The Couger Report

I have made the trip between Columbus, Ohio and somewhere in Michigan on about a bi-weekly basis for months now. Today, however, was a bit different. Sometime between last Thursday and today, two signs were erected that read: “Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” In the lower left it mentioned recovery.gov and something about “putting Americans to work.”

Both locations (one on US-23 north of Marion, OH and one on I-75 south of Bowling Green) were fairly deserted, with light traffic and roads in good condition (compared to the cement/gravel/asphalt mix of pot holes we call roads up in Michigan).

Perhaps more interesting is that there were no workers. In fact, there were no orange cones to even signify workers. Not even a “construction ahead” sign or a “traffic fines doubled” sign. There was nothing but a sign, signifying the Holy President Himself and His hallowed plan to reverse global financial markets by giving people shovels, jobs and bi-weekly pay.

Then I thought about it. Say the workers do show up someday, and this isn’t one big political maneuver. Why would we give them shovels? I mean, if this is all about creating jobs, then expediting the process will only put the workers at a disadvantage.

I think, in an effort to create jobs and keep workers working, we should give them all sand paper, and tell them to sand the road down.

Then, we should give them elmer’s glue and rocks, and have them rebuild the road. Seriously, if the goal is to create jobs this is perfect. It will take so many workers (such a long time) to do this.

When the people who drive on the road get irritated, the process will repeat and the government will be able to hire even more people, to fix the road made out of elmer’s glue and rocks.

The only problem with the plan (and there is only one) is that Elmer’s glue is waterproof. Now that, my friends, is a market failure. All those greedy capitalists, especially the ones from Hillsdale College… no wait… the ones that go to Church, well, they conspired and created waterproof glue, and that killed jobs.

Nevertheless, the solution is easy: create a government agency to oversee research on a new type of glue that will dissolve in the rain… so every time it rains jobs are created.

And we just created 40 million jobs.