays itself as the solution to all the problems... that it just created, and exacerbates with its "solution".

This story is not unique. I have heard them from countless people across the country — the former auto worker turned medical assistant and the recently single mother who went back to school to become a heating and air conditioning technician. They remind me that America's spirit of "can do" is unstoppable, and that our nation's workers are the best in the world.

The auto worker turned med assistant is going from private sector job to govt. funded job. The govt. took over health care, remember? The single mother who went to school to become a heating & AC technician is part of this govt program. Another green job subsidy.

Cue some more asskissing at the end. The "can do" spirit doesn't mean scam into a government subsidized job. "Can do" spirit is stoppable by government. And it can be quashed when the plumber decides it's easier to take care of his family by scamming a govt. program than it is to relocate and work as a plumber somewhere else. When the auto worker's company is destroyed by government meddling, he goes off to use your taxpayer money to find a new taxpayer subsidized job.

They're all being paid $1 to dig a hole and refill it, and Commissar Solis is busy telling you what a wonderful thing it is.