Rich: Nice piece today on job creation. As NRO’s house pessimist, though,
I feel bound to make a couple of points. You say: “The trick, of course, is
to create more jobs than are lost.” Well, that’s part of the trick.
Problems would occur, though if the jobs lost were jobs for engineers, chip
designers, materials scientists and systems analysts, while the jobs created
were for telemarketers, child-care providers, HMO paper-shufflers and fruit
pickers. Are we sure this is not what’s happening? I’m not an economist,
but I live in a lower-middle-class neighborhood where people are moving in
and out of jobs all the time, and I hear stuff. Similarly, if 100,000 jobs
are lost to mostly U.S. citizens while 100,000 are created for largely
lower-paid legal and illegal immigrants, that would not be something to
celebrate. The devil is in the details.