We have spent the last three-plus years in the Third Age of Bailout.
During which we have spent trillions of public dollars trying to create (“or save“) private sector jobs.
The results have been simultaneously disastrous and completely ineffectual. And utterly predictable.
We on the Right were all along explaining that we have historical evidence aplenty that the public sector stealing money from the private sector to
- Waste a goodly portion thereof (as government always does) and then
- Slosh the remainder around to political supporters and cronies
is not the way to create jobs.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deepened and deeply prolonged the Great Depression by so doing.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson increased and ensconced permanent, intergenerational poverty – by declaring War on and setting us up to spend trillions of dollars subsidizing it.
For resisting this serial economic and governmental folly, the Left has incessantly accused the Right of not having a plan to create jobs.
This ludicrous charge simultaneously reveals two immutable truths:
- The Left is-outside of their exhausted government-borrowing-and-spending model-totally bereft of ideas. On private sector job creation-and most other things. And
- The Right remains sorely challenged when it comes to communicating and explaining immutable truths.
Immutable truths like:
- The government can’t create (“or save”) private sector jobs. President Obama’s Press Secretary (finally) acknowledged it. What it can do is damage and outright eliminate jobs and job creators in the process of trying to do so. Because the money government uses (so poorly) has to first be stolen from…the job creators in the private sector. Were it instead left there, it would in fact create (and save) gigs. And, thusly, the other side of that coin…
- Reducing the size, scope and sphere of influence of government is, in fact, a hay-yuge job creator – and a tremendous jobs plan.
Nature abhors a vacuum. As government shrinks and leaves room, the private sector will immediately rush to grow and fill it.
Let us briefly examine (what should be) the obvious.
- As government expands, the private sector contracts. More money to government means more less money in the private sector. Because it is from the private sector that the government takes it.
- The more active government is, the less active the private sector is – a perverse and dangerous sort of Red Light-Green Light. As we’ve seen with the President Barack Obama Administration – and its ceaselessly active and expansive Agencies, Departments, Commissions and Boards. Private companies remain frozen in amber – not knowing when and where the next government money bomb or regulatory anvil is going to fall. Ask not on whom the hammer falls – it may fall on thee.
- All of which is why government “stimulus” spending is actually bad for the economy.
- It inserts government-funded competitors into the marketplace, created/subsidized to compete against private companies investing private capital. Which…
- Freezes into inaction private companies all over the place – not just in the areas in which the government competitors have been inserted. Because (as we said) they don’t know if the next government money bomb is going to land on their heads. So it makes private companies wonder…
- Why risk my capital to invest, hire or expand – if a government-funded competitor may the next day be created/subsidized to take me on, and potentially take me down?
Thusly, when government acts (Green Light) – the private sector stops and waits (Red Light).
This is why private companies are – to much consternation from the Left – sitting on trillions of dollars of capital. Not investing, expanding or hiring – for they (understandably) live in fear of the government’s next debilitative move.
Thusly, any proposal that makes for less government is – inherently – a jobs plan.
House Republicans just this week announced their Fall plan. It is deregulatory, it is fairly comprehensive – and they are calling it a Jobs Agenda (which, of course, it is).
To which I say: Bravo. Keep that push – and that messaging – going.
President Obama, meanwhile, this week announced another $1 billion in private sector regulatory abuse.
To which I say: Terrible. And typical. Like more than a century’s worth of typical.
We need to end all of these pro-regulatory, Huge Government pushes. And begin the WalMart-esque tax, tax law and regulatory rollbacks.
The President on Wednesday asked for a Congressional joint session next week to give yet another of his famous problem-solving speeches – so as to announce his latest Keynesian, Huge Government, big spending “jobs plan.”
Prepare for the wondrousness of – more of the exact same with which we’ve been poisoned since at least World War I.
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Which brings us to the private technology and communications sector.
Which currently serves as a pristine less government-more jobs visual aide.
The companies that provide us our Internet and cell phone access remain under the spacious regulatory confines of the 1996 Telecommunications Act – the last time Congress addressed these spheres.
As the year indicates, there was relatively little in the way of the Internet and the cell phone – so the Act intentionally left them relatively unregulated. To allow them to grow unfettered into whatever they would become.
And that hands-off approach worked. Huge.
Fifteen years later, the reg-free World Wide Web has become a free speech, free market Xanadu.
And cell/smart phones are increasingly bionic – perpetually becoming better, stronger and faster.
And the two spheres are becoming increasingly intertwined. Every day brings us new and fabulous breakthroughs in the harmonic convergence of the Internet and what was once euphemistically called your “phone.”
Coincidences? Hardly.
Less government – revolutionary freedom.
(Pun intended. As we’ve learned from China, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the rest of the world, government involvement with the Internet is a BAD idea.)
Less government also means more opportunity.
For we are delivered word that while the rest of the American economy has now long been mired in 9+% unemployment, the tech sector rate is a tiny (by any standard) 3.3%.
Less government – many more jobs.
As (further) demonstrated by a recent report that determined that for every one regulatory bureaucrat you dump, you create 98 private sector gigs. A year. For each of the first five post de-regulator years.
Less government – many, many more jobs.
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But we are on the verge of President Obama dropping a ginormous Tech Sector regulatory anvil right on our gourds.
In December, his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) jammed through its illegal Internet regulatory power grab so as to then impose the all-oppressive Network Neutrality.
So when this unlawful order is finally filed with the federal register in a couple of months – the free speech, free market, job-creation joy ride will be over.
Unless – we can overturn the rogue Commission’s unauthorized seizure. Which we can do with the Congressional Review Act (CRA).
The House has already passed its portion thereof. The Senate won’t vote on it at least until the order is officially filed.
The CRA can not be filibustered. Which means when the time comes, only 51 Senator Ayes are required. All 47 Republicans have promised theirs, so but four Democrats are needed.
Which we can get. In fact, they likely can be culled from amongst the 23 Democrats up for reelection next year.
Some of whom aren’t running – they may be less than persuadable.
The rest are running. Many of them in swing – and in some cases solidly Republican – states.
We should be able to get the requisite four.
And we should definitely work very hard to do so.
So as to place on President Obama’s desk a golden opportunity for him to put his money – and pen – where his allegedly deregulatory mouth has been.
He’s been promising less government. Let’s give him the opportunity to make good on his word.
(Please, insert jokes here – it’s in part what the Comments section is for. ;-)
The nation’s economic recovery – from this Leftist, Huge Government malaise – requires nothing less.