Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is probably one of the most important books in economics ever written and it was not written by an economist.

The central premise is that an economist must look at the total picture and not omit the results that you can not see. For example a government program that spends money on a road or museum uses money that would have been used to stock inventory in a store, add on to a house, buy a car, or fund a college education. While we can see the benefits of the expense by simply viewing the road or the museum we do not see the loss of the many things we were not able to spend the money on.

Thus the premise that a government program will create jobs is inherently false. Any job created by any government program is offset by a job that was not created or in fact lost in the private sector. In fact due to the inherent inefficiency of a government program and the lack of accountability from market driven forces, a job created by a government program costs more than a single job in the private sector.

During the PR promotion for a roads program tax in Bibb County years ago, a promoter promised the roads tax would CREATE over 3,000 jobs. We asked the spokesman if in fact he expected unemployment in Macon Bibb County to be zero, because at that time that was about the entire unemployment role.

Like most proponents for political solutions he evaded the real question in favor of buying support with promises that could not and would not be kept.

Unemployment in fact increased during the roads program.

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