Richard Trumpka Fills My Resume

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumpka has proven to be the only breathing person on Earth capable of enlightening me on what the left believes a job is and how much it costs.

Thanks, at least, for that much.

What's the best way to get Americans back to work?

Raise taxes, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Specifically, he wants to raise the federal gas tax as a means to fund infrastructure spending. "We need a dedicated source of revenue to create infrastructure in this country," he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying clip.

"We need to create jobs. The best way to do that is through infrastructure development." Simply maintaining the existing infrastructure in this country will cost $2.2 trillion over five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That doesn't include Obama's objective of high-speed rails and green energy projects.

Trumka didn't say specifically how much he would raise the gas tax, but mentioned he's shown the President a $256 billion plan to improve infrastructure. If every billion spent on infrastructure creates 35,000 jobs, as he claims, this package would create close to 9 million jobs over the next five years.

What is needed is more taxation.

That's right folks, taking the money directly out of the taxpayer's pocket, percolating it through the stifling filter of bureaucracy, and then earmarking that money onto inefficient union-waged projects is how to create jobs--a complication that would at least partially dissolve if these projects were administered outside the influences of the Davis-Bacon Act. But, who cares if the taxpayers get screwed in favor of union interests?

(For the record, I'm not totally against gasoline taxes, or, more specifically, any infrastructure usage taxes, as long as those taxes prove ultimately to be revenue neutral to the government and that the money is actually spent on the infrastructure targeted by the tax. But, is that ever the case?)

Thanks to the article, we know now that Trumpka believes an infrastructure job costs $28,571 dollars all costs inclusive. (One billion dollars divided by 35,000 jobs created.) Though, to be honest, I didn't realize that Trumpka would be satisfied with championing temporary jobs that paid about $9 an hour before overhead, taxes and benefits.

I say temporary jobs because in order to reach the 9,000,000 jobs number that is cited in the article, each job is counted on a per year basis. Using the same logic, a man that has been employed for ten years as a hardware clerk has not had one hardware clerk job for ten years, but has had ten different hardware clerk jobs (all of them created) each lasting for one year.

Imagine how many jobs could be created if each only lasted several months!

Smoke and mirror calculations are a mainstay of progressive job creation methodology, but they do make it easier to fill up a resume.

Thank you Mr. Trumpka!