"I can look out my window and see a gas station convenience store, a café, a grocery store, a post office and a casino. All owned by a government. And all are jobs created by government."

Unfortunately, Mark, we can't all be subsidized sovereigns. Somebody has to provide input for the handouts.

Oh yes, government creates jobs -- many of them unneeded. Examples include the more than 800 employees in this state involved with selling and marketing liquor. Some of them should be moved to enforcement, which unfortunately today is at the bottom rung of priorities for the Liquor Control Board, and the rest should go away.

If oil drilling doesn't create jobs, why is the Gulf Coast losing 40,000 oil services jobs with the ban on deepwater drilling and the slowdown of shallow drilling?

Soon, the Alaska pipeline will be forced to shutdown because not enough oil is being pumped through. This will severely impact tens of thousands of jobs and the economy of western states that rely on North Slope oil.

Your tribal jobs was a government job, and it is a net loss of tax revenue because private sector jobs have to pay extra taxes to keep the government jobs alive.

Government does create jobs, but ones that are a net loss in taxpayer assets. That is the point. The private sector increases net tax revenue, government jobs decrease net tax revenue. This isn't to say all government jobs are bad, just that there are too many of them.

And soon 16,000 new IRS agent jobs will be added to monitor our health care compliance. I had put 'choice' but realized that wasn't an option.

Wow. Can't wait.

Thank you for your comments.
I do understand some of the perceptions involved when it comes to Indian Country. Though I would counter: If the rules are so stacked for tribes, then why is unemployment in five or ten times higher here on the reservation. Before government programs from the Great Society there were no government jobs ... or private sector jobs.
I also wanted to say something about the 16,000 IRS agents. This number has no basis in fact. As Factcheck.org points out this number was invented by politicians opposed to health care reform.

"why is unemployment five or ten times higher here on the reservation...?"

That's a question for your tribal council. Sovereign nations should not, always, expect others to solve their problems.

Did you ever wonder where the government got the money to create those jobs?

Is that a legitimate role of government...to put in gas stations, convenience stores or a casino? No, absolutely not. People can build their own stores and casinos. I do not want my tax money going to those things.

Jobs are created by entrepreneurs. Your delusions are epic. You need to learn about business and entrepreneurship, that is what made America great, not the government building casinos and convenience stores.

The rhetoric described in this piece, "government doesn't create jobs", is based on defining the national welfare in terms of the private economy and excluding public activities. The reason for the distinction lies primarily in a philosophical attitude, common among Republican voters and politicians, that values private sector activity over public sector activity. Such attitudes are rooted in notions of freedom and individualism. I think that this piece is a little misleading in that it attacks Republican notions on the basis of economic considerations and ignores the philosophical issues.

As for economic considerations, the question of whether government jobs are good for the economy is entirely unanswerable due to the lack of context. Imagine debating the relative merits of a hammer and a saw without consideration of the purpose for which these tools may be employed or the manner in which they are used. Without context, pro-hammer politicians can point out that there are many occasions in which hammers were used in the construction of a house, while ignoring the fact that the task at hand is to cut down a tree.

Create all the govt jobs you want. Pay great wages and benies not available to privates. Raise taxes and fees to support this scheme, until payers start paying attention, protesting, and then voting those responsible out...with a vengeance.

This is why there will always be republicans and tea partiers. The dems promise the world and then try to actually deliver, until bankruptcy is at the door. those that pay the bills (privates) finally notice, usually late and not before great damage has been done.

The beat goes on.

You almost gotta luv it. This is a state that built airplanes to sell to the government, using aluminum smelted with electricity from government dams, or commercial airplanes to fly in government airways and land at government fields. We grow wheat with government water for irrigation and ship it in barges on government waterways. We trade overseas using government ports, and the second largest employer in the state is the U of W. As for MS, their stock wouldn't be worth recycling if the government didn't enforce their copyrights and patents. And, of course, we all drive on government roads, want the bad guys locked up in government jails, and hope a government fire department will save our house or our life in an emergency.

But still, in spite of this rather abundant evidence, almost a third of us will believe Rupert Murdoch and Fox propaganda about 'free enterprise'.

Some people appear to have no idea how "Government creates jobs." When "government" mandates schooling, and then collects taxes as a pooled resource to hire teachers, build schools. We get first the jobs that all that labor entails. And yes the cost is at the expense of the private sector. But the result is educated people who then can create jobs.

It's the same for libraries, a public source of knowledge. Police & Courts, which keep the private sector from having to hire private armies, and resolve disputes somewhat fairly. There would be no contract law without enforcement and that requires a functioning judiciary. There could be no laws without a functioning legislature. You can't pay anyone to do this without some sort of tax collection.

The private sector would all be medieval fiefdoms without functioning government jobs. And even then, that's a form of government but it's not one that works all that well unless you are extremely lucky and have a benevolent dictator.

Want to look at a modern country without a functioning government? How about the Congo? Plenty of free markets, no regulations. How's that working out? not so well if you ask me.

As for the tribes, they wouldn't be in so much trouble if the land they were given had been managed well. Ie. The Federal Government managed it for the interest of the private corporations and neglected to pay the tribes and sometimes even didn't bother to collect the fees due for the mining and drilling.

It's been a rigged game. To blame the mark in a rigged game for losing is totally wrong.

GaryP -- You are taking the argument to a ridiculous extreme. No one said we should do away with government. We need the government and we need regulations. We should not count on the government to create jobs however, that is our role as free individuals in America.

Serialcatowner -- The airways do not belong to the government, they belong to the US citizens, the roads are not government roads, they are our roads. You do make some good points about the proper role of government-- ports, law courts, etc.

Your sweeping comment about free enterprise... what is that about?

America is not great because of our government, we are great and have a very high standard of living because of free enterprise.

Taupe, you fail to realize that we have free enterprise because we have good government. It's the functions of government which is not corrupt which allows profit to be kept by individuals and corporations. We count on government to create the necessary environment for jobs. Those functions takes workers. Hence, Government creates jobs.

Right now we have an excess of workers, and an excess of work, and yet no private capital is being spent on that work. ie. Roads, Rails, Parks, bridges, power transmission, power generation. People won't stand for toll roads where the toll is every mile or so, where a free enterprise system can have a system where I repair the road, I charge for the use of it. But just the part I repair. Since I can't repair all of the state's roads, I just collect tolls on the part I do repair. So the block in front of my house now costs $10 to access.... you can easily see how the original toll roads got completely out of hand and were nationalized.

I agree with your first paragraph about the legitimate role of government.

I am not sure how to respond to your ideas about toll roads,since I am not knowledgeable about that. It seems to me that private toll roads would work fine because the market mechanism would operate. I think there are areas of the country where there are private toll roads.

OK, serial catowner, lets take your logic further. Why have a private sector at all?

we could smelt the aluminum in govt owned smelters. Boeing could be another Airbus like consortium owned, administered and run by a buracracy based in DC.

Who needs farmers? They just suck at the public teet like all the rest. Get rid of those unrepentant privates and hire appreciative socialists!

I say SOCIALIZE it ALL! Make everything fair. No more of those rich bastards sucking up all the wealth. spread a little of it out. Wasn't that the mantra of he who you voted for?

Of course we learned this lesson already in the 1620's at Jamestown when most of those settler's starved trying out collectivism for the first time in America.

Wow, in what demented looney-tunes world is rednecklogger "taking my logic further"?

Rednecklogger has assigned the wrong direction in which I would go "further". It makes a difference.