AUTHOR: Mark Lavergne TITLE: it's about jobs DATE: 11/05/2009 07:14:00 AM ----- BODY:
There's a piece at MSNBC today about how Congress is trying to push through unemployment insurance extensions. It begins with a story of an unfortunate lady, Carolyn Johansen from Virginia, who has burned through all her benefits and now serves as a horror story for the job-seeking.

After losing her job last October, Johansen figures she’s applied for over 300 jobs, but can’t find anything, not even seasonal work for the holidays. A single mom with a master’s degree and a career as a librarian, she applied for work at Blockbuster this week but couldn’t get an interview.

Now wait a minute. You mean to tell me that we've spent $787 billion on the biggest taxpayer-funded economic so-called "stimulus" in human history and a librarian with a master's degree can't get a job? Where did all our money go? To raise some people's salaries and call it a "job saved"? This is ludicrous. And what's next? An $1.5 trillion healthcare bill? Is Cheryl Johansen going to be shot outta luck there too? But I digress. The White House has started playing the game of measuring how those mountains of cash have helped to stimulate the economy, and it is not just the right-wingers who are saying it: what we are getting is a jobless recovery. Stocks are going back up, but the people don't have jobs. Which means the money's out there, but not very many people seem to be enjoying it. So much for "spreading the wealth around." This is why conservatives eye things like unemployment benefit extensions with great suspicion. The government has done a demonstrably terrible job of getting money to the people (the very people it took the money from via taxes in the first place). Why would we want to give the government suits more authority to take more money? What reason do we have to think, based on their track record, that they will redistribute it fairly and equitably? Why not keep the money in the pockets of ordinary local citizens and see how skilled they are at spreading their own wealth around, by doing things like hiring people, and charitably giving? (The short answer is Government projects onto its constituents the most defining characteristic of itself: greed.) And now the Democrats, in the wake of Tuesday night's elections, are debating whether to focus on job creation instead of Barack Obama's far-reaching let-me-do-everything-for-you-because-I-can-do-it-better-than-you agenda. What I want to know is how many private sector, non-bureaucratic jobs have been created by the "stimulus." Because that's where the growth is going to happen. Otherwise it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. And "Peter" in this case is the next few generations of U.S. citizens. "Paul" is ... I don't even know who Paul is. It sure ain't Carolyn Johansen.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Mark Lavergne TITLE: competition DATE: 11/04/2009 10:01:00 PM ----- BODY:
John Stossel has written an opinion on "The Double Standard About Journalists' Bias," in which he states:
Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check. Reputation matters. Word gets out. Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy. Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.
He recalls how at the start of his journalistic career he made a living reporting that a) some businesses were doing shady things, and b) the government should do something about it. He still supports doing the former, but the latter not so much. Gradually he discovered that consumers tend to be just as capable of regulating the market with their wallets as the government is of regulating it with their laws. In fact, the consumers tend to be more effective and avoid the unintended consequences of regulation. Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation published an essay on "Why Government Control of Bank Salaries Will Hurt, Not Help, the Economy."
A government "pay czar" now sets salaries at many large American banks. The Obama Administration has proposed legislation to extend similar controls to the entire financial services industry. Apparently impatient with the legislative process, the Federal Reserve Board announced plans to regulate bank pay under existing safety and soundness rules, extending even to low-level employees.
There seems to be a lot of impatience with the legislative process these days. The premise is that bank compensation policies were a big factor in the recent financial crisis. In other words, leaving it up to private citizens who run companies to decide for themselves how much to pay the private citizens who work for them is the reason the market failed. Which of course means that these bosses can't be trusted with their own money. Which seems to mean, in the simplest terms, that they shouldn't be free. The essay continues:
Relying on this unproven supposition, regulators seek to mandate bank pay practices in order to reduce financial risk, most notably by limiting performance-based awards to restricted stock.
Rewarding someone for doing a particular job better than someone else? We can't have that! So says the federal government, to private citizens running private businesses. If you want to reward excellence in your company, too bad. It could lead to excess, and excess leads to ruin. Forget that the regulations will force executives to spread around the bonus awards blamed for the financial excess, rewarding below-median performances and limiting the incentives to perform above board. What's missed here is the spirit of competition. Competition means you work hard with the resources you have to overcome the odds and achieve success. That's competition, and it's what drives the American Free Market that has created the single most prosperous civilzation in the history of the human race. Are there still poor people in free market societies? Sure. But they are a) fewer and farther between, and b) less poor by comparison, than in any other economic scheme ever devised by man. The point is not that corporate fatcats should be canonized. The point is that bureaucratic mechanisms are not the best solutions to all of society's problems. The problem of financial excess for some and poverty for others can be addressed -- not perfectly, but more effectively than in any realizable alternative -- in an economic environment where people are free to make their own choices. If an executive at Wall Street Scumbags, Inc is charging customers an arm and a leg to pay his employees exorbitant bonuses to supply crappy products to the customers, then those customers can take their business elsewhere. In an environment where the government does not pick winners and losers, where it gets out of the way, competition will naturally emerge. It's not rocket science. It's just what Stossel is talking about. Competition forces the cheaters to play by the rules. Shooting himself in the foot Meanwhile, the Obama administration is claiming that 640,000 jobs have been saved or created so far by HR 1 (the $787 billion so-called "stimulus"). According to the Associated Press, the stimulus bean counters are counting a pay increase as a job saved. By that definition, the private sector "saves" hundreds of millions of jobs every year without the federal government's "help." But wait a minute, does this mean that the pay czar is actively working to prevent the "saving" of jobs in the financial sector? A cap in pay means a cap in raises. And a cap in raises means a cap on jobs saved. Obama is shooting himself in the foot.
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