Well, you can chant your mantra as much as you like but I gave you a simple exercise which absolutely proves your claim is false. I've never found a conservative anywhere who can offer a sane rebuttal, but there are plenty of them who chant your chant.
No, you gave him a response which shows you don't know the difference between wealth and a paycheck.
Government can make jobs, but where does it get the money to pay the paychecks? from taxpayers. You assume that whatever the government bureaucrat does is just as productive as whatever the business taxpayer does, but this is hardly ever the case.
For a free-market business to survive, it has to produce a product somebody wants to buy. But for government activity (whether commerce or regulatory) to survive, it just has to get appropriations, and force the product on the consumers, whether they want it or not. The second kind of activity is usually unproductive at best if not counter-productive.
Every socialist society is full of factories that produce crap nobody wants, but which operate as patronage systems. Such factories waste the resources of both the people and the raw material, but unlike private factories, producing garbage will not make them shut down. Their operation is a political decision, not a business one.
That's why government doesn't produce wealth. |
