Curmudgeon's Corner

Job Creation

Posted by Al Campbell on Sept. 6, 2011

Employment, Economy, Political, Taxes, Quality of Life, U.S.

It seems fitting that, emerging from Labor Day week-end, we would be focusing on JOBs this week.  Our President will address the nation, or at least the part of it that will be watching, on Thursday prior to the Packers-Saints NFL game.

The advanced hype would have us believe that his message will deal largely with creating more infrastructure jobs than anything else and that is troubling on several levels.  Road builders will love the extra money but won’t need a lot of employees since much of that work has been taken over by machines over the course of the past several decades, and most of those road builders are already at 100% of capacity for some time to come.  There aren’t many, if any, real “shovel-ready” jobs to be found.

Most of us, I think, understand that new businesses and new product lines create more jobs than are created by the typical government stimulus plan.  Those new jobs won’t be created unless and until government gets out of the way of those entrepreneurs who would otherwise be willing to invest in start-ups.  These jobs cover the gamut of occupations and are not just oriented to road building and bridge building and railroad track-laying.

What would make more sense would be a speech where the President makes it known that his attempts to control everything from Washington, D.C. will be ended, that all the burdensome regulation and delay will be ended immediately and that the free market will be permitted to work its magic.  He would tell us that he is seeking Congress’ approval of an immediate tax reduction to put more money back into the economy instead of making unemployment more and more attractive by extending benefits.  He would also tell us that he is delaying the continued implementation of ObamaCare since that is hurting the employment market for those who already are employed.  He would say that we will drill for oil and natural gas in our own country and that those projects will be given immediate approval.  He would acknowledge that the recent green company failures, several of which have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, indicate that he got ahead of the market for green products and services and that he will shift his personal emphasis away from that area for the next year and one-half, until his second term or someone else’s first term.

Based on his performance over this long week-end, however, there seems no hope for such a lucid and meaningful speech.  I expect that he will continue to campaign for re-election by blaming everything on the Congress, by courting big labor, and by claiming he has been right on everything but just hasn’t gotten the support he deserves.  We likely will have just another in a string of poor speeches from our President.

At least we’ll have a football game to watch to take our minds off the speech that precedes it.