JOBS: Old guys hold the keys

Mr. President you have been trying - and failing - to create jobs for a long time. You started up there where jobs do not come from. They do not fall from the sky. Stimulus packages do not create them. Visiting a couple of operating factories does not reveal the picture. Jobs first come from down where wealth is created by milling, mining, fishing, grazing and the like.

For decades now wealth creating jobs have decreased and service jobs have increased until the majority of employment is in civil service, school teaching, barbering, health care, carrying mail, etc. But service jobs do not create wealth, and society cannot long exist without the basic creation of wealth.

If you want to create jobs you need to send your informants down here, for instance, to the lumber industry. Have them look up those "evil" sawmill owners who closed their mills, laying off hundreds of workmen. They had been creating wealth. Some of them got rich. But well paid workmen brought in the logs, others milled them into lumber. The lumber was made into houses and furniture. And the employers of such workmen made a profit. And for supposedly getting rich they were demonized. Yet their workmen were happy, and they all paid taxes.

Some of you upstairs thought that if they were rich they would be socked by taxation to help the poor. They were not as evil as you thought. They were smart. They joined the ranks of the poor. That's easy. They simply shut down the mills.

Now if you want to create jobs come and find those smart old guys and ask them to list all the disincentives that put them out of business: Regulations, minimum wage dictates, unreasonable taxes, social dispersions, etc. Fix the problems and I think they will come up with plenty of real wealth-creating jobs. Down here is where job creation starts.

EARL D. HUNTER

Coeur d'Alene