...it would appear that one of the things that government isn’t very good at is creating jobs. For we’ve got the result of Andrew Cuomo’s lovely jobs and startup plan for New York. Which has created some 408 jobs. To put this in perspective that’s about the number that Walmart employs in the average store. Leading to a modest proposal. Why not stop spending the taxpayers’ money on something that government isn’t very good at and instead just get out of the way and let private sector companies do their stuff?
In fact, in many parts of the country it would actually be simpler to get government to stop doing what it currently does so that Walmart could open a store and employ 400 people.
One of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most highly promoted economic development initiatives has produced just 408 new jobs across New York State in the past two years, even as the state has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting it, according to a delayed report released on Friday afternoon.
You know when something’s bad news in this trade. Reports that come out on Friday afternoons, especially in the summer, are things that those releasing the report would really prefer no one took much note of. Perhaps by Monday the news caravan will have moved on and no one will really have understood?
There’s also that other little clue when the PR budget is vastly larger than the program budget. This means that this is politics, about burnishing the vote gaining abilities of those proposing the plan rather than actually doing anything about the economy or jobs. We might even think that not taking $175 million off the taxpayers of New York in the first place would create more than 408 jobs.
