Real Jobs Create Wealth

Feb. 19, 2009 — -- So, President Obama got his stimulus bill. For a mere $787 billion, he has pledged to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs. That's only $224,857 and change per job! (If I still have my job next year, will he take credit for saving it?)

But wait. Only 3.5 million jobs? Why so few? It's not like creating jobs is difficult.

Egypt built more than 100 pyramids beginning sometime in the third millennium B.C. to house the corpses of the pharaohs and their significant others. Think of all the jobs that project created. I'll bet the unemployment rate was something any pharaoh could have proudly campaigned for re-election on -- if he faced election, that is. Pyramid-building is one heck of a public works project.

Its economic significance was not lost on that great advocate of full employment through public works, John Maynard Keynes. The British economist, so in vogue today, famously wrote in "The General Theory" (1936), "Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars, may serve to increase wealth."

In fact, pyramids are even better than the usual government project. Keynes said, "Two pyramids ... are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York."

Ancient Egypt's success has many applications today. We could have full employment overnight if the government simply outlawed machines. Today's 7 percent unemployment rate would vanish.

Again, we find an endorsement in Keynes's "General Theory": "'To dig holes in the ground,' paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services."

Exhibit B is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I don't mean his public works projects, like the Civilian Conservation Corps. I'm talking about his most serious job-creating operation: the draft.

In September 1940, Roosevelt signed the Selective Act, which ordered all males 21-35 to register for military service. "Of the 16 million persons who served in the armed forces at some time during the war, 10 million were conscripted, and many of those who volunteered did so only to avoid the draft ... " writes Robert Higgs in "Depression, War and Cold War."