Outsourcing

Countries in the European Union as a whole have stronger job

protection laws than the United States -- and higher unemployment rates

because their rate of job creation is much slower.

On the other end of the spectrum, there has probably never been any

place with a more unrestricted labor market than Hong Kong when it was a

British colony. Unemployment rates of one or two percent were common in

Hong Kong then. After China took over Hong Kong, it created various new

benefits for workers -- and unemployment rates hit 7 percent, not high

by European standards, but a multiple of what it had been for years.

What all this says, in various ways, is that there is no free lunch --

not even during election years.

Senator John Kerry says that he would create 10 million jobs if he

were President. But Presidents don't create jobs.

The most a President can do is have policies that allow private

employers to create jobs. Foolish policies can destroy jobs and prolong

a recession or depression but Presidents cannot "grow the economy," no

matter what political rhetoric says.

Of course the government can hire more people or favor a particular

industry in one way or another, and thereby cause employment to be

greater in that particular industry. But the government has no money of

its own, and the money that it takes from the private economy to

increase its own hiring or to promote hiring in some favored industry

reduces the money available to hire people elsewhere in the economy.

President Bush's tariffs on imported steel may have saved some jobs in