Where Are All The Jobs?
Toni Alimi ·
September 5, 2011 at 5:44pm
Check out this statement by Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute, concerning the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report on Jobs.
It's easy, and perhaps appropriate, to continue to pin most or all of the blame on President Obama. But what can local governments, and Republicans in the House and Senate, do to curb this trend towards recession? Where have all the Jobs gone? How do we, as it's so often put, "get America back to work?"
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Comments:
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
My suspicion is that the jobs, along with our money, have gone from the private to the public sector. To paraphrase a current candidate, make the government as inconsequential as possible, get it's foot off the private sector's throat, and watch the economy grow. It's happened before.
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
From California, the jobs are moving to Texas. My sister and her husband are both moving their medical practices from beautiful and swanky Newport Beach to Kerrville, Texas in March. Even Steve JOBS will be leaving here soon.
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
Federal regulators are on a tear, creating new rules and requirements at warp speed, and entrepreneurs know that the trend is from bad to worse. EPA is instituting rules guaranteed to close down coal power plants, so future US electricity prices must rise and grid reliability must decline. If you are considering siting a factory in the United States, you will factor this into your analysis and pause, or locate elsewhere. If you import raw materials from abroad, as Gibson Guitar does, you also reckon the possibility of jail time from environmentalists wielding arbitrary police power. You have no idea what your future health care costs will be, but understand that they will increase massively once Obamacare is in place. You face a maze of permits and credentialing requirements, all administered by officials hostile to you and your undertaking. If, despite the long odds, you succeed, the government takes 35 percent or more of your profit in corporate taxes, crippling your company's ability to reinvest relative to its foreign competitors. More than half the money that filters to you is likewise expropriated, not for urgent necessity but to lavish on other citizens after washing through the all-powerful bureaucracy.
Sep '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
I had a conversation with a construction supervisor for a national homebuilder and he said many of their vendors were having trouble finding workers. It seems like the wages they can offer cannot compete with unemployment and food stamps. If people are paid not to work chances are they will not work. The idea that government is supposed to do something is wrong headed. If they would simply stop regulating, stop spending, stop legislating, stop taxing and stop helping things would get better a lot more quickly.
Oct '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
liberal jim: I had a conversation with a construction supervisor for a national homebuilder and he said many of their vendors were having trouble finding workers. It seems like the wages they can offer cannot compete with unemployment and food stamps. If people are paid not to work chances are they will not work.
· Sep 5 at 8:59am
But...but...surely that just means the company should pay higher wages, doesn't it?????
Jan '11
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
Robert Samuelsson has a Labor Day piece today. Not happy reading.
I endured the internet replays of the Sunday talk shows. On Meet the Press, Tom Friedman was perfectly ridiculous, explaining his theory that we're not prepared for the future, and that workers aren't educated to compete in the future, and so on. His theory might make sense if the job crisis was a problem with workers ... but it isn't. Jobs aren't growing because the economy isn't growing.
The workers are fine. The businesses are reaping profits. So there must be some other reason why companies aren't growing.
Businesses aren't expanding, which is where the growth comes from. They're not taking risks. Banks are tight on credit, because they can make as much money with less risk using free money from the Fed. And the businesses themselves are wary of taking risks, because they're clearly afraid of regulation ... and even if the risk succeeds, the government wants to take a greater share of the success.
Why take a risk of ruining what you have, just so that Obama and Pelosi can placate their base?
The solution? 2012.
Jul '11
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
Local governments have little control over what amounts to a macro policy, and a federal spending overhang that acts like a hand placed on the head of a person in the water - it's hard to swim when you can't breathe. The economy won't start growing again until federal spending is de-constructed, and that there is stability in costs. If a company does not know its costs, but knows that they are going up, they will be highly reluctant to start new projects, sign contracts to begin work on long-term projects, and - hire more employees.
At my company, we've been told that if the penalty we'll pay for our "Cadillac" heath care coverage kicks in, we will have no choice but to move to Obamacare, in whatever form that comes in. The "Cadillac" threshold is something like $11,000 or $12,000 per employee. I have news for those idiots in DC - this is as far from a Cadillac as driving a 1979 pinto.
That's just an example of unknowable costs. We only know that they are likely to go up. We're in a negative feedback loop.
Dec '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
The GOP in the House and the Senate can do little, for now.
At the local level, where citizens can have direct impact, I see movement in things like impact fees, permitting fees, etc. At the state level we need strong GOP leadership cleaning out the bureaucracies and stripping down regulatroy burdens. It would also help if we could wring organized labor out of our state governments and especially in public education. That may help us get our schools back under control so we don't continue to graduate generations of indoctrinated leftists.
Oct '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
Sorry to get all engineer, but we're in a positive feedback loop with a negative outcome. Negative feedback corrects excursions from a desired outcome back toward it, while positive feedback reinforces them, sending things toward perdition. I'm all too aware that these terms are frequently misused, but in evaluating policy it's important to use them precisely.
A couple of decades ago I spent an entire chapter in a diet book sorting this out.
Aug '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
Well the good news, Toni, is that by the time you graduate there is hope that good jobs (i.e. nothing involving liar loans for the working poor), will have come out from hiding, provided the election portends honest, quantifiable relief for the private sector.
The jobs, like the munchkins, are still laying low in the shrubbery, waiting to see who'll next wear the red shoes.
Jun '11
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
Toni Alimi: Check out this statement by Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute, concerning the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report on Jobs.
It's easy, and perhaps appropriate, to continue to pin most or all of the blame on President Obama. But what can local governments, and Republicans in the House and Senate, do to curb this trend towards recession? Where have all the Jobs gone? How do we, as it's so often put, "get America back to work?" ·
In addition to being fierce warriors, Americans are also known for being doers, inventors, makers. We don't wait around for the "government" to get in or out of our way. We push forward.
We make up our own jobs.
Be a doer, an inventor, a maker. Don't depend upon a hoped for sinecure offered by a corporation or a government.
Dec '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
You get the .gov the hell off our backs and out of our way.
We'll take care of the rest.
That means tax cuts of every sort, and the wholesale slaughter of regulation (newest first, but cutting very deep).
When you quit making it illegal to make money, people will start trying to make money again.
Until then . . .
Feb '11
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
From August 2010 to August 2011, the job market has improved. [http://goo.gl/P01dP] With the rate of unemployment moving from 5.0 to 4.7 to 4.6 to 4.5 to 4.5 to 4.4 to 4.3 to 4.3.
(Less if you live in Texas.)
If you're male aged 25-34, you can expect to be making a median income of $51,000. [http://goo.gl/XywBl]
(More if you live in Texas.)
There's a catch, though. You need at least a Bachelor's degree.
Anything less than that, you've two or three times the rate of unemployment, and half the income.
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So perhaps the question should be: "Where did all the other jobs go?"
Put another way, do Democrats hate the working man?
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On a related matter, where do folks without papers (i.e., criminals) usually work?
Edited on September 6, 2011 at 8:38amFeb '11
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
I agree with all of this: less government, less tax, less regulation. All of that will undoubtedly work to the good. This doesn't address, though, the fact of our time which is that we've over-consumed and overspent. The proof is in our massive personal debt, mortgage debt, municipal debt, state debt, and federal debt. Red ink everywhere. It's difficult switching jobs or starting a business if you already have a mortgage and maxed out credit cards. A debtor can't afford risks or additional commitments. Government can't afford lower taxes even if it manages to stop spending money it doesn't have. So the developed world has over-consumed and can't afford our wares anymore while the developing world doesn't need us, they can take care of themselves. Only time can heal some of our wounds, I think.
Aug '10
Re: Where Are All The Jobs?
The president of a successful independent bank, HQd in Nashville, recently told me businesses aren't borrowing (thus, taking some risks) because of the thing business fears most: uncertainty.