By Tony Huppert, CEO, Team Oil Inc.
Our politicians, along with their followers, usually have one thing they all agree on, “We have to create jobs.”
But actually putting this decree into action is harder than it seems.
A lot of times, we retool our factories so we are more competitive with foreign countries. We take a factory of 4,000 employees, give the owner tax incentives or grants to retool and upon completion of the retooling, the factory runs twice as many parts with 2,000 less employees. How did this create jobs?
Even in agriculture, farmers buy bigger equipment, requiring less labor to operate. How does this create jobs?
In Las Vegas, the gambling machines have changed to cash acceptors; self serve fountain machines, and paper pay out for the gambling machines with automatic cash kiosk. How does this create jobs?
Book a flight, order parts, call a government office and the result is the same. Push one for this, push two for that, push three and automatically your purchase or wish is completed. Maybe job creation is a myth.
Looking at it a different way, we pay farmers to have land lay idle to control prices and farm financial survival. Maybe, we do the same by paying people to lay idle, to control wages and workers financial survival?
Tony Huppert is a Wisconsin businessman of 40 years and CEO of Team Oil Inc., the family-owned and operated Team Oil Travel Center, and Subway in Spring Valley, Wis.