Wealth creating jobs

[OwlHoot]

Any new idea e.g. energy saving, id cards scheme generates jobs and hence wealth. Wealth decreasing jobs are jobs that are protected and could be done more efficiently if opened up to competition e.g. barrister, investment banker, politician.

What a simplistic, verging on daft, outlook.

So you're saying that if the Government paid one lot of unemployed people to dig holes, and a second lot to go and fill them in again afterwards, that would be creating wealth for the country or humanity just because the diggers and fillers themselves were being paid?

Also, suppose a genius invented some new technology but was clueless about patent law or how to go about getting funding to develop it. Would you claim a barrister or investment banker who helped realize the idea and create thousands of jobs were *not* indirectly creating wealth?

[expat]

What a simplistic, verging on daft, outlook.

So you're saying that if the Government paid one lot of unemployed people to dig holes, and a second lot to go and fill them in again afterwards, that would be creating wealth for the country or humanity just because the diggers and fillers themselves were being paid?

Also, suppose a genius invented some new technology but was clueless about patent law or how to go about getting funding to develop it. Would you claim a barrister or investment banker who helped realize the idea and create thousands of jobs were *not* indirectly creating wealth?

Not obvious. In the first case, that would indeed increase GDP, and there are sound reasons why this is so. But indeed it is perfectly obvious that no "real" wealth is being created here.

In the second case, "indirectly creating wealth" is quite a subjectve idea. Adam Smith himself stubbornly insisted that someone who does such a thing is not creating wealth. His example was an artisan who makes a machine that allows a farmer to grow more food: he said that the artisan does not create wealth: the farmer creates the wealth. He allowed that the farmer creates more wealth because of the artisan's machine, and so the artisan is being helpful: but he insisted that he is not creating wealth.

As with the definition of GDP, how you assess it depends on what precisely you are trying to measure. Or, as you might say, what axe you have to grind.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

This is a good question, that will probably get nothing but stupid reactions here.

And as if by magic.....

Any new idea e.g. energy saving, id cards scheme generates jobs and hence wealth. Wealth decreasing jobs are jobs that are protected and could be done more efficiently if opened up to competition e.g. barrister, investment banker, politician.

Let's just be 100% clear, because there is no room for doubt in any sane person. ID cards will cost everyone in this country dearly. Allowing the government to take over your identity and charge you for a licence to use it may create a few jobs in the public sector, but it'd be cheaper to increase benefits or reduce taxes and save wasting all the cash on stupid and pointless ID cards - and they are far from a new idea, either.

[RichardCranium]

Allowing the government to take over your identity and charge you for a licence to use it

Most elegantly put, and too good not to steal. I shall take those words and re-use them, many times, thank you.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Most elegantly put, and too good not to steal. I shall take those words and re-use them, many times, thank you.

Sadly I can't claim that as original, but I thought the same when I first read it