Government, the magical job-creator

President Obama wants to move alleged terrorists out of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba so he can keep a campaign promise and shut the place down.

Obama home-state politicians want the federal government to buy the Thomson Correctional Center in rural northwest Illinois and move the current Gitmo residents in.

Land of Lincoln Governor Pat Quinn waxed eloquent on Sunday in an AP article proclaiming that selling the prison to the federal government is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create jobs in the struggling area.

But can politicos really turn taxpayer-funded public works projects into incredible job-creating machines?

Seems the politicos pretending to be business-savvy savants made exactly the same claims back when the Thompson prison was built.

An NECN.com video extolling the incredible job-creating opportunity of the facility back then first describes it as "almost empty" today and then continues, "When Thompson prison opened eight years ago it promised the tiny town of Thompson hundreds of jobs. But that didn't happen."

If the much ballyhooed business acumen of the office-holding classes failed eight years ago, what suddenly makes them brilliant business bosses today?

The video answers neither question.

The problem with government-created jobs is in the answer to the question, "where does the money come from?"

Are the new inhabitants self-supporting workers who will be paying for their room and board and recreational facilities and medical care from their paychecks?

Of course not. The "new jobs" will be created and paid for from the pockets of taxpayers. All taxpayers. Including those who own businesses who create real jobs by providing goods and services to consumers who buy those goods and services from the incomes they earn from working real jobs.

Government never creates "new jobs," it simply creates "different jobs" than the jobs that businesses would have created had they been able to keep all of their profits.

When a business creates new jobs it hires new employees through its existing HR department, which may be no more than the owner herself.

When government creates new jobs it blows huge chunks of cash on committees and commissions and boards and agencies and task forces and working groups and then awards contracts to politically-connected sycophants and hires high-priced unionized employees and pays for it all out of the incomes of already working consumers who then no longer have that money available for buying the goods and services of businesses who no longer have the money available to expand their businesses and create new jobs.

Government is overhead. Government doesn't generate a profit or produce any marketable goods or services to willing consumers. It simply redistributes other people's money – or other people's jobs - and ensures the cream is scraped into its own pocket in the process.

If politicians really wanted to create jobs libertarians have the answer. They would sell off every publicly owned property possible, refund all of the profits to their citizens, move what little remained of government into offices leased from a privately owned building, and quit pretending to be business bosses.

Once all victimless crime hostages are released from all prisons there will be a glut of cells available for alleged terrorists awaiting trial.

But of course that will never happen. Politicians' enormous desire for ego fulfillment is second only to their desire for power.