Ergo, government has created jobs.”

This is what a leftist actually believes.

The Austrians and fellow travelers – pioneers of subjective value theory – of all people should have grown out of this by now. Yet they, much like Randians, remain in the grip of the old socialist models, with society perceived as a struggle between good guy producers and bad guy parasites. The truth is that it’s the producers (taxpayers and the thugs who work for them) who produce the system and everything that is wrong with it; the parasites are largely their victims (third world Nation Building victims, convicted prisoners, people reduced to material desperation by taxpayer- and voter-supported zoning/minimum wage/gentrification efforts, third world workers who provide cheap labor after having traditional means of independent subsistence closed off and prohibited to them by local governments, etc.). The truth is, government jobs produce plenty of economic value. It’s just that they produce it towards horrifying ends.

The value of a job is more than its contribution to the greater economy.

Only to that employee and their family.

The efforts are designed to reduce the number of votes cast by cheaters who would, if possible, vote in multiple polling places and/or vote where they are not eligible to do so. The primary way in such efforts would reduce voting by people of a particular group would be if that group of people would otherwise be responsible for a disproportionate number of illegitimate votes.

I wish people who want honest elections would more aggressively point out that every fraudulent ballot that is cast disenfranchises a legitimate voter who had selected the other candidate. A measure which wrongfully denies the vote to a hundred people who should have been eligible, but prevents the casting of a thousand illegitimate ballots, will reduce by 900 the number of people disenfranchised. While it may be hard to quantify exactly how many illegal votes are blocked by such a measure, or would have been cast in its absence, it’s pretty clear that the higher the perceived probability of getting away with illegal voting, the more people will engage in it. The fact that few people would engage in illegal voting in places where methods exist to stop it, in no way implies that few people engage in illegal voting in places where they can do so with impunity.

If each government agency were required to report its finances publicly, using precisely the same standards required for companies, government would suddenly be a whole lot more transparent. Failure to file statements should be subject to the same penalties as applied to company personnel.

Transparency – that, of course, is the primary reason that the government does not do so. Sauce, good for the gander.

I appreciate the reply, and I would understand Mr. Richman’s argument better if he were responding to an O’Donnell assertion that the government cannot create economic growth. But O’Donnell is not saying that the existence of politicians proves that government can grow the economy, he’s saying that the existence of politicians proves that government can create jobs.

As a liberal, I am very concerned about economic growth, and I want to see the GDP pie get bigger. But I’m also concerned about the ability of individuals to get an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. (Whether a politician gets an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, I won’t address. Just consider instead other government employees, such as public defenders, postal employees, teachers, park rangers, etc., most of whom are probably as honest as anyone.)

The value of a job is more than its contribution to the greater economy. It’s also in a person’s ability to provide for his/her family, and in giving someone a sense of self-worth and dignity. If the government can provide lots of people with that, with a smaller GDP gain than could be had if the people were hypothetically hired by the private sector (which doesn’t seem to be very interested in hiring nowadays), I won’t claim that it’s pure added value, but I would claim that an argument can be had about whether the job has added “value” or not, whether or not the added value is purely economic.

Before the vote by mail method was implemented, we voted at a single site in our individual precincts. We did have to show our voter’s registration card, which was checked against the list of registered voters in that particular precinct to compare the name and address, and then we had to sign that list next to our name before we were allowed to access the punch card voting machines.

However, I don’t think vote fraud occurs much with the voters at the various voting locations as it does in the count (whether done by hand or tallied by machine). What was that old quote? “It matters not who votes, what matters is who counts the votes.” That is why my local Libertarian party recruits observers to watch the votes being counted at the auditor’s office.

I think Sheldon Richman’s point is that, in economic terms, simply creating jobs is irrelevant; job creation is just a convenient proxy for economic growth. Government created jobs aren’t valueless because they are created outside the context of price signals. Rather, since they are created outside that context, the politicians and bureaucrats creating them have no real way of telling whether or not the jobs will create value in the economy.

O’Donnell’s argument about politicians having jobs is facile and specious, not because they don’t have jobs in the Google sense, but because those jobs are irrelevant to whether or not government can create economically useful jobs. The hypothetical Boeing contract is sort of an apples-and-oranges example in this context. The government isn’t just handing them money to build things that may or may not be wanted, it’s just overpaying. Incidentally, it is a prime example of the inefficiencies of crony-capitalism. A better example in this case would be Solyndra or the Chevy Volt.

So we can simply ignore both the 10th amendment and the fact that similar laws have actually RAISED the number of people voting, including minorities, because some guy says so?

“We have two examples of states that have had photo ID laws now for seven or eight years — Georgia and Indiana,” the election expert told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview. “They’re very tough requirements, but voting has gone up in those states, including minority voting. And not just the election that Barack Obama ran in, but even in the 2010 midterm election.”

And this isn’t even mentioning the very dubious thesis that requiring IDs in order to vote is designed to keep black people from voting. It sounds far more like an excuse to keep the accusation of racism alive and well towards a southern state than any possible mal-intent on the part of said state.

For instance, am I to take it seriously that requiring ID to get on a plane/train is designed to keep black people from flying? Or to keep them from driving, for that matter? I suppose, also, that the federal government is racist because their own laws require an ID in order to open a bank account? According to your “reasoning”, the federal government wants to keep black people from voting and flying. Is that your stance? Or are you a Team BLUE hack that will throw around charges of racism without any real world support at all? I’m going with the latter.

Pfft. Is anyone surprised? He’s the date-raper still slobbering to the girl that he loves her as he holds her down by the throat the instant he’s got her into his car.

Make government irrelevant every chance you get.

Try not to worry about this crap until Monday. :)

Well, I can’t answer that question with any certainly. But I know who can: Go down to your nearest post office, walk up to the employee(s) of said post office, and ask them if the government can create jobs. The answer will be far more accurate than any google search you can do.

Ergo, government has created jobs.

But Richman has introduced a different definition into the mix. He cites Karl Marx for the proposition that “if it is not useful, then the labor it contains is also useless, does not count as labor and hence does not create value.”

Apparently, he thinks that, if the government has paid for something, it is outside the context of price signals, and that therefore it is valueless because the exchange didn’t occur in a market.

If the government massively overpays Boeing for a military contract, do the assembly line workers therefore not have jobs?

Sorry if this is a bit incoherent, but it’s infuriating to see such circular logic being applied to claim that government employees don’t have “Real Jobs”.

Oh, come now. There have been 43 Presidents (I’m nit counting Cleveland twice). There must be one or two promises that got kept, if only by accident.