Posted on 06/02/2012 6:16:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
The continuing weakness in the job market, which I wrote about this morning, means that the debate over unemployment benefits will get more heated.
I’ve already noted that even left-wing academics like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that you get more unemployment when you subsidize joblessness.
And I’ve cited some good research on the topic from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, as well as other studies by academic economists.
But none of this evidence seems to matter, as I discovered in this debate with a former Obama Labor Department official.
To better understand the points I was making, here are two good anecdotes from Ohio and Michigan.
Last but not least, this cartoon does a very good who of teaching about the economics of unemployment insurance. And if you want to understand the absurdity of the left, this post shows Nancy Pelosi is a train wreck of economic illiteracy.
The Labor Department just released its monthly employment report and the White House is probably not happy.
There are several key bits of data in the report, such as the unemployment rate, net job creation, and employment-population ratio.
At best, the results are mediocre. The unemployment rate generally gets the most attention, and that was bad news since the joblessness rate jumped to 8.2 percent.
What makes that number particularly painful is that the Obama Administration claimed that the unemployment rate today would be less than 6 percent if the so-called stimulus was adopted. But as you can see from the chart, squandering $800 billion on a Keynesian package hasn’t worked.
While that chart is probably embarrassing to the White House, I think the most revealing numbers come from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website, which allows users to compare employment data and GDP data for different business cycles.
I looked at those numbers a couple of months ago, so I could compare Reaganomics and Obamanomics, and the difference is startling. The Reagan policies of lower tax rates, spending restraint, deregulation, and tight money generated much better results than the statist policies of Obama.
The most recent numbers, shown below, aren’t any better for the Obama Administration.
But I suppose the good news is that the United States is not Europe. Government is even bigger on the other side of the Atlantic and many of those nations are in the middle of a fiscal crisis and the unemployment rate averages 11 percent.
Sort of makes you wonder whether there’s a lesson to be learned. Maybe, just maybe, bigger government means weaker economic performance.
A job, of course!
For some politicians, a handout might be better in exchange for a vote. In this way, the vote is purchased with tax money. The voter is afraid to vote for the guy who will take away the handout. The voter has become dependent on government.
And government handouts are just "good business".
Unfortunately, the Welfare State culture we live in has sapped the will to work out of a lot of people. They'd rather have a handout than work.
“Unfortunately, the Welfare State culture we live in has sapped the will to work out of a lot of people. They’d rather have a handout than work.”
Not all. On the 18th I start a full-time job after being on SSDI for 15 years. And I did it on my own without any government help. It was all because I wanted a better life for my family and I never gave up on myself. I got better physically and then got a minimum wage part time job for three years to establish a good work record.
God has blessed me and my family. I have a much greater appreciation of hard work and a good job after being out of the job market for so long.
Gotta cut taxes, spending and regulation from top to bottom.
For every one of you there are nine others who don’t want to risk losing their benefits by finding a job and making their lives better for themselves and their families.
For them the promise of a job cannot beat the security of the government handout.
They are not risk takers and they’ll only have what somebody gives them. In other words, they’re children.
"The Reagan policies of lower tax rates, spending restraint, deregulation, and tight money generated much better results than the statist policies of Obama."
Of course, the principle of freedom for individuals in the society and limitations on those to whom they entrust power produces better results than the counterfeit idea of unrestrained coercive power in the hands of arrogant power holders in government. Duhhh....
Throughout history, the latter scenario has been played out in one form or another. Always, it results in loss of freedom and lack of opportunity, jobs, prosperity and plenty.
Conservatives and the Republican nominee now must articulate America's founding principles--principles which were so carefully designed by the Founders to expose, rebut, rebuke, and avoid the tyranny of any "class warfare" or "redistribution" ideas wannabe tyrants might use to enslave individuals.
In their overwhelming desire for accumulation of power of government over people, Democrats, under Obama, now acknowledge the taxing power as useful for restraining motivation toward what they deem to be undesirable behavior.
On the other hand, they deny the certain fact that "taking," or taxing productive citizens also discourages and restrains motivation and job creation in the private sector.
They now have endangered the liberty of millions yet unborn with their illogical arguments on behalf of "taking" and "redistributing" the earnings of hard-working Americans. They claim they are "taking care" of those who elected them. Their "taking care" amounts to enslaving every citizen, born and unborn, for generations to come.
Their claims would fall on deaf ears, if most citizens understood their Constitution's limits on the powers of government. Here are the Founders on the policies of today's "progressive" Democrats:
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams
And:
“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams
Republican voters need to "conserve" and these ideas on behalf of future generations. Their spokesman needs to have studied history enough to be able to use them intelligently against the "chief redistributionist" and "leveler" of today.
Very well said as usual
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