Jobs: everyone with an agenda can help get the 'snowball' of jobs rolling.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: [on] MANAGEMENT

A lot is being said about jobs these days, ranging from "How do I keep mine?" to 'How do I get one?"

"The Snowball" refers to a book by that title about Warren Buffett. The snowball represents the little bit he started with that slowly became one of the world's largest fortunes.

Not many jobs will come out of complaining about the government, banks or companies. Actually, companies that have jobs are looking for people who have a positive attitude, people who know there are problems but choose to attack them from an optimistic angle that brings along a team of people. More about this later.

First I'd like to complain a little about government, banks and companies.

Government cannot create any jobs except government jobs. I wrote this late last year during the presidential campaign, and I was told by at least half of the people who wrote in that I was crazy. A typical negative comment went something like, "What a stupid statement! Of course a government can create jobs." Others told me I was a poor writer who didn't understand how the world worked. And some much worse.

But the facts are that the government can only create jobs by making life easier for businesses. It can give tax credits (as it does for green industries like wind turbines), it can subsidize a market like it has for new home buyers, or it can incentivize businesses by easing the tax load. These things give more profit to businesses so they can invest in themselves.

Government can't even give you a government job without taking money from the rest of us (taxes).

How about this to get some hearts racing. ... Every drop of money the government spends comes from profit. Business profit, capital gains profit, savings account profit, etc. The government taxes business, people (paid through profit), sales (no profit, no pay, no sales), real estate, etc. Without profit or loans or gifts from other countries, any country is out of business. Right now our country's income is basically from taxes on our business profit and loans from China.

One good suggestion is that we should cut spending. An annoying thing about government is that the last thing it thinks about cutting is its own size. There are lots of examples, but how about the increasing cost of college, a ticket on the light rail and the fact that your house is worth less than last year but...