Posted on 06/26/2012 6:59:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When the government issues the June employment report on July 6th, the one data point that will be missing is the number of jobs that have been lost – or never created – because of government regulatory, tax and monetary policies. Given that government spending and regulations now control more than 50% of the U.S. economy, these data may be the most important of all for understanding what is keeping the unemployment rate above 8%.
That may be about to change thanks to the just launched “Missed Jobs Report” on the Engage America web site. This report will use “crowdsourcing” to build a database of what until now has been the unseen job destruction caused by government policies. Engage America is a nonprofit organization that seeks to engage the public discourse on several core issues facing the American people, including the federal budget deficit, tax policy and Social Security. (Full disclosure: I collaborated on the development of the Missed Jobs Report and have a professional association with Engage America.)
The Missed Jobs Report is designed to overcome the basic problem that government reports, economists and journalists alike can only report what can be seen, leaving unreported all of the unseen impacts of government policies. Government spending and targeted tax rebates given to favored companies or industries are trumpeted by press releases and ribbon cutting ceremonies. But elected officials, regulators and companies rarely hold press conferences to announce job cuts attributable to specific government policies. And, the Fed has never owned up to the millions of jobs it has destroyed by its errant monetary policies. Yet, a great deal of the cost of government regulations and taxes are the jobs and opportunities that would have been created, but were never brought into existence,
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Opportunity cost is very real, and this report should quantify it.
That's a very important number. It's also a good one to keep in mind when the apologists for greater spending talk about how low US taxes are in comparison with those of many other countries, or historically.
The trend of government spending and control in the economy has been inexorably upward since the 1950's. Even in those days when we had high marginal taxes on the rich (Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations), the Federal government was only spending 18 to 20% of GDP, and the states were spending much less (remember lower state sales and income tax rates). So, when you hear a Democrat state that the reason we were so prosperous in the 50's and 60's was because taxes were high, remember that correlation is not causation. Big government is inefficient, and the more of it you have, the slower the economy grows, regardless of specific tax details.
Perhaps for jobs not created we could look at money flowing into the government in the form of taxes and fees, and estimate what the private sector could do with that. Or look at the government-induced cost of starting or maintaining a business is and look at what a business could do if relieved of that burden. But these would be estimates with a fairly wide range. Not sure if anyone could narrow it down to a meaningful range.
Some of the spin offs from crony capitalism which has no problem with those regulations. Great way to suppress competition and squash small business.
Of course what is not mentioned is the lure of CHEAP labor. If all the onerous regulations were removed, US workers and their productivity can’t compete with people making 25 cents perhour, i.e. unless their standard of living goes down to that of the third world.
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