Jobs jobs jobs

In Silver Spring we saw signs on the side of buses: "Cable means 10s of thousands of stable jobs", sure it does. Until a disruptive technology blows it out of the water. Or, alternately, cable becomes a counterproductive legacy with lots of overhead, and a net cost. Could be. Don't get me wrong, I love my cable, even if Mary wants to get rid of it and we really don't watch it, but producing jobs is not a reason to patronize something. Producing value is. Similarly, on the side of 95 coming North into Philly there were pro-dredging signs which cited job production as a rationale. Idiocy. Dredging is good or it isn't. What kind of next jobs would come out of a terminal dredging project? Lots of skilled dredgers? Job creation is not a good rationale for utility selection or public works, particularly when unemployment is 4.7%.