Of all of the President's rhetoric lately (and there has been a lot), nothing is more bothersome to me than the repeated calls for ‘creating jobs'.‘Creating jobs' is not the same thing as creating prosperity and economic health. In fact, the result of the way that the President sees it and would like to implement it is that the two are inversely correlated. If I take out an advance on my credit card and hire a carpenter to build me a deck, I have created a job. When he is done after two weeks, he is out of work again and I am now $5,000 in debt and therefore will have to cut back on my consumption going forward to pay off my debt. This is no different than a stimulus bill. When you inject political motivations such as creating ‘green jobs', you are, by definition, diverting capital (through the public sector, away from the private sector) to resources that otherwise would not attract private capital because they do not offer the same return on investment. ...(Read Full Post)