Ministry Of Counter Counters

My doomerism doesn't stand a chance in the face of 162,000 new jobs created in March. At that rate we'll be back to "normal" by March of 2012. Wa-hey!

That is...if we can sustain that rate. Nonetheless, 48,000 of these jobs were census counters. My friend's wife is included in that number; someone who really wasn't in need of a job to begin with, but presumably took a nice temporary job to supplement the family income.

I don't want to discount census worker jobs, because they are jobs. But think about it -- these 48,000 people will do absolutely nothing, perhaps less than nothing, to augment the U.S. manufacturing or productivity base. Hiring a person to count another person, while an important function, doesn't do a damn thing towards reducing our trade deficits, to build stuff, to keeping someone employed for more than a month. But it is GDP -- government spending is GDP. So while these don't do a damn thing to promote any long term employment, next month we'll report that GDP is screaming along! 5% growth! The stock market will see this as a sign that we've turned the bend, and will scream up alongside GDP.

Look, if hiring someone to count others was really so productive, why don't we just hire people to count cars on our gold-plated freeways? Or, count how many hot water faucet handles in government buildings turn to the left, and how many to the right. If it were a truly productive endeavor we could just hire 7 million counters and we'd have a roaring economy in no time! Recession's over!

With that many counters, we'd of course have to hire a group of counters to count the counters; you know, to audit their counts and to maintain quality control of the counting. The Ministry of Counter Counters would be formed -- the only question is -- who would oversee this ministry? Justice? Treasury? The FTC? Boy, that's a tough one...