The government can't make a job you don't pay for!
President Obama must be given credit for being a die hard socialist, but our economy is stagnant because of it! by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Friday, September 23, 2011
When I worked as the Chief of Staff for a county legislator in Suffolk County, New York I paid great attention to the Labor Department report that was issued each month. On the monthly report they indicated the number of people working in different fields. For the four years I worked in that job, the percentage of people employed by the government remained around 16%, about one in every six people. Now, that did not include those folks who worked in not-for-profits, or defense contractors, or others who salary was primarily made up of government money. And to be honest I don't remember ever looking at the number of people working in health care, who also would be greatly funded by government money.
Now some here might dismiss a county as a reasonable snapshot of America. They would say it’s too small. But, Suffolk at that time was about 1.2 million people, had three county budgets, the Operating Budget being around 1.4 billion dollars. Suffolk was one of the wealthier counties in the nation, and may still be. It is on the eastern part of Long Island, its western border less than thirty miles from Queens in New York City.
Oh, one last point. At the time I worked in the legislature Long Island was suffering a regional recession. The end of the Cold War had forced a reduction in defense aero and electronic contracts. Unemployment was on the rise, and people were leaving Long Island. In addition, the aging of the county population and influx of illegals drove up government health care costs. In New York, counties pay about 1/2 of the state contribution to Medicaid. In the Suffolk budget these health care costs were ballooning forcing both Sales Tax and Property Tax increases. The residents were angered...quite like now. The Democrats were ejected. Taxes became the only issue.
The post-Cold War economy, the beginnings of globalism, the terrorist attacks before September 11th, and new high tech development did much to reverse the economic doldrums on Long Island and bring the moneys to Long Island to finance a housing boom In ten years housing prices would almost double.
I write all this so you will have some idea of my interest, as an elected official’s aide to the economy. While serving with the county legislator, he held one of the seats on the Economic Development Committee. I read all the legislation that came to that committee and attended most of those meetings. After my job n the legislature I would work for a senior NYS senator and retain the same degree of interests, if not with a broader view.
I am a conservative, in part, because I believe in capitalism. But, I don't have a Harvard - Yale view of capitalism. Mine is a nationalist view of capitalism. I do not believe in capitalism in the global, international setting. Why?
Within a nation, one can level the playing field and insure that competition and fairness pervade the system. For the most part, the national government can sustain the basic fundamentals of capitalism. Business decisions are made for business reasons. That is, until the government inserts itself. For example, in health care, government policies have poured large amounts of money, which has done two things simultaneously; increased the number of people who can be treated, and significantly inflated the cost of health care. We have more health care, but at a much more inflated cost.
But, if you look at capitalism you must realize that trade and industrial decisions are made by nations for reasons other than business or profit. They could be made for national security reasons; they could be made for political reasons. So the market really can have very little to do with commercial-trade decisions of a nation. And it is this distortion of capitalism which has caused so much grief to so many Americans.
After the Cold War, America had an opportunity to withdraw from the world to some extent. I do not suggest a complete withdrawal, so much as a re-evaluation of our place in the world. We could have developed an America First domestic and foreign policy where national sustainability in all fields, from energy to the production of shirts could have been our goal. Instead, we adopted a strategy of globalism, one which really has little to do with the US, and more to do with creating markets and investment opportunities for the world's wealthiest. Our own leaders, on both sides of the aisle, placed America second to the wealthy. They defended it many ways. First they said it was inevitable and could not be stopped. (In Brazil, where maybe they don’t have so many Ivy Leaguers, they are stopping it and prospering.) They promoted the needs of the rest of the world and touched our Christian (not allowed to say that) soul by bringing the issue of global poverty home. They falsely described our dependence on Middle East oil, and said we had to be there, for us, and for the world. (The world that doesn't seem to care about Middle East Oil and the threats to it.)
What we did in effect, was trade the wealthiest market place in the world, the US, for access to Kenya, and India, and Algeria. Our wealth is draining, our ability to make things, through industrial production almost gone. We entered a "capitalist" competition with unions, massive regulations, and a huge social infrastructure cost, plus an ever increasing senior citizen class to compete with nations using child labor, unregulated wages, weak environmental laws, and a hunger to work. Poverty brings more kids, and a younger work force.
So now we are in decline. We have a huge college infra-structure teaching kids liberal arts where there are few jobs. We send way too many kids to college, only to have them drop out, or even graduate without real marketable skills. And we have centralized industries eliminating thousands and thousands of jobs. Further, we have not taught self-reliance, saving for retirement, or limited the role of credit in consumption. Credit has funded the demand side of the market, creating a bloated, false demand. And, at the government level, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs are funded through debt...thus the 17 trillion dollar deficit we face. And these jobs are not just in Washington. Some of your teacher's pay is funded by debt through the Federal Department of Education. And many of your state and local workers are at least partially funded the same way.
And our kids owe billions in school loans, to get degrees which in the end did not help them earn more money, but set false expectations on government.
This brings us to President Obama and his plan. Spend more through the government on contracts for "shovel ready" projects he proclaims. Remember "shovel ready"? Those projects still ain’t happening. And Obama is not alone in this, In Texas, Governor Perry took a state with no debt, and has created more than 31 billion dollars in debt for road projects. But back to Obama, his plan does not have any real core focus. All believe we are in some kind cyclic recession, rather than understanding our economy is stagnant because there is no more faith in America and that the foundations of capitalism have been eroded to the extent that we are no longer operating under that economic theory. If I earn it, they will take it. If I invest it, and take the risk, they will claim they deserve the profits.
Each job the government creates, either on the federal rolls or through public works, or grants to local or state governments will eventually be paid for by the people. They may initially finance it through debt, on the credit card, but in the end you will pay the bill. And they know it. And now you have Ivy Leaguers telling us inflation is good because it devalues the debt! It also devalues every dollars you have in savings, and money you have in the value of your home, any money you earn today. These men don't get it.
Wealth is not dollars.
If you own a piece of land, that is wealth. If you clear the land to develop, that could be an increase in wealth, if there is market for cleared land. If someone builds a house on the land, the house is wealth. The dollars used to do all this is just a way to measure to value...it’s not wealth itself.
Folks, Obama's plans are an extension of what got us here. Unfortunately, Perry and Romney are too a lesser degree Obama. They do not see the real causes of our decline. We need a candidate who understands that America must rebuild its own economy. This will require a complete change in direction, a complete change in the American view of economics. We are in debt, not just to the government, but to the world through our trade deficit. People say trade creates jobs. I would argue self-sufficiency would create many more; especially when we are operating at a trade deficit, where we import much more than we export.
The solution to our situation will bring pain. Moving from a debt driven, global economy, to a market based domestic reliant economy will have ramifications. Dock workers will have less work. People paid by government, will either get less, or be released. But if we don’t do this we are headed to the Soviet Union type model.
I also would consider new regulations which require majority American ownership of American companies, or companies that operate within the United States. Americans need to connect nationalism with business decisions.
It took three years for Obama to get to jobs, and when he did, he embraced a socialist model. He must go. But replacing him with another globalist will not fix what is destroying the American economy.
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