Harbeson blows up Morton Marcus

Debbie Harbeson in the Jeff/NA Tribune...

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s very fashionable this election season to talk about “job creation.”...

I also noticed the way this message is being conveyed by some candidates really has Morton Marcus, an economist who used to be with IU’s Kelley School of Business, upset. In his latest column he complains that a candidate for state representative has promotional items that say, “it is private business — not government — that creates jobs.”

According to Marcus, “This is stupidity if believed; a lie otherwise. A job is created when a person is hired and paid for his/her work. It does not matter in the grand scheme of things if this person works for the private or public sector.”

Marcus is right. And wrong. He’s right that government can create jobs....We can see that they are actual jobs....However, Marcus is wrong when he says it does not matter whether a person is working in the private or government sector because, at some point, the worker has to be paid.

How does the government get money to pay people holding government jobs? They have to take it from people doing productive work in the private sector. And when this wealth is forcibly taken to pay for government jobs, it lessens the private sector’s ability to invest in private sector jobs, which are the ones that actually pay for government jobs....

It must be true that the private sector pays for government jobs because if not, then we wouldn’t have a jobs problem at all. The government could just create a job for everyone and we’d all be just fine....it’s an illusion that a government job actually moves the economy forward.

Morton Marcus wants us to believe that “in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter.” But if we continue to listen to people like him, then at some point “in the grand scheme of things, we’re all going to be broke.” Not to mention morally bankrupt if we keep supporting these schemes.