Employment and Unemployment Policy

Alright, so I could not stay away. I have to talk about employment, France, and Wal-Mart. So first employment. Everyone always bitches about the number of jobs that are created, how Bush somehow "lost" the United States hundreds of thousands of jobs. The French always brag about their enlightened approach to legislation (i.e. a law saying you can not work more than 35 hours a week) and how their workers have been shown to be some substantial percentage more productive than American workers. All of these are stupid assertions. Oh and Wal-Mart is not all bad. Consider that my intro paragraph.

So the United States first. First, why is employment important? Well obviously it is important because in our country if you do not have a job, it hurts a lot. Job retraining is not easy and transitioning from a steady job you thought you would have your whole life to a different one is difficult. But employment is important for reasons outside of just bitchy poor people. It is a indicator of the success of the economy and the fact that economic growth created more jobs is the main reason why market economies are so fucking awesome. Unfortunately job growth has become far too political of an issue. George Bush has no control over how many jobs are created during his term. The most he can do is provide a temporary boost that would most likely end up being ultimately destructive. This is true for all presidents (with the exception of FDR, who is an exception given the significance of his problems). What can be done about job growth? Well economic stability and education are about the only solutions that are effective in the long term. The smarter you are, the more industries and innovations you create which in turn creates more jobs. Bush overseeing a budget deficit has no bearing on this (in the short-term at least).

Now in France they thought they had an excellent solution to their employment problem. They figured that if they had a certain number of jobs and people worked a long time, if they forced people to work less, more people could be hired. This is such a terrible idea for so many reasons. First of all it is based on an incorrect premise, that there are a fixed or even limited number of potential jobs. In fact, quite the opposite is true; there are an infinite number of possible jobs. But France is destroying those possible jobs with this legislation. First and foremost because under an economy where I can only work 35 hours, there is no point for me to go to the best college, to challenge myself, to go to graduate school, or to even work hard for the chance at more hours and higher pay. The second reason this is a terrible idea is because it kills employers. They now have to go out and hire a significantly higher percentage of workers, which they otherwise would not. Hiring workers is very costly, so what is their solution? Mechanization. If McDonalds has a machine that can make burgers at a cost of 15 dollars an hour, and the cost of hiring and paying a worker goes above that, they will not hire more workers; they will just buy the damn machine. This explains why the French so often brag about their increased productivity. Sure they are more productive, but that is some expensive productivity.

Last, Wal-Mart. Now I am really sick and tired of people bitching about Wal-Mart. I am fine with people not liking Wal-Mart in their town, out of fear that it may hurt their town center. But those who contend that it hurts its workers must take into account a number of very convincing. arguments. First, yes, Wal-Mart does not pay its workers incredibly well, but in doing so, is able to provide very cheap goods, goods that if all of a cities poor were forced to buy at "Ma and Pa's Corner Shop" would cost significantly more. Second, no one forces people to work at Wal-Mart. This is something people frequently forget. Some contend, well Wal-Mart is so big. Others go so far as claiming that the reason people get tricked into being forced into working their is the prestige it exhibits on its commercials. That is rubbish. Wal-Mart competes with other employers to hire people. It has no control on setting the wages of the market (the term for such a company is a monopsonist, and they pretty much do no exist since the invention of the car). True Wal-Mart does an extremely lousy job in competing for these jobs, and that is why they have an incredibly high rate of turnover. Ultimately this is very costly for them, given they have to continually retrain their workers, but those who stay around for longer than a couple of months do get raises. Now I think the Wal-Mart example brings into light disturbing market inefficiencies, but that is not Wal-Mart's job to fix, it is the governments. Unfortunately the government sucks at fixing these kinds of things. Job retraining vouchers, an increased earned income tax credit system (which was a great thing Clinton did), or some kind of healthcare system (yeah I said it, and I am starting to believe in some type of market solution being more and more necessary, especially given the detriment this has on really smart foreigners immigrating as well as the cost that employers often have to bear) would all go extremely far in using market solutions to market problems.

This has probably been my most controversial post thus far. Hopefully we can get some kind of argument going here. Though obviously stated with a certain bravado, I do not intend these to be the final ones on this dispute. Consensus anyone?

-Mr. Alec