Thursday, July 02, 2009

Why Aren't People Hiring? Government Might Be to Blame

Well after job losses went south again to the tune of 467,000 more jobs in June which is up 122,000 jobs from May you have to start asking serious questions. This economist makes a lot of sense why companies are not hiring right now.

America isn't hiring precisely because of government policy. Small business owners, who are usually the first into and the first out of the job pool, are standing by the fence and watching. They are paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty. If they hire someone who ends up doing poorly, will they be able to fire that person? Will they have to pay their health care bills after they've been terminated? If so, for how long? Who will pay for all these stimulus checks? If it will turn out to be small business, why would they hire instead of keeping costs low to prepare for the big tax bill? Where will the market move? Are you in the right business or are your clients in a politically disfavored industry? Are your clients in health care (being nationalized), autos (already nationalized), banking (somewhat nationalized) or any energy production process which uses carbon (pulverized)? Until you know, you don't grow, and until you grow your market, you don't grow your payroll.

Yup uncertainly breeds a bunker-down mentality. Why hire when you might get taxed heavily if your business grosses over $250,000 a year? That is the problem with vast redistribution of wealth across all parts of our economy. You take from the productive job creators and give to the currently unproductive.

The problem is that this unproductive person that gets government money will never receive the same amount of money that a good paying job will pay him. All it does is create a permanent underclass that is dependent on the government dole. Kind of like the mob of Rome. This Rome parallel even kind of extends to bread (the "stimulus" bill) and circuses (Michael Jackson's death.)

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