Read Don Carrington’s lead Carolina Journal Online article about the dubious concept of “job-years,” and you’ll find this quote from Gov. Beverly Perdue:

“You know, what I’m aware of on rail is that the money would help us do what we need to do in this state, and what we need to do in the country, from my perspective as somebody who’s had a chance to visit other countries and see their transportation system, that we need to focus on some type of transportation possibilities other than cars and buses. If it’s 1,200 or 12,000 in this economy, they are important jobs. I watched the recovery dollars for roads come into North Carolina, and I saw companies go back to work. I saw projects getting built. I’m watching the Yadkin River Bridge with great expectation. And so if the job estimates are right or wrong, the bottom line is it’s jobs for our people.”

Those comments are likely to make Kevin D. Williamson cringe. As the National Review deputy managing editor and Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism author writes in the latest print version of NR:

Our politicians talk a lot — far too much, in fact — about creating jobs, saving jobs, protecting jobs, and jobs’ going overseas. But it is foolish to try to create jobs. To create a job is to create an expense, not value. We could create many thousands of jobs in agriculture tomorrow by seizing everything painted John Deere green and dismantling it. But the spectacle of Americans returning to the fields to pick cotton by hand is not one I hope to see. No company really wants to create 1,000 jobs. It is only when the marginal worker creates more value in output than he consumes in compensation that he is hired.

Later, Williamson adds this thought about economic development based on chasing the “next big thing” with targeted tax breaks and incentives:

Our public policy ought not so much to be directed at cultivating the next Google or the next Pfizer — politicians have no ability to do that, anyway — but at maximizing the value of Americans’ labor.