Jodi Beggs at About.com:
This is something I occasionally get in trouble for saying around here. The point is not that jobs are bad things, in fact they are great for households and firms. Households earn income greater than their opportunity costs and firms earn profit great than what they must pay in income (i.e., exchange in the labor market creates value). But jobs are not the things you want to count up as a measure of the benefits of environmental policy. Because as soon as you do government will start trying to create jobs where the benefits of the jobs are less than the costs (e.g., bridges to nowhere).I was told a number of years ago that Harvard Kennedy School professor Rob Stavins is always very careful to point out to his students that a job created is a cost, not a direct benefit. (Of course, the benefits to the company of hiring another worker may outweigh this cost, but that doesn't make the cost not exist.) It shouldn't be surprising, then, that many of the so-called "job creators" in our society aren't so down with that label unless it's politically convenient.
Recently, entrepreneur Nick Hanauer got the chance to essentially say as much to the U.S. Senate. A few points in the remarks are worth noting ...
