Job Creation: fable and facts

I don’t generally do partisan politics here, but this instance is so egregious that I can’t stop myself.

Tim Hudak is promising one million new jobs in Ontario (Canada, eh).

((At the same time he is going to slash civil servants and cut corporate taxes. We can ignore these dumb, non-stimulus moves for now. What about job creation?))

Here you will find that, in the UK, a job creation scheme to create half a million jobs is in tatters. Some businesses got huge subsidies and created few jobs. (This works just as well as tax cuts here, eh?) The estimate for the cost of each job moves around a lot, from 33,000 UK Pounds to 200,000.

I have it in mind that, years ago, an industrial job in Canada cost about $150K Canadian to create. (A call centre job can be made for less, as can an immigrant farm worker’s job, but those don’t help our core unemployed.)

The Americans have had ‘quantitative easing’ going on for a while. It seems to mean, the Fed prints money and buys mortgages and related paper with it. How this inflation-creating, deficit-driving plan ever got accepted is mentioned here. Apparently, QE was also supposed to create jobs – at a net cost of … wait for it …  $553K USD per job.

Tim Hudak is leader of the Ontario Conservative party. The Federal Conservative party is led by our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. His government ran Canada Job Grant ads that cost $2.5 million. Here you will find that the program mentioned in said ads has never been started.

I mention this because Mr. Harper claims to be running a sound economy, and supports Mr. Hudak.

Overall, job creation is something, imho, no government knows how to do. A million new jobs is a fable.

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