An Overdue Book

It isn't about altruism - it's about the benefits that come from everyone working to maximize their own welfare. You say you would build an automated factory that would hire a minimum of workers - but you are overlooking the fact that someone has to build, design and maintain that automated equipment. All of that supports jobs - jobs that very probably pay more than the factory floor worker job. Depending on what you make, it will also create further manufacturing positions using your product, or sales jobs selling that product. No action is taken in isolation, and the only way your argument works is by ignoring the interconnectedness of self-interest in creating wealth. Your self-interest benefits mine, and together we create wealth.

Even if you sent the manufacture of your product to China - it would still create jobs here. Your product would come back here - dock workers benefit, sales people benefit, truckers moving your product across the country benefit. You're perspective narrows the "jobs" created to the factory floor - like Obama's automated teller example limited his to bank tellers. The snowball effect of jobs created anywhere, as long as those jobs create wealth in the form of usable or sellable product, is always overlooked by people wanting to take money from the "rich" to give to the government - which is arguably the only way money fails to create wealth. Broaden your perspective and you will see that your factory is better than government spending.