76-02-B5
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Forbes on "Full" Employment[edit]
Transcript[edit]American politicians who talk warmly about achieving full employment by way of having the government create jobs, should look across the Atlantic before they leap for the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill. I'll be right back. Recently Forbes magazine made some points in an editorial which supporters of centralized economic planning schemes such as the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill might find instructive. Forbes put it this way. A major factor in rupturing the pound and bankrupting Britain is its nationalized industries, including steel, coal, air transport, railways and electricity and gas. Once workers know they're working for the government, they figure it's going to be for life, no matter what productivity, no matter what efficiency, no matter what. Last year, British Steel Corporation, nationalized in 1967, lost some 600 million dollars and its productivity, by U.S. and other steel standards, is mostly less than half. When his chairman suggested that the company should fire 50,000 unneeded employees he was bounced. When it was suggested to shipyard workers, ship building was nationalized this summer by the secretary of state for industry, that 65 percent of them would be unneeded because of the lack of orders, the Union in effect told him what he could do with and to himself. Indeed governments have a responsibility to the unemployed, but there is absolutely no way that problem can be solved by nationalizing industries and adding to their payrolls all the unemployed. The magazine goes on to say, as full employment becomes more and more an election year promise, it's important to keep in mind that trying to achieve it by expensively foolish means will lead only to an ever greater number of jobless. Forbes then discusses some concepts in the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill with which it agrees, such as job programs for teenagers and the disadvantaged and it hints that it might like to see a guaranteed minimum income program, something with which I would disagree, for I'm convinced such a program would be self-defeating and would make welfare roles and costs skyrocket. Their conclusion however makes a telling point about nationalized businesses and why they're such failures. Quote, "Nearly full employment will come about in the future as it has in the past, both here and abroad, when business must keep competitive by developing new products, improving the old and being tested in the marketplace. Nationalized corporations have no such necessity, no such incentive and in the long run add to the problem rather than the solution." Unquote. Unfortunately for the American economy and, for that matter, everyone who works. Those do-gooders in Washington who see centralized economic planning, which amounts to nationalization of business, as the solution to all our ills don't seem to have bothered to see how badly it has worked elsewhere. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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