John Stossel - Who Creates Jobs?

[brockleinweber]

Lower taxes, lower the minimum wage. Job creation.

[itsarendezvous]

Lol these people say the main thing businesses worry about is sales, true, at 25% of the concern. But second and third on the list is government policy at 19% and taxes at 18% if I remember the numbers correctly.

[edwinfarr]

Businesses sit on money... It's called operation reserves. It is not good fiskal policy to spend every dollar all the time. Not all businesses grow all the time. It is bad fiskal policy for a business to rely on credit for all growth and operation deficits (especially the latter).

[Goodatconnect]

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, consumer spending is up 2% since the start of the recession. Also interesting is his assertion that corporations are "sitting on record profits, " despite that there is not "consumer demand."

[UtubeMyAccountName]

@FunctionalRepublic First, govt is not necessary for a functional free market. Government is in fact the greatest adversary of the free market. What government is supposedly necessary for, is the protection of individual rights.
As to your question; yes.
Government jobs not only produce no wealth, but they must also must pay for those jobs by taking resources out of the private sector, that was using it to produce the goods & services, whose sale in the market place did create wealth.

[groam]

@UnoRaza What about all the companies that open plants in America. Or the stock investments of other countries who fueled hiring and production. The trouble with protectionism is that it raises consumer prices, and does not keep jobs. Since consumers have to pay more for general products, it leaves them less to spend on other goods, so it hurts the economy more since businesses will shrink due to less demand. Moreover, other countries will retaliate in a similar manner.

[GTSN]

How come drug dealers never struggle even when the economy is bad ? Maybe it's because there's no government regulation or interference.

[daviddial]

If the government provides stimulus money?! Where do they get that stimulus money from?

[brotherchrisrco]

As I tried to explain to the Millennial, where the term "kick start" came from, she put a Tide Pod in her mouth and tried to understand...

[SoftlinkStudio]

But companys hire people when there's more demand- think about it, if I own a buisness the more demand I get the more people I need to hire to keep up whith production. But if there's no demand than I have a bunch of workers doing nothing, so I fire them.
You see buisness hires from demand not "uncertanty"

[UtubeMyAccountName]

@shodanxx Do they allow competition? I mean is there a private alternative to compare prices. I mean if you have a monopoly on a service, it's nearly impossible to not profit.
Also, it was the Quebec taxpayer who built those hydroelectric power stations, not the Quebec govt. Which is another problem with govt services, you have to pay for them at least twice, and in many cases (like this one for example), continuingly. Not good.

[UtubeMyAccountName]

@regelemihai Citizens (& business) aren't spending, because they have no money to spend.
Politicians call this lack of resources 'lack of demand', because it keeps them from having to explain, why people have no money to spend (where the money has gone).
It keeps them from having to explain that the taxes, debt, inflation, regulation, social engineering, social safety net programs, wars, etc., etc., etc. are siphoning all the resources away from citizens (& business), and out of the economy.

[fzqlcs]

Baking a loaf of bread does make you richer. You have a commodity that you consume or trade. That is production. When you make bread, you produce and therefore make wealth. You are right if you are contending that demand precedes supply. But the act of demanding does not create wealth. Only production does that.

[Radnally]

The gov is about 25% of the economy. I'd say it's a player in job creation. It's ability to borrow money without ever being profitable, is an enviable position. This is not lost on corporate America. Between legislating protectionism, corporate subsidies and spending large sums of borrowed money....US corporations depend a great deal on government involvement.

[RnBramwell]

@mcbain434444 They buy into it because it seems to be altruism, whereas leaving people alone seems selfish and therefore immoral. Selfishness is good —when properly distinguished from pursuing or taking the unearned.

[groam]

In the words of Nancy Pelosi, "every month we don't have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans loose their jobs.".

Insanity at it's finest.

[eagleeye]

Supply and Demand are two sides of the same coin... except that consumer demand is, in fact, effectively infinite. To prove this, all you need to do is ask yourself a very simple question: When have you ever known ANYONE that doesn't want to improve his standard of living? ESPECIALLY when those people are struggling to survive?

Demand never needs stimulus. It's already there.

[bluefootedpig]

The simple fact is that too much of our money is going to interest payment. We have a fixed money supply, yet interest adds money to the system. If people didn't have to pay interest, then more of their income could go to buying more things, and thus we can consume more and get us going again. But when 1/3 of your income is to a mortgage, and a good junk of that is interest, then you are buying interest, which is neither produced nor worth anything.

[LDub]

If I own a business and invest in producing invisible magical fairies that follow you around all day and do nothing, do you really expect that I would make money?

[UtubeMyAccountName]

@shodanxx If the power is sold below cost, there is no way the (is it a corp or is it govt, you said corp this time) is making a profit. That's what below cost means.
This is a slush fund (the so-called trust fund).
If it's not the lowest cost way to provide energy, then how does it benefit everyone? How does it benefit anyone?
I'm not making any judgments about the service, as I don't know anything about it. I'm just pointing out logistical impossibilities.