Best way to create decent paying jobs?

The Soviet Union managed to develop technology, industrialise their country, and increase the economic standard of living of its people (although admittingly not to extremely comfortable levels). So the government can potentially create jobs. The question is whether government-directed economic activity can add productivity over that from the private sector. Since there does exist rising unemployment, would not these unemployed be more productive in government-directed industry than not working?

Perhaps you would like to explain why construction workers who need a house do not earn enough money from their job to buy one, and why they are unnable to build their own house? If the cost of products is really almost all just the cost of labor, then the laborers should be able to afford products, because prices should fall with wages. But this is not what is happening.

There is some truth to what you are saying, the private sector is important for economic productivity, and all too often the government thinks it can just "transfer" the wealth from the private sector to everyone else. But it is not accurate to claim that only the private sector can create economic activity and jobs.

Another plausible phenomena is that increased distribution of wealth could potentially lead to an increase in demand, as more people would have more money. More money being spent could mean more jobs. More jobs would mean less competition amongst workers and higher wages. One person with a hundred million euros will spend much less than a hundred people with only a half million euros each.

 

While there certainly is some correlation between wages and inflation, there are also several other factors. I am not in favor of inflation, but I strongly disagree with people that claim a fundamental link between inflation and employment. There is certainly a link in short-term fluctuations, but inflation is caused by other things besides rising wages. Longer-term changes in the economy are far more influential on employment and inflation. The best example I can give is like comparing climate change and weather, trying to claim that since it is warmer when it is sunny, climate change must be caused by fewer clouds. Do not confuse the obvious correlation of change in employment and inflation over a relatively short span of years for thinking that one is the main cause of the other!

This is an example of the fallacy of composition- what is true for an individual is not necessarily true of a larger group of individuals. Education is not the solution to lifting people out of poverty.

Only useful education helps create more wealth.

It seems that most forms of education is modern society are not useful, only competitive demonstrations of competency. In this sense then, education does not help create more wealth, but rather, in a way, is a waste of time and resources.

While on the scale of an individual, education leads to a higher personal income, this is not necessarily the case in society. Education often only leads to higher income because the employer would rather give the good paying jobs to those that have more education. So if other people obtain higher educational credentials, it will just mean lower incomes for the people that do not have such credentials.

The phenomena of economic disincentives caused by non-practical overeducation in a society is called credentialism.

A society only needs a small portion of individuals to be educated in science, medicine, or advanced mathematics. Trying to teach a greater number of people these specialised areas of knowledge will not benefit society.

 

One should note that the 'strong' screening hypothesis (where education, rather than being an investment in human capital, serves an allocative 'certification' role) is not supported by the empirical evidence.

 

I tend to shy away from books (tend to be already out of date and range from textbook bogus peddling of 'truth' to a researcher selling her dogma). Stick to journal offerings like the Cambridge Journal of Economics. You don't get an obsessive reliance on greek letters!