You know the economy is in deep guacamole when the creation of a few government jobs is celebrated as big economic development.
Word came a week ago that there would be an announcement of substantial new employment in Dalton, Ga. Amid talk of a “major economic impact,” there was excited discussion about which company might expand.
But when the happy day came, we learned that no “company” is expanding; government is. Thirty-five people will be hired soon for new Georgia Department of Labor gigs in Dalton. Ten more will be added later. The federal government – you know, the same bunch that has been reduced to searching the seat cushions for cash to pay the interest on the $13.3 trillion debt – is funding the positions.
In a repulsive demonstration of how government views the public as supplicants and itself as a benevolent overlord, Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond announced the jobs as if he were doing a personal kindness to the people of Whitfield County. Evidently expecting billows of gratitude, Thurmond the Merciful said the jobs had been bound for Atlanta before he had a change of heart.
“(W)e decided the folk in Atlanta got enough jobs,” he said.
While I’m sure Atlanta appreciates his judgment on that, what’s still more enlightening is this idea that government is showing us special favor by giving back a few of our tax dollars in the form of fresh bureaucrats – whose salaries we then get the privilege of paying.
It doesn’t occur to stimulus- and pork-addled officials at all levels of government that government jobs do not really count as economic development. Yes, those workers will buy houses, cars, marmalade and other essentials. But government can “boost” the economy only to the extent that it first takes money out of the economy.
Translation: It robs Percy to pay Pam.
Missing from the discussion is the economic growth that gets aborted when money is extracted from the private sector to fund bigger government. Nobody notices the small businessman who can’t create jobs because the money he would have used to do so was seized through taxation. And there’s no meter at Bi-Lo showing how many bushels of squash didn’t get bought by the people who weren’t hired by the businessman who couldn’t expand because government wouldn’t let him keep more of his income.
Instead, we get nonsense about how grand it is that morbidly obese government is packin’ on a few more pounds.
Why don’t I feel like breaking out the air horns?
‘Reach for hope’
The economy is resting comfortably, with its legs elevated, a cold compress on its head and rumors that it may regain consciousness sometime around 2015.
Meanwhile:
* The unemployment rate is floating somewhere in the ionosphere.
* The stimulus continues to fail, according to the standard that Barack Obama set before Democrats in Congress passed it.
* And we are progressively losing our right to make some of the most fundamental decisions about the medical care we will receive.
Yet the president – agitator in chief on behalf of so many unhelpful policies – tells an audience in Milwaukee, “Don’t give in to fear.”
We’re not giving in to fear, we’re giving in to reality – the reality that hiking taxes on small businesses, borrowing trillions of dollars from future generations and assuming government is better suited than the people to decide how resources ought to be allocated cannot rescue any economy outside the mythical one that exists in university lecture halls and in the minds of the majority party in Washington.
“Let’s reach for hope,” the president counsels.
Oh, do let’s.
Let there be hope on Earth, and let it begin with us. In the voting booth. Nov. 2.
Dollar days
Newsweek – I mean the publication itself, not a single copy – was sold not long ago, reportedly for a dollar.
Yes, a whole dollar.
Coincidentally, a recent issue proffered Newsweek’s ranking of the 100 best countries in the world. The editors left the United States out of the top 10 – presumably to punish Americans for avoiding Newsweek in such multitudes that it lost $30 million last year and now has sold for less than the price of a cup of coffee at Huddle House.
Footnote: An unscientific survey places Newsweek at No. 379 among America’s best magazines – in a three-way tie with The Journal of Migraine Management and Hopscotch Today.
To reach Steve Barrett, call 423-757-6329 or e-mail sbarrett@timesfreepress.com.