Human Events: John Stossel: 'The Economy Needs No Conductor'

Source:The FreeState.  

There’s been this endless debate in America in the last few years about what creates economic and job growth. Is it the private sector or public sector. Does government actually create any jobs, well the answer to that question is yes. In the sense that they create government jobs that can contribute to private sector job growth, by rewarding contract to the private sector that then hire additional workers. To perform the new work that their contract requires, to complete the new work. 

But what really creates jobs, is consumer demand. When people need to buy things or want to buy things and have the money to do so, then they go out and buy those things, which leads to economic and job growth to meet the new consumer demand. The way to create job growth, is through economic growth. And government can help and hurt in several ways.

They can help buy keeping taxes down, so consumers have money to spend.

Only having needed regulations that can be understood and doesn’t make employers jobs even harder. And make their cost of doing business more expensive.

And they can help with things like infrastructure investment that creates work for construction companies and builds and repairs, new roads and bridges around the country. So people can get around in an efficient way.

They can help with Energy Policy, by allowing the American energy industry to capitalize and produce all the natural resources we have in America.

Where government can hurt the economy, is through over taxing. For example passing Tax Hikes on people who can’t afford to pay them. So now they have even less money to spend.

Over regulating to the point that no one understands the regulations and they aren’t even be enforced. Because government doesn’t even understand them.

And they can hurt the economy by overspending. Running up huge debt and deficits, driving up our interest rates. Making everything more expensive for everyone. Which results in everyone spending less money. Which is what happened in the recession of the early 1980s and early 1990s. And they can hurt by not trading enough and over taxing private companies. Making their cost of business more expensive.

It's really consumer demand thats what drives economic growth, that leads to job growth. So as long as people have incentive to spend money and have the money to spend, then they’ll do those things. So what government can do, is try to ensure that consumer spending is always high. That we always have a need to spend money.