The conservative mantra has been ‘we need to elect someone who can add jobs’ to the state’s economy. As conservatives who believe in the merits of a free market system, to elect someone because of their promise to create jobs is a vital mistake.

GOP Needs to Support Profits

We don’t want government to deliver or add jobs, we need government to provide for the private sector to make great profits. Elect politicians who do just that and the jobs will come.

Last Friday morning I arrived early for my involvement with William Jessup University in Rocklin, California. I serve on the WJU Marketing Committee with numerous Jessup staff members, faculty members and administration officials, helping this gem of a ’liberal arts university’ continue its conservative reach throughout Northern California.

As I was taking my seat at the conference table, Professor Sam Heinrich approached to say hello and engage in our usual pre-meeting conversation about the economy, our concerns about the lack of government leadership and the overall misdirection of the state.

Professor Sam Heinrich is the director of the School of Professional Studies (SPS Program); a former bank and finance manager. Heinrich’s personal moniker is being an avid economical and political junkie. His friendship is a constant challenge for me on semantics; because words mean something.

All the more important when you consider the changes our country is experiencing as we travel through the Obama indoctrination and redefinition process of what makes America great. 

Heinrich was quick to the take Friday, “Eric, why are we asking for candidates to provide jobs?”

I was remedial in my initial response, “Sam, because we are conservatives, and we believe in the private sector.”

Heinrich replied, “Right, but why are we asking government to create jobs – they can’t, nor do we want them trying. What we need is for Republican candidates to start talking about providing a climate for profits. We need to be educating the voters that profits are the answer.”

The professor is right.

We are doing a great disservice by demanding that President Obama’s agenda provide jobs for the country, and we are just as guilty when we – as conservatives –  request Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell to do the same to save California.

We don’t want government to provide jobs; whatever government provides, it can also take away without reason.

What we should be demanding is the private sector’s right to make profits – those gross black numbers that lead to growth, increased revenue, higher salaries and more production. And in the end, these evil profits harvest new jobs and more hires for the company successful enough to reach a thriving profit margin of operation.

As Thomas Sowell writes in Basic Economics, “Economics is more than a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies. Its fundamental concern is with the material standard of living of society as a whole and how that is affected by particular decisions made by individuals and institutions. One of way of doing this is to look at economic policies and economic systems in terms of the incentives they create.”

In the midst of this recession and government ideology fight, our daily lives are inundated with evaluating opinions about the state of the economy. What about the freedom of the economy to do what it is meant to do?  Allow individuals and institutions to achieve a profit, evolving from those profits are growth, services, products and eventually jobs.

When a company starts to create a profit margin, others chase after it. As the profit margin produces for the original operator, more companies attach themselves to the widget as they hire people to meet the growth demand so to reap a profit for themselves.

The end result, jobs that are added by the economy – not legislation, government spending or intrushion. Politicians should be campaigning on “creating profits”, not creating jobs.

As conservatives, we believe in a government that allows for the addition of jobs, by getting out of the way and writing legislation that provides profit taking incentives.

Candidates should be discussing economic policies and economic systems in terms of the incentives they will create, rather than simply the goal of adding more jobs.

Let’s be serious, government can add as many jobs as it wants, but if it is not attached to a healthy economy that is demanding more jobs due to the harvesting of a great profit, it becomes nothing but a good intention with a serious consquences thereafter.

Sowell again, “consequences matter more than intentions – and not just the immediate consequences, but also the longer run repercussions of decisions, policies and institutions. Everyone agrees on the importance of economics, but thre is a far less agreement on just what economics is.”

I am convinced that government’s real job is to provide for the private sector to make real profits.

The goal is more people working in jobs and making a better way of life. The means is to deliver incentives, freedom and individualism for those who are reaching for profit to find it on their own merit, without the hurdles and burdens of government regulations or false stimulation.

For the candidates that want to message ‘jobs’ during this primary marathon, message correctly and successfully.

Jobs will arrive by way of the private sector – not government – when we demand that government support private sector profit taking once again, at that point freedom from debt returns, as does the economy.