The World According to Michael Steele

According to Michael Steele, this is not a real job.Or this.
Or even this.
Government jobs, you see, are not real jobs. Building a parking lot for Macy's is a real job while paving a new interstate highway is a phony job. Erecting a warehouse for Nike is a real job; building a new state-of-the-art prison is just a pretend job. Army soldiers, being government employees all, perform valueless tasks.

Conversely, Steele holds the bizarre belief that private sector jobs never "go away" permanently.

George STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, but we've seen millions and millions of jobs going away in the private sector just in the last year.

Michael STEELE: But they come -- yes, they -- and they come back, though, George. That's the point. When they go -- they've gone away before, and they come back.

U. S. Steel in in 1943 employed 340,000 Americans. By the year 2000, they only employed 52,000. Those jobs have never come back.

The reality is 1) this economic decline in unprecedented. The jobs may not come back in our lifetimes.
2) The nation is sick. Very sick. Too sick to come back with a cup of thin, tepid chicken broth and telling him he recovered from that little cold he caught back in 2001. It is not a cold recession this time, it is economic pneumonia. The patient needs active intervention or our nation may become permanently disabled. Perhaps even die.

3) Historically, great civilizations have died many times - Greek, Roman, Mayan. The great economic power of Timbuktu is now just a dusty town with 32,000 impoverished citizens. The jobs never came back to Timbuktu.

At its height, Rome had enough jobs to maintain a population of five million. After Rome's fall there was barely enough work for a population of 50,000. Even now, two millennia later, Rome has not fully recovered and can only support a population of 2.5 million.

Sorry, Mr. Steele. Sometimes the jobs don't come back. Sometimes, if you stubbornly insist on doing nothing at all, the patient dies.