Clint Bolick has some thoughts on free enterprise, the courts and the Constitution.
[Update a few minutes later]
More thoughts on economic freedom from the (unfairly demonized) Charles Koch.
[Update a few minutes after the above]
Are the jobs gone for good? I agree with a lot of the commenters there that it remains a problem of overregulation, and insufficient freedom.
The example of Ms. Vong is perhaps a little misleading, and not enough facts were presented for anyone to know. But the women I know avoid Vietnamese nail salons like the plague, because they in fact spread diseases like a plague. These establishments reuse foot and hand soak baths to save money, and as a result spread fungal, bacterial, and even parasitic infections widely. The fish food pedicure almost requires bath reuse, with no antiseptics added.
I’m not sure this was the best example the author could have picked…
I have to disagree with Patterson’s article and most importantly, his last sentence. Strangely luddite-sounding article. It might have been hard for the 19th century people, who didn’t want manual textile manufacture to go away, to imagine what the new job would be. But that didn’t mean the new jobs weren’t there. So just because Patterson/Cowen can’t imagine where the new jobs will emerge doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
And if you’re talking free markets, one could say the Luddites were ANTI-free market because, in a way, they essentially wanted to fix the price of a bolt of cloth.
And it’s strange that he thinks of computers and their utilization as eliminating jobs when there are millions of jobs – including mine – that were impossible before the 1970’s.
If a MacDonalds burger is cheaper because you don’t need personnel at the counter, then the owner of that money will find some other way to spend it. This creates a job…just not a MacDonald’s job.
But when you get to his last sentence, I think he self-detonates. Yes, when the shuttle ends the US will be earthbound….but that only has to last 20 seconds (exaggerating) if we chose… The moment you want US manned capability just pay Space-X and you’ll have it. Along with the jobs that go with it. Why does he think that there can be no space jobs to replace the NASA jobs? To be sure, private industry will do it cheaper and faster with fewer people, but that’s only a good thing.
I think Patterson simply isn’t looking far enough ahead: Cheap spacefaring, for example, could open up whole new planet utilization and colonization in the future. There will be a job or two there…..
But, but, but we’re being told that people who have more money than they can spend, just hang onto it and go swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck! And that’s why we have to boil the rich down and reclaim the money like so much tallow from their overmoneyed carcasses!
McGehee:
hahhah pretty funny!
Gregg Says:
“But when you get to his last sentence, I think he self-detonates. Yes, when the shuttle ends the US will be earthbound….but that only has to last 20 seconds (exaggerating) if we chose… The moment you want US manned capability just pay Space-X and you’ll have it. Along with the jobs that go with it. Why does he think that there can be no space jobs to replace the NASA jobs? To be sure, private industry will do it cheaper and faster with fewer people, but that’s only a good thing.”
And the money saved could buy more rockets from SpaceX or build communities in space that will need SpaceX rockets.
“So just because Patterson/Cowen can’t imagine where the new jobs will emerge doesn’t mean they aren’t there. ”
The regulatory environment today makes new jobs harder to create. The expenditures needed to bring new processes and techologies to market will be greater and will probably be less labor intensive so fewer new jobs and more old ones made obsolete so yes, there will be jobs but not like the days of assembly line expansion.