Missing the Point, As Usual!

The Harvard Economist recommends the post by a CEA member who advocates men take jobs usually performed by women.

The Economist in the article states:

Policy wonks like me have wondered why more lower-skilled men aren’t adapting. Why don’t they take care of their children when they are out of work? Why don’t they take jobs as home health aides? Or sign up for degrees in nursing? One problem is that these occupations conflict with traditional notions of masculinity. They require sitting, caring and communicating, as opposed to working with big machines.

To anyone who has or should have been examining the distribution of labor by segment knows or should have known is that more and more jobs are in Health Care and Education and Government, such as teaching. You see my dear economist friends, all of these jobs are paid from taxes! Yes, surprise, taxes. And these folks want more people to get jobs funded by taxes? Who will pay the taxes? Oh, I forgot, it is the $10 trillion more debt over the past eight years. I would call that funny money.

Frankly I do not know what the incoming President thinks, but I know the numbers. We need jobs that create value not deplete it. Manufacturing may be the name for the jobs creating value and paying taxes. Nurses are wonderful. But they do not create value in a true economic sense, namely we are taxed to pay for them. Ever heard of the ACA or eve Medicare? Yes, Medicare is a tax that for me I have been paying every years since 1965! Likewise for Social Security, guess it will end when I die, and not really, the Government gets one last grab from inheritance tax.

So folks, jobs that create exogenous value are real jobs. Making a wrench, digging a ditch, writing software, installing an outlet. Not one single Government employee creates value. They live off the dole, the taxes paid or to be paid by those who do create value.

The pity is that we have these economists who I believe have never held a job. A real one at least.