Lots of things “create jobs and economic activity” (for at least someone, in the short term): Ponzi schemes. Mob protection rackets. Dumping untreated toxic slu

Lots of things “create jobs and economic activity” (for at least someone, in the short term): Ponzi schemes. Mob protection rackets. Dumping untreated toxic sludge in the local river. Burning down the rainforest and replacing it with palm oil plantations and cattle ranches. Establishing a pharmaceutical monopoly and then jacking the price up by 1000%. Opening child-labor sweatshops. Prostitution of sex-trafficked slaves. Kidnapping for ransom. Medical research on unwilling human test subjects. Child porn production. Black-market organ sales. Judges conspiring with for-profit prison companies to send innocent people to jail. Selling small arms to mass-murdering foreign paramilitary groups... Hand-waving away all of the details because you think “jobs” outweigh “the legal particulars” is a free pass to support pretty much anything you personally prefer (or personally profit from), irrespective of its harms. I’m sure it would create a lot of short term jobs if we leased Yellowstone to the Disney company to develop into a theme park. But “maximizing short-term local economic development” is not how we make decisions about what to do with congressionally established nature preserves.