Posted on 09/01/2011 5:07:58 PM PDT by Kaslin
After wasting three years and more than a trillion dollars of "stimulus" money, the President has announced he has a new plan for creating jobs.
The problem is: Government doesn't create jobs that add value to the economy; companies and entrepreneurs do. Through taxes, mandates and regulation the government typically discourages hiring and destroys jobs. What Washington should do right now is step aside.
To show how serious he is, the President has enlisted noted labor economist Alan Krueger of Princeton University to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Unfortunately, one thing Krueger is known for is his finding that government-mandated increases in the minimum wage don't discourage hiring.
Most other economists understand that when government forces companies to pay more for labor, those companies will do what they can to use less labor. So minimum wage increases — especially for those with scant experience and marginal skills — is a job killer. It's no accident that unemployment is highest among teens and people in their early 20s right now. They are the people most affected by the minimum wage.
The trouble with government job-creation schemes of any kind is that, at best, they easily evolve into make-work projects.
On a visit to Asia, the late economist Milton Friedman observed workers digging a canal, using shovels. He asked a government bureaucrat why they weren't using modern excavation machinery. The answer: "You don't understand. This is a jobs program." Friedman replied, "Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give the workers spoons, not shovels."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
The more jobs the government creates the deeper in debt we go.
Government is out , Family is in, so, well , ah family is bad ?
Dominion VA Power announced this afternoon that Chesapeake Energy Center (coal plant) will close in 2016. It will cost upwards of a billion dollars to upgrade to meet EPA regulations, so they are closing it down. Obama is honoring his campaign promise to crush electric generation from coal. Wonder if he will bring this up in his big jobs speech next week? Higher unemployment, higher electric bills. 1/20/13 can’t come fast enough!!!
the headline is right on the money
What America needs today is a leader who will read and understand the great moral philosopher Adam Smith's 1775 treatise "An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," digest the wisdom of that work, and then move on to the American Founders' 1776 Declaration of Independence and their 1787 "We, the People's" Constitution for self-government.
Such a leader might become so passionate about liberty that he/she would inspire new generations of Americans to relight the lamp of liberty and freedom which now flickers.
The so-called "miracle of America" did not happen accidentally. As Weaver observed, "Ideas have consequences." The ideas of freedom articulated by Smith in Europe and implemented in America by its founding generation brought over 200 years of amazing triumph over tyranny, darkness and oppression to persons from all over the world. Edmund Burke attributed the great economic progress of the American colony by 1775 to its "spirit of liberty." (See Burke's "Speech on Conciliation . . . .")
Such a "spirit of liberty," rediscovered by a significant part of the American population in 2011-2012 could rekindle the light of liberty, dispel the darkness of the regressives (otherwise known as "progressives"), and bring about enormous economic progress and relief to individuals of our time, thereby assuring that future generations would know of our devotion to them and their happiness.
Right on.
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