If nothing else, this post allows me to use the nifty image pictured on your right.
But I thought today’s essay by Patriot Post’s Mark Alexander was a keeper. In “Job Creation for Dummies” he outlines five basic tenets of economic prosperity that Barack Obama is refusing to embrace, instead creating photo-ops like a “jobs summit” to score points for trying rather than allowing government to step out of the way and allow small businesses to succeed.
Just looking at the logo to the right, we see Obama’s philosophy embodied. It’s recovery.gov – as if the government has a place in economic recovery. Sorry, it does not.
I’m certainly no economist, so the sum of my economic learning comes from the School of Hard Knocks. Seems to me though that as government has become more and more complex over my lifetime it takes more and more time for business to comply with government regulations and taxation rules. Thus, it follows that the time spent dealing with red tape is like overhead and businesses cannot make as much of a profit when their overhead is higher, unless they raise the prices they charge to maintain the level of service.
Some may argue that the complexity creates jobs because – as an example – a doctor needs to hire someone to deal with the paperwork presented by health insurers, generally at the behest of government. Fair enough – but is that truly helping the doctor with the appointed task of helping patients or is that just another cost of doing business? That cost gets passed on to someone because, again, businesses don’t pay taxes, their consumers do.
Let’s say you happen to be the paper-pusher hired by the doctor to deal with the paperwork. It’s most likely your salary can only go up if the doctor continues to see patients and reimbursements increase. If not, you could be asked to forgo a salary increase for an amount of time because the overall business income is flat or declining – yet your bills aren’t declining because costs are going up for all the service providers you have – food costs go up, the price of gasoline skyrockets, energy costs increase, and your tax burden gets no lighter. At least if you were on Social Security you’d get a $250 check to make up for a lack of a COLA this year, but regular employees have to make do.
Luckily, the paper-pushing industry probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It appears to me that the only jobs the Obama Administration is interested in creating are government jobs, or work which is dependent on federal money such as “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects like milling and resurfacing perfectly good stretches of highway. The jobs being “saved” are either union jobs, as in the United Auto Workers, or the fat-cat Wall Street types who bundled money to see Obama elected. Yeah, they may take a pay cut for a year but that’s the sacrifice made to make them look better in the press. They’ll get it back.
Meanwhile, good business fold up their tents, take down the shingles they hung, and have no way of paying their debts fully. Homeowners and investors see their nest eggs wiped out – that is, unless they desire “help” from the government.
Apparently the only time those who favor big government are happy is when society is miserable, because then they can step in and make themselves feel better by helping out. On the other hand, when the economic engine is humming they carp and complain because people are happy despite the fact they don’t need a handout. If it weren’t for having a perpetual underclass these busybodies would be throwing themselves off the Bay Bridge.
Let’s face it – the worm turned when getting “relief” from the government was no longer a stigma. The more people on the dole, the less of a chance being there will be looked down upon. That’s the true aim of Obama’s “recovery”and judged by that standard we can see it’s humming along quite well.
