Submitted by ssbaker305@yahoo.com, Sep 10, 2008 11:38

Once again, I find Mr. Stossel's lack of comprehension incomprehensible. Clearly, Mr. Obama wasn't talking about taking away domestic jobs (the cook or tailor the shopkeeper; really, Mr. Stossel needs to update his list) for government jobs. He's talking about creating domestic jobs instead of outsourcing jobs to foreign lands - the current trend.

Business Week recently did a comparison of the current (now, previous) Bush Boom to see if the same number of jobs were created as in previous expansions. Surprisingly, they were! But, just not here, in Europe, China, India etc. This is as unsustainable as our reliance on fossil fuel (another of Mr. Stossel's status quo prescriptions). And why are we comparing North Korea and South Korea? How about comparing China and India - both started to modernize at roughly the same time, both have roughly the same population and land space, but today, China's GDP is 4 times India's. I believe in India, but you can hardly fault China for her achievements of centralized planning. The key to making bureaucracy work is to hire better bureaucrats.

We knew how to do this when we developed the government work projects of the Great Depression - Hoover Dam being just one - or when we built the highway system, or the Apollo Moon rockets, and wasn't the Internet started in America's Defense Department? Yes, it was. The "market" will not create green jobs unless all the true costs are factored in. This means no government subsidized wars for oil in the middle east, no oil leases where the oil companies cheat the taxpayers out of their rightful revenues for land, no dumping toxic slag into Virginia streams and rivers and calling it part of doing business. These are costs. They need to be factored in - then you can start talking about a truly free market. As we've seen from the recent nationalization of the home mortgage market, this administration can talk the talk, but they can't walk the walk.

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