Maryland keeps leading the way – in losing jobs

Another dismal unemployment report continued a bad month for Governor Martin O’Malley as he tries to regain his early momentum for a probable 2016 Presidential run. Unfortunately for both the governor and those who were more directly affected, Department of Labor estimates peg 11,000 as the number of jobs lost by Marylanders in June, although the DOL also revised the number in Maryland who lost jobs in May downward from 7,500 to 2,900, according to Jamie Smith Hopkins at the Baltimore Sun. The state’s topline unemployment rate ratcheted upward to 6.9 percent, although Hopkins was careful to add this was still below the national average. Obviously that’s cold comfort to those whose personal unemployment number reached 100 percent.

While the GOP is sympathetic to the plight of these newly jobless, they are also using this new data to point out the ineffectiveness of the state’s Democratic majority to address the problem. For example, O’Malley’s favorite new whipping boy and subject of “juvenile attacks” Larry Hogan of Change Maryland commented:

Something isn’t working here. Now would be an excellent time to re-evaluate our tax-and-spend approach to governing and start developing policies that increase private sector job growth.  It’s unacceptable to have increases in the unemployment rate month after month.

Fellow gubernatorial hopeful and Harford County Executive David Craig chimed in:

While the state of Maryland has raised taxes, our debt has also increased.  This is a dangerous formula and it is the wrong direction for our great state.

Added U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino – a man of succinct words:

Absolutely inexcusable. The time for real change is now.

Yet there are those on the Left who seem to think this isn’t such a big deal. One is House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, a Washington insider who believes that economists think food stamps and unemployment insurance are two of the “most stimulative (things) that you can do,” as quoted in CNS News. Hoyer goes on:

Why is that? Because those folks who receive those resources must spend them. And they’ll spend them almost upon receipt. Most economists with whom I talk believe that those with significant discretionary income, that that’s not the case.

Well, of course that’s not the case for those with “significant discretionary income” because they either have steady jobs which give them a paycheck every week or two or they are successful business owners. Congressman Hoyer, those are the people who create jobs, so why “reward” them with higher taxes? That’s what Maryland does on a state level and we’ve seen the results.

If anything is plain to see regarding our economic situation, it’s that people need jobs. There’s an honest difference in political philosophy between that expressed in President Obama’s “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen” speech in Roanoke, Virginia; an approach which presupposes government needs to step in to “spread the wealth around” in the name of fairness, versus one where job creation is encouraged by allowing employers more freedom to keep their own capital and invest in ways they see fit, like expanding their workforce, building or securing new facilities, and raising the wages of deserving employees as a means of profit sharing. (And yes, I understand there are some business owners who keep the profit for themselves.) But you can’t share a profit if none is to be made.

My adopted home state has a number of assets: good location in relation to markets, a well-educated workforce, and the advantage of having the seat of federal government nearby. But so does Virginia, and we see them gaining jobs at Maryland’s expense. As a third gubernatorial candidate, Frederick County Commissioner Blaine Young, states on his 2014 campaign website:

(N)orthern Virginia just doesn’t talk the talk about being business friendly, they walk the walk.

Sometimes it seems like those in Annapolis just assume that Montgomery County will continue to pay the state’s bills in much the same way that heavy manufacturing and industry in and around Baltimore did a half-century ago, a time when the land which now consists of newer Montgomery and Prince George’s County developments was still cropland and forest. But that golden goose of government may stop laying its eggs, as the brain drain shown by the Change Maryland study could evolve from a trickle to a torrent if reforms aren’t conducted.

Part of the advantage of the American system is that those who don’t like something about a particular state or locality have the freedom to move to a place they feel is more advantageous to their interests. But what that says about a place productive people leave in droves is that something is desperately wrong; revisions need to be made and lessons learned. Maryland isn’t quite the East Coast version of California yet, but we’re working on it and making a course correction should be priority one for 2014.

One thought on “Maryland keeps leading the way – in losing jobs”

  1. agreed and i am moving to Tennessee to avoid another series of taxes to cover up a lack of spending cuts and the mafia road system of kick backs.

Comments are closed.