By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Right-wing propagandists and other delusional, semi-literate dimwits are fond of proclaiming that “governments don’t create jobs. Only the private sector can create jobs.”
Governments do, of course, create jobs. In every country of the world, a large portion of the working population is employed not in the private sector but in the public sector. They work in health care and education and social services and law enforcement and firefighting and national defense and food inspection and many, many other areas too numerous to mention. And there is not a one of these important jobs that rightly belongs in the private sector. In fact, there are many functions now performed by the private sector — for huge profits and at low rank-and-file wages, of course — that should rightly and urgently be returned to the public sector — to government.
All that having been said, however, a consumer economy — like the U.S. or Canada — must also be able to rely on the private sector to do its share of the heavy lifting when it comes to job creation. But there’s the rub! The private sector — the corporations — in both the U.S. and Canada has long since ceased creating jobs in North America in anywhere near the numbers needed to restore any semblance of prosperity.
The question is: Why? read more »