"Government Doesn't Create Jobs"

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

09 November 11

onservative politicians and pundits love to parrot that patently false statement as many times as they can, despite some of those same politicians getting their paychecks from ... the government. For example, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) oversaw 47% of all government jobs created in his own state between 2007 and 2010, while he was in charge. Public employee Rick Scott (R-FL) has handed out 15,000 pink slips to his fellow public employees since he's been governor, with the nerve to lament about Florida's rising unemployment in the same breath. Though in his defense, Rick Scott now says he doesn't have to create any jobs. This is surprising, considering Scott's campaign slogans of "Let's get back to work," and "Jobs, jobs, jobs."

Congressional Republicans (re: public employees) aren't any different. They've shamelessly voted down creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs for their own constituents - like teachers, police officers and firefighters - because of a 0.5% tax surcharge on incomes exceeding $1,000,000. Republicans claim they'll outright refuse raising taxes on anyone during the recession, yet Republicans have come out in favor of raising taxes on Americans lucky enough to even have a job.

So cue Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, taking to the golden EIB microphone to tell his millions of listeners that it's the private sector, not the government, that does all the job creation. Now, he's partially right in that the latest lackluster jobs report showed 104,000 private-sector jobs gained and 24,000 jobs lost in the public sector. Yet his claim that providing public-sector jobs somehow harms the private sector is the epitome of economic illiteracy.

As a small business owner myself, the thing holding me back from creating jobs in this economy isn't taxes or regulation, but slow demand. Whether private or public sector, when more people are out of work in a consumer economy, demand for goods and services inevitably goes down. And with less demand, businesses have no choice but to lay off workers. We need jobs to fully recover, but jobs won't come about until demand picks up. Demand won't pick up until people have money to spend. So why are our leaders hell-bent on cutting public-sector jobs when we need them most?

75 years ago FDR put 8.5 million Americans to work rebuilding our cities with an $11 billion investment, or $1.7 trillion adjusted for inflation. The jobs created through the Works Progress Administration put nearly a quarter of America's unemployed back to work in the middle of a crippling depression. During the WPA's 8-year stint America's unemployment rate decreased from 20% to 4%. We could generate the revenue for a similar jobs program by simply levying a $0.03 tax on speculative Wall Street transactions, something embraced by everyone from the Occupy Wall Street movement to Bill Gates. How's that for public-sector job growth?

When I called Rush to correct the record, I reminded him that the private sector is still hiring like clockwork while Republicans are killing public-sector jobs with relentless budget cuts. Rush flipped out, hurled a few ad hominem attacks my way, and hung up.

Me: If George Bush wrote a jobs bill, and it happened to increase taxes on millionaires by a half-percentage point to create 450,000 jobs, would you support that bill?

Rush: No, because there's no ... it's impossible. There's no federal spending that creates private-sector jobs ... There is no way that government spending is gonna increase hiring at any private-sector firm. It isn't possible. You cannot take money out of the private sector - you just can't - and have people hired. It just doesn't work that way.

Me: Well actually, the last few jobs reports, Rush, the private sector had created jobs in line with what's expected in an economic recovery. The real job losses have been in the public sector, because of crushing budget cuts -

Rush: You know, I have to -

Me: - all this bill would try to do is relieve some of that.

Rush: If I were you, I would be embarrassed. You are such a tool. You are a mind-numbed robot, programmed to spew a bunch of absolute garbage. Illogical garbage. You're just flat-out wrong, embarrassingly so. Reading from a script! Incapable of critical thinking on your own. You're a sponge. And you're soakin' up stuff from the wrong side.

You can view the Dittocam's record of our discussion below. And check out Media Matters' dissection and fact-checking of the whole conversation here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kLASGdyWM

Carl calls Rush Limbaugh as "Keith from Galveston, Texas."

Carl Gibson, 24, of Lexington, Kentucky, is a spokesman and organizer for US Uncut, a nonviolent, creative direct-action movement to stop budget cuts by getting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. He graduated from Morehead State University in 2009 with a B.A. in Journalism before starting the first US Uncut group in Jackson, Mississippi, in February of 2011. Since then, over 20,000 US Uncut activists have carried out more than 300 actions in over 100 cities nationwide. You may contact Carl at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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