Cynthia Shifts Focus to Jobs Program for Seniors Living in Poverty
 Davis shares her economic and family values expertise with Kit Bond, October '08 |
Hoping to capitalize on her national infamy as an advocate for hungry (but motivated!) children, Rep. Cynthia Davis has turned her attention to the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is expected to create about 300 new jobs for Missourians age 55 and older. The program pays participants’ salaries while they are gaining work experience and on-the-job training, and is for individuals 55 or older with incomes up to 125% of the federal poverty level.
In her latest newsletter, Davis explains why programs like this are bad, bad news. If God wanted these seniors living in poverty to have jobs, she argues, they "would have appeared spontaneously."
With the unemployment rate increasing, trying to teach people over the age of 55 new skills will add to the supply of workers, but not the demand for workers. This could create more unintended consequences because the taxpayers are paying these wages, not the businesses. This government program is another way to redistribute the wealth. While all of this seems "nice", we could have accomplished even more for our senior citizens if it were not for federal government interference with our free markets.
The information from the governor's office estimates this will create about 300 new jobs for people over 55 years old. However, since the government is paying their salaries, it is hard to imagine this being on par with a new private sector job. When the stimulus money goes away, it is likely the jobs will also go away. If there were true demand for them, they would have appeared spontaneously without governmental intervention.
Exactly! We could have "accomplished even more for our senior citizens" if we had done nothing, and just waiting for jobs to "appear spontaneously." Trying to train people for new jobs won't actually create jobs for them -- it will just give them the skills to seek new opportunities that would otherwise have been out of reach. And who needs that?
Davis isn't concerned about the effectiveness of this specific program, or how it's executed. She's saying that any job training program that receives any public is a waste because if people really needed new skills, they would spontaneously find jobs, or spontaneously be able to afford training programs (financed by the jobs they don't have, I guess).
In the same newsletter, Davis includes a picture of herself with Margaret Donnelly, Director for the Department of Health & Senior Services, and staff members from the Goodwill Industries Store in O’Fallon. Goodwill participates in the program, and helps provide seniors with jobs to training and skills they can use to obtain full-time employment. But since they're all smiling, we can safely assume Cynthia didn't tell any of them they would have all been better off without jobs, waiting for new ones to spontaneously appear without any meddlesome government intervention.
Finally, Davis is optimistic her great successes as an opponent to health meal programs for poor children and jobs programs for seniors will raise her stock in Washington. She is now advertising her services as "An O'Fallon Economist," though she wisely predicts that few people will take her up on her offer.
(h/t The Turner Report)
