Time blogger Justin Fox made a chart of recession job loss threads. Fox's chart shows recessions from 1974 to present. The brown line represents the job losses from the current recession. Notice the currrent recession job losses are below the green line (recession of 1981.)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports only 59.9 percent of the population is working. Retirees and children need to be taken into account. There is reason to expect the number to slip lower. Since November 2007, the BLS reports retail jobs have "declined by an average of 44,000 per month." 495,000 jobs have disappeared from the financial industry. 351,000 leisure and hospitality are gone. New jobs are not being created. The BLS numbers are the best argument for President Barack Obama's stimulus program. Trickle down tax cuts are not going to magically make jobs appear. Infrastructure project will.
We could put all those people to work mowing the white house lawn with fingernail clippers too. Without market prices to indicate what projects are producing value and which aren't, what's the point? Bureaucrats are not entrepreneurs. The chances of them picking projects that produce more value than they consume and having the discipline to keep costs under control are nil. They can only damage the economy more.
ReplyDeleteThe assumption that entrepreneurs are better at building the economy that bureaucrats is invalid because entrepreneurs are only interested in making money. Entrepreneurs are not interested is bettering society. Just remember the tobacco business.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet the tobacco business employes a lot of people gainfully. Ask any tobacco employee whether they'd rather be out of work.
ReplyDeleteAs for government bettering society, a) that's not its role, and b) it messes it up when it tries. I'm trying hard to find an instance of a government program that has worked better than a private or charitable sector equivalent and drawing blanks... perhaps you know of something?
And yes, entrepreneurs are interested in making money, but to do that they all have to employ people. You may not like it, but it works the *least bad* of any other options. You work for somebody, right? That person (all companies started as an entrepreneur) took big risks initially to make some money, and along the way hired you and gave you a living. People create things, good governments get out of the way.
The assumption that entrepreneurs are better at building the economy that bureaucrats is invalid because entrepreneurs are only interested in making money. Entrepreneurs are not interested is bettering society.What a freaking joke. Yes, the government is just great at bettering society - just ask the hundreds of thousands of dead, maimed, tortured, and orphaned Iraqis - man, they can't use much more help from our benevolent government over there!
ReplyDeleteWho's going to make the money to pay the taxes to pay for the government labor?
ReplyDeleteSocial Security and the GI Bill are two government programs that have worked.
ReplyDelete