Can you think of any politician who is not promising he or she will create jobs?

The President promises to create them if we slip him another half a billion to spend. All the Republican candidates assure us they will create jobs. These guys talk “green jobs.” They rant about bringing home the manufacturing jobs that fled overseas. They promise shovel-ready jobs. And construction jobs. And jobs that will magically appear when we create another federal training program. (There are only 47 such programs operating now. How well are they working for us, do you suppose?)

Here is a dirty little secret. Pssst. Politicians do not and cannot create these jobs.  Sure, they can take money from one pocket of the economy and stuff it into another pocket. They create jobs over here. But they dry up jobs over there. Because they have taken the money from over there. So there is no net gain in jobs.

We saw this in the wake of the porkulus bill. A big portion of the money went to states and counties and cities. They used it to keep their workers working. While the federal government added tons of jobs. Yet there was no net gain in jobs. Why? Because the pols scared the bejeepers out of the private sector when they piled a few trillion onto the national debt. And threatened new taxes galore. To pay for porkulus.