Time To Cut Saturday Mail Service

December 26, 2012 Leave a comment

Something called Communities and Postal Workers United held a hunger strike last week to protest proposed cuts to the post office. The group may or may not have more than six members. The hunger strike may be the best sort of strike. Nothing sticks it to the man like starving yourself. In this case of course the man is taxpayers. No doubt taxpayers are crying crocodile tears for postal workers who might see Saturday service cut in an effort to balance the post office budget. Keep in mind the post office lost $16 billion this year and must cut $22.5 billion by 2016.

Tomfoolery by hunger strikers aside, will anyone notice if mail isn’t delivered on Saturday? Most businesses are open Monday to Friday, so no one in business will notice if their mail isn’t delivered on Saturday. Will you notice if you don’t receive mail at your home on Saturday? It seems unlikely that residential people will notice or care. Snail mail is an antiquated form of communication these days. Few people send letters, certainly they aren’t sending letters as they did just a quarter century ago. The mail seems to be limited to little more than solicitations, coupons and the occasional correspondence or card.

Of course the pathetic little hunger strike staged for the media last week has nothing to do with customer service. Customers simply don’t care about Saturday service. It’s the postal employees and their union that care about these matters. Part of the problem is the massive unfunded pension liability the post office has. We’re paying for thousands of retirees who don’t contribute anything to the post office anymore. Their pensions are unfunded and as such the post office has a massive $16 billion deficit. The other part of the post office problem is rising fuel costs and fewer customers.

Like every other business when customers go away something has to be cut. The biggest and easiest cut to make is at the employee level. In the case of the post office it would be easy to cut back on Saturday service, which is unnecessary, costly and antiquated. If that means fewer postal employees or a cut back in hours, so be it. When a company has a $16 billion yearly deficit something has to be cut. We may be talking about a branch of the Federal government but they act like they’re a business. They run advertising, they sponsor events and their budget is separate from the rest of the Federal budget. For all intents and purposes the post office is a business with Federal backing.

Ask yourself whether you’ll miss getting mail on Saturday. Odds are you won’t even notice if the mail doesn’t arrive on that day. As a nation we have a $1 trillion annual deficit and over $16 trillion in debt. While the post office is off budget, their debts become part of our annual deficit and national debt. Getting Congress to cut something, anything, is like pulling teeth. It appears most are on board with cutting back on the post office and we need to support this. It’s not every day the Federal government cuts billions from the deficit. We don’t need Saturday mail service, it’s time to cut back.

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Obama’s Tax Increases Have Nothing To Do With Jobs

September 22, 2011 Leave a comment

The President is running around the country promoting tax increases by calling it a jobs bill. He’s currently taunting Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell by giving a speech near their districts in Cincinnati. Obama’s speech is going to be in front of a bridge that he alleges is the perfect example of an infrastructure project his jobs bill will create jobs to fix. Unfortunately under his own bill the bridge isn’t even eligible. In fact, even if it was covered by the jobs bill workers wouldn’t be hired until 2015. Don’t expect the left-wing press to cover these facts.

While it’s amusing that Obama’s grand example of crumbling infrastructure won’t create jobs for years and isn’t eligible anyway, his true intentions aren’t as funny. Obama’s running around calling himself a warrior for the middle class. Obama stated the other day:

Now, you’re already hearing the Republicans in Congress dusting off the old talking points. You can write their press releases. Class warfare, they say. You know what? If asking a billionaire to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear that charge as a badge of honor because the only class warfare I’ve seen is the battle that’s been waged against middle-class folks in this country for a decade now

 The notion that raising taxes on the wealthy is being a warrior for the middle class is ridiculous. Let’s not forget that 51% of Americans don’t pay income taxes. That is what we’re talking about after all, income taxes. Those 51% are lower and middle income Americans. The wealthiest 2% pay around 60% of the income taxes in this country. Obama wants to raise them even higher and somehow that makes him a warrior for the middle class. I didn’t know the middle class demanded so much of other people’s money.

But let’s examine how it could be that a middle class American can pay the same income tax rate as a wealthy American. Warren Buffett whined a couple weeks ago that his secretary pays a higher income tax rate than he does. I’m left wondering how that could be. We all know Buffett only pays himself a salary of $100,000, which puts his salary in the 28% tax rate. Is he paying his secretary $174,401 or more? That’s where the next tax bracket begins.  If that’s what he’s paying his secretary, I sure would like to have that job.

Obama has said several times over the past few weeks that billionaires shouldn’t pay the same tax rate as a plumber. Well, they don’t.  Unless the plumber makes a ton of money. To have the same tax rate as a millionaire or billionaire, a plumber would have to take in more than $379,151 to thus be in the highest income tax rate. If there are plumbers out there making that kind of money, good for them. But that seems a little unlikely.

Odds are that Warren Buffett’s secretary and the average plumber are making what Obama said nurses, teachers and construction workers make: $50,000. These middle class Americans don’t pay anywhere near what the average person making a million a year pay in taxes. Even USA Today caught this. If you’re making an average middle class salary and have kids, you’re not paying 25% to the Federal government. With deductions and tax credits, odds are you’re paying 10% or less. Probably a lot less. Even the capital gains tax for the rich is higher than that at 15%. A millionaire may pay 30% of his income in taxes.

As someone who admires millionaires and billionaires, I very much agree with Obama. They should pay the same rate as middle class plumbers, secretaries, teachers and nurses. It’s absurd that they aren’t paying the same percentage. I therefore propose that no one pay more than 10% in tax. Of course, Obama won’t go along with that because he’s really just playing a class warfare game. He’s trying to set the middle class against the wealthy, despite the fact that the wealthy pay an overwhelming majority of the income tax in this country.

In the end, while Obama has spent most of his time talking about tax increases the number one issue among voters remains jobs. Obama’s tax proposal doesn’t really have anything to do with jobs. Increasing taxes on the wealthy won’t create any jobs. In a year it won’t even increase Federal revenues because the wealthy will find loopholes or they simply won’t work as much. This is what has happened every time taxes have been increased. Again, what does this have to do with jobs?

Filed under 2012 election, jobs, Obama, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Obama Demands Love From A Public That Ignores Him

September 15, 2011 Leave a comment

Obama roared to a crowd of supporters “if you love me, you got to help me pass this bill.” It’s sort of comical, the whole notion of people loving an elected leader to the point that they help pass a jobs bill. It’s very Hugo Chavez circa 2007. Mr. Hope and Change is on a doom and gloom tour of the country pushing a jobs bill that 51% of the country doesn’t believe, out of the gate, will create any jobs.

Apparently hope means threatening that bridges will collapse without the jobs bill and change equates to sob stories about children having to learn in schools that are, gasp, old. Kids can’t learn in schools without air conditioning according to Obama. One wonders how through thousands of years of human civilization anyone could learn how to read without air conditioning, central heating or a laptop.  Obama’s doom and gloom is as laughable as Attack Watch. His hope and change mantra has proven to be little more than the same old Democrat lines about grandma eating dog food and london bridges falling down.

Obama’s jobs speech has been a failure. Democrats aren’t on board with it. After the NY-9 defeat Democrats no longer have any reason to stick with Obama. They’re better off opposing him if they want to be re-elected. Obama’s poll numbers haven’t gone up in any significant way since the jobs speech. He’s up a two points in the Rasmussen poll, within the margin of error. In the Gallup poll he’s actually down two points. The American people aren’t listening to Obama anymore, they’re either tuning him out or they simply don’t agree with his policies any longer.

Obama’s falling bridges and school sob story tour isn’t being bought by the American public. Most people recognize that Obama’s jobs plan is little more than a second, lighter stimulus bill. Instead of wasting $800 billion, this time we’ll only waste $450 billion. (tax cuts and extensions of current rates are not expenditures, but we’ll stick with Obama’s numbers for now) If $800 billion couldn’t stimulate the economy and prevent unemployment from increasing, surely spending $450 billion more isn’t going to help.

The Obama ship is sinking and everyone seems to recognize it except the President. He’s offered no new ideas, has no plan and his administration seems to be descending into chaos. This comes as no surprise to those of us who said back in 2008 it isn’t wise to elect a Senator, especially one without any experience. Obama doesn’t know how to manage his own team, he doesn’t know when to get rid of people when they aren’t doing a good job. Obama is out of ideas and he has no one around him offering anything other than the same, tired ideas repackaged. He doesn’t have the management skills to get rid of these people and hire competent replacements. With Democrats likely to run from Obama as Republicans ran from Bush from 2006-2008, Obama is left alone with no clue how to handle his job.

Obama’s jobs speech was a make or break moment for his Presidency. He had a chance to turn things around last week. It’s clear he didn’t turn around anything. The American public doesn’t buy his repackaged stimulus bill. The public is laughing when Mr. Hope prattles on about falling bridges (shovel ready projects?) and schools without air conditioning. The public snorts out loud when he talks like a grotesque teenager saying ‘if you love me…’ In short, Obama is being ignored and when the public is paying attention they’re rolling their eyes. Obama is on course to become a national joke. His best bet is to shut up and go silent for a month. But we all know Obama won’t do that. Each day and each speech makes it easier for the Republican nominee to win next year.

Filed under 2012 election, jobs, Obama, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Obama Jobs Speech Review

September 9, 2011 Leave a comment

President Obama gave his long anticipated jobs speech last night. It sounded more like a campaign speech than a jobs speech. His mantra the whole evening was “pass this bill.” Unfortunately there is no bill, he hasn’t submitted anything to Congress yet. In fact, while he was busy touting all the goodies in his nonexistent bill, the President let it slip that a week from Monday he’ll let us all know how he plans to pay for it. He alluded to tax increases, I suppose we’ll have to wait for specifics.

The problem of course is that his plan won’t create any jobs in the short run. He has a $450 billion jobs plan, that’s based mostly on extending tax rates for the middle class at their current level. He offered some minor small business tax cuts as well. The Republicans should readily agree to any tax cut and any extension of the current tax rate. This is not the time to be raising taxes, it’s a time to cut taxes.

But the rest of Obama’s jobs plan is nothing more than pork barrel spending in the form of payoffs to Obama’s union pals. It didn’t go unnoticed that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was sitting in the gallery, presumably a guest of the President. The AFL-CIO stands to rake in a fortune through infrastructure spending. The teachers unions also stand to make a fortune if more is spent on teachers, as Obama demands. Of course, none of this spending will create jobs today. At best they’ll create jobs a year or two from now.

Obama essentially gave a campaign speech yesterday, feeding a lot of red meat to Democrats who have become disillusioned with Obama’s passive style. Republicans already don’t like Obama, they’ll like him even less after last nights speech. Independents will likely be turned off by the campaign tone of the speech as well. They’re also likely to be turned off by the fact that Obama basically admitted that the policies of his first three years in office were a failure. He tried to pretend like it’s the policies of the last 30 years that failed, but only the most diehard, head in the sand liberal will buy that line. Once the dust settles, independents will see that Obama’s policies have failed and that he’s essentially offered more of the same.

Last night Obama set up the 2012 election as a battle between he and Congress. He’s basically doing what President Truman did in 1948. There’s one glaring difference between 2011-12 and 1948 though. Obama’s party controls half of Congress, that could not be said for Truman in 1948. The Republicans will pass jobs bills, but they’ll die in the Senate. That gives the GOP the opportunity to present to the American people two visions for the future. Truman was able to present his vision and point to Congress and legitimately accuse them of doing nothing, which is what they did. The GOP will not make the 1948 mistake a second time. If bills don’t get passed, the GOP can blame the Democrats in the Senate.

I expect Obama to get a 2-3 point boost in the polls for about a week before his numbers drop off again. Once people really take a look at his plan, they’ll see that it’s basically Stimulus II. They’ll like the tax extensions and cuts but hate the spending. At the end of the day, the public is still weary of more government spending in light of our current deficit. The fact is, Obama is basically offering us Stimulus II, a lighter version of his already failed Stimulus I. It didn’t work the first time, why would anyone believe it will work again?

Filed under 2012 election, economy, jobs, Obama Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Obama Jobs Plan Won’t Create Jobs Today

September 8, 2011 Leave a comment

The President is set to give his grand jobs speech tonight. In it he will apparently offer a plan that will “cost” $400 billion. This is up from $300 billion in the last 24 hours. We should be careful what we call a cost. A tax cut isn’t a cost to government because it isn’t an expenditure of money they already have (or in recent years, doesn’t have). In total, it looks like the President will offer around $250 billion in new spending and $150 billion or so in tax cut extensions.

In short, his jobs plan isn’t going to do much of anything. Extending tax cuts isn’t going to create any jobs. In fact, we shouldn’t even be calling them tax cuts because they’re little more than an extension of the current tax rate. At best these “cuts” will save jobs because people will have that extra bit of money to spend at the grocery. But it will not create jobs. The bulk of Obama’s tax “cuts” are for the middle class, with the remainder to small businesses. The small business tax cuts aren’t anywhere near big enough to have anything more than a marginal affect on the economy.

The remainder of Obama’s spending comes from sending money to the states to pay for teachers and infrastructure spending. In other words, a payoff for Obama’s union pals. Unfortunately this additional spending sounds like little more than Stimulius II. We already spent $800 billion on the first stimulus and it failed to do what Obama said it would: Keep unemployment under 8%. Obama admitted two years later that shovel ready didn’t really mean shovel ready. So why would this round of Stimulus lead to ‘shovel ready’ jobs but the other Stimulus didn’t?

Infrastructure spending isn’t going to make a dent in the current unemployment rate. It takes two to three years for a new project to get underway.  By the time new infrastructure spending results in actual jobs, Obama will either be out of office or in his second administration. Politically he’s shoring up his union base but in doing so he’ll lose moderates in the long run when this Stimulus doesn’t work.

Of course what this dog and pony show is really all about is setting up House Republicans to take the fall when Obama’s plan doesn’t pass. The GOP is going to have to hit back hard against Stimulus II. Speaker Boehner and other Republicans are going to have to go to the American people and talk about the failed $800 billion Stimulus and make the case that this is more of the same.

In the spirit of compromise, the Republicans should gladly pass all of Obama’s tax cut proposals. In fact, the House Republicans should pass the tax cuts within two weeks. Send the tax cut bill to the Senate and let the Democrats take the fall if they aren’t passed or let Obama take the fall if he vetoes it. The GOP ought to be the party of tax cuts and we should live up to the billing and let the Democrats be the party of anti-tax cuts.

Obama’s speech tonight probably isn’t going to save his Presidency. He appears ready to retread old, failed ideas in the form of infrastructure spending and wasteful spending on teachers unions. His tax cuts aren’t cuts at all but rather extensions of the current tax rate. No one is fooled by the idea that keeping your current tax rate is a tax cut, nor is anyone fooled by the idea that a tax cut is Federal spending. Unless Obama is failing to leak a big new idea on jobs, tonight’s speech will be another nail in the coffin of this administration.

Filed under 2012 election, economy, jobs, Obama Tagged with , , , , , ,

Obama’s Jobs Plan Amounts To Stimulus II

September 6, 2011 Leave a comment

President Obama held a rally with labor leaders yesterday in Detroit. Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa Jr. was Obama’s warmup act. He declared:

We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war.

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.

Predictably the White House has no comment about Hoffa’s speech, which was given in front of Obama who said nothing about it during his 25 minute address. On one hand Hoffa’s comments are a very clear indication of how the leadership of the unions view politics. They and the extreme left really do view things as a war and they have little to no problem with violence. On the other hand Hoffa’s comments are almost laughably ridiculous. He apparently thinks this is the 1930′s where unions can get away with violent rhetoric because the public supports them and supports the left-wing pols they endorse. Polling indicates Obama has never had the rank and file union members, and has them even less so now.

While Hoffa’s comments are sure to be a hit on right-wing talk radio and blog roll today, it’s President Obama’s comments that are more interesting. Obama hinted at what will be in his big jobs speech on Thursday. It sounds like a good portion of the speech will be a proposal to spend more money in infrastructure. This includes an infrastructure bank, which would supposedly include the private and public sector.

In other words, if Obama’s Detroit speech is any indication of what his jobs speech will be he’s calling for Stimulus II. You’ll recall that Obama’s biggest argument for the Stimulus was all the “shovel ready” jobs that it would fund. Two years later Obama admitted that “shovel ready” didn’t mean right away. The Stimulus package did little, if anything to employ the American workforce. It was little more than a payoff for unions at the expense of taxpayers. Most of the “shovel ready” jobs already existed and they came at costs of over $250,000 per job.

So now it appears Obama is ready to offer Stimulus II. He’s learned nothing from the failure of Stimulus I. The President is devoid of new ideas, he’s clearly ready to retread a failed policy. People need to go to work now. There aren’t any shovel ready jobs that are being hoarded away for lack of funding. The fact of the matter is that when government spends on infrastructure, it takes two to three years before actual construction jobs are created. Stimulus II will create few if any jobs, but the jobs that it does create will happen during the next administration, not in the next year.

Last week the Weekly Standard declared Obama was President Zero. Zero jobs, zero ideas. That’s looking like an accurate statement. Job growth was zero in August and in September the President appears ready to show us he has zero new ideas. While Jimmy Hoffa Jr. will get all the headlines today for his ridiculous, violent rhetoric in Detroit, the President’s Detroit speech is far more important. It shows us that we have a President who doesn’t know what he’s doing and is unable to come up with any new ideas. His jobs speech is headed towards disaster.

Filed under 2012 election, economy, jobs, Obama, Politics, unions Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

GE’s Immelt Advises Obama On Jobs Yet Ships Jobs to China

August 25, 2011 Leave a comment

President Obama has done a remarkable job of failing to run the executive branch of government in an efficient manner. In particular, Obama has surrounded himself with bad advisors and has been slow to remove them. This is one of the problems with electing a Senator, especially one with no private sector experience. The lack of executive management means Obama doesn’t know how to judge advisors and he doesn’t know  how to place the right advisors in the right roles. It’s been clear to just about everyone that the Treasury Secretary has done a poor job, yet he remains in office. There are countless other examples.

One glaring example is Jeffrey Immelt. Immelt is the CEO of General Electric and he heads up Obama’s panel on US Jobs and Competitiveness. It just came out this week that GE is going to partner with China to produce a commercial airliner that will rival Boeing. How exactly can Immelt advise Obama on American jobs and competitiveness when he’s actively joining with the Chinese to go into direct competition with Boeing? Surely competition with Boeing isn’t going to be good for American jobs.

It’s worse than that though. Last year GE recorded record profits in the billions. Yet they paid no Federal income tax. Boeing has attempted to make themselves more competitive by building a manufacturing facility in South Carolina. The Obama administration actively opposed this move and is forcing Boeing to build the facility in Washington state. At first glance it appears that Obama is aiding his union pals, as the South Carolina facility would be a right to work plant while Washington would have a forced union plant. But on second glance one wonders if he isn’t aiding his advisor’s new venture in China.

Immelt has no business in the White House advising President Obama. Immelt’s presence is a conflict of interest in many different ways. Keep in mind, GE owns a substantial portion of NBC, which has been the biggest cheerleader for the Obama administration. Couple that with GE’s failure to pay income taxes (and the subsequent lack of auditing by the IRS) and the company’s venture with China which threatens US jobs at Boeing and one wonders how Immelt can properly advise Obama on much of anything.

Yet Immelt remains in the White House, advising the President. He remains the head of Obama’s panel on US Jobs and Competitiveness, even though his company has shipped jobs overseas and seeks to aid a Chinese aviation company go into direct competition with American Boeing. Surely this sort of nonsense isn’t going to be part of Obama’s grand jobs plan that he plans to unveil after his vacation. Or is it?

President Obama has done a stunning job of failing to lead his own administration. Immelt is bad politically for Obama at this point, even though the media (particularly NBC) has been silent about the deal. News is trickling out and it isn’t good for Obama’s administration. There are a number of advisors and cabinet members who are liabilities for Obama, yet they remain in place. Obama is slow to move, slow to recognize that he isn’t getting good advice.

This is why the country doesn’t usually elect Senators with no private or public executive experience. Senators don’t do anything but control their fiefdom of 15-20 staffers. That’s a far cry from running the entire executive branch of a state or the Federal government. It’s a far cry from running a business. All those people who thought Obama was so smart, who thought he would be the best President ever failed to recognize that being President isn’t all about having a few political positions. It’s about managing the White House and the executive branch of the Federal government. Obama’s credentials were poor going into his administration. Immelt’s continued presence in the administration shows Obama’s poor credentials at work.

Filed under economy, jobs, Obama, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Obama’s Numbers Tank As Unemployed Wait For His Vacation To End

August 24, 2011 Leave a comment

Obama’s approval rating according to Gallup yesterday dipped to 38%, his lowest point ever. When it comes to economic matters, his numbers are even lower. Only 26% approve of his handling of the economy. In the Rasmussen Poll the number of people who strongly disapprove of the President was 45%, one point worse than the total number of people who approve of Obama. The total number who disapprove is 56%. The President’s numbers are getting worse, despite the fact that he’s disappeared to Martha’s Vineyard.

One reason why Obama is losing support is that he declared that he’ll have a jobs plan ready in September, after his vacation. This is a horrible political move by the President for a number of reasons. We have 9.1% unemployment and 18% underemployment. The economy is stagnant and a double dip recession appears to be happening. The President has been accused for months of not having a plan, which has hurt his credibility. So what does Obama do? He declares that he’ll have a plan ready after his vacation. That isn’t sitting well with the public.

If President Obama has a jobs plan, why can’t he share it with us before his vacation? Surely we’re not to believe that he’s working on the plan during his stay on Martha’s Vineyard. There are so many unemployed, if there is a plan it shouldn’t have to wait for the President’s vacation to end. Politically Obama appears arrogant and disinterested. Not to mention self absorbed. People don’t like seeing the President run off to a exclusive resort community when the economy is tanking. But taking a vacation can be overlooked. It’s when he declares that something as important as a jobs plan, which is the number one political issue according to polls, is put off for a vacation that the President starts suffering in the polls. This indeed is what is going on.

Worse, Obama is making the same mistake that President Bush, 41, made in 1991-92. In December 1991 Bush declared that he would show the nation is grand economic plan at his State of the Union address in January 1992. A big deal was made out of it and it turned out to be underwhelming. It didn’t help that for a month his administration leaked details of the plan, which were then attacked by Democrats running for their party’s nomination. Obama is doing the same thing here, details of his plan have been leaked over the past week or two. It appears to be an underwhelming plan yet the administration is building it up as the greatest thing since the New Deal.

Bush 41 lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992, in part because his poll numbers tanked after his poor economic plan was unveiled. Obama’s numbers are already down, they can certainly get worse if his jobs plan is underwhelming. The public is already annoyed about the jobs plan because it has been delayed for the President’s vacation. With poll numbers in the high 30′s and low 40′s, there is a long way to go before this President bottoms out if his plan underwhelms.

All of this is so unnecessary for the President. He never should have said he would pitch a jobs plan after his vacation. Even if his plan all along was to pitch the plan in early September, he should waited to tell the public. Now the public is sitting at home, unemployed, underemployed or worried about their employment wondering why something so important to them has to wait for the President’s exclusive vacation to end. Politically this whole situation is foolish and could have been avoided. It’s yet another example of Obama’s mismanagement of his administration.

Filed under economy, jobs, Obama Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Real Unemployment 10.3%; Massive Inflation Looms

March 4, 2011 Leave a comment

While the Obama administration may spend the day boasting about the unemployment rate dropping to 8.9%, it’s important to take a closer look at the numbers and a closer look at the economy as a whole. Gallup currently shows unemployment at 10.3%. Why is there a difference? When people give up looking for work the government no longer considers them unemployed while Gallup still counts them as unemployed. This is why Gallup’s number is more accurate than the governments, they include everyone. You can see where the government would have incentive to manipulate numbers by not counting people without jobs as unemployed. That was the case just a few months ago when unemployment dropped .4% without any relevant gain in new jobs.

When we look at the rest of the economy it is clear the recession is still continuing and it may even get worse. Gas prices are averaging $3.43/gallon and oil is over $100/barrel. Gas prices are up 50 cents in the last three months. If these prices remain high over a long period of time, it’s going to make a significant dent in the economy. Consumer goods and services will be the hardest hit as consumers will have less to spend at stores. Higher gas prices mean higher shipping costs, which means the price of everything from food to clothing will rise in price. Any rise in price means we can buy less with the dollars we have. If people buy fewer goods, long term there will be fewer jobs. The consequences of a gas price increase won’t be seen in the Feb. unemployment numbers but if they stick around they will be seen in the coming months.

The UN declared that world food prices have increased to all time highs. Corn prices are around $7.20 per bushel and increased 2% yesterday. Wheat prices are up well over 50% in the last year. The price of cotton doubled in the last year. The price of beef is up 25% since 2009. For a change it appears that the UN is correct, food prices are rising quickly. This has been going on since last summer. I’m sure you’ve seen prices increase at the grocery store lately. When food prices go up, more of our income is spent on food which means we have less to spend on other consumer products. Long term, this is going to be very negative for the economy.

It’s great that the economy is picking up again. Some of this is thanks to the tax consistency created when Congress extended the Bush tax cuts. For at least a couple of years businesses and investors have a measure of tax certainty and can plan accordingly. But there are dangers looming. The housing market is still depressed, manufacturing is still slow to recover and inflation caused by the Fed printing money is making the value of our salaries decrease.

Not everything in our economy is sunshine and flowers right now. We still have a real unemployment rate over 10%. Food prices are rising substantially as are gas prices. Oil prices threaten to make everything cost more, while the Fed continues to print money like a basement counterfeiter. Jobs are picking up, which is great. But inflation is beginning to take its toll on the pocket book of the middle class. By the end of the year the big issue in the mind of voters will not be jobs so much as it will be inflation.

Filed under economy, inflation, jobs, Politics, unemployment Tagged with , , , , ,

Jobs Report Not As Good As Obama Claims

January 8, 2011 Leave a comment

The job report issued by the Federal government is a complete and total mess. The Obama administration is pleased that the unemployment rate is down to 9.4% and that just over 100,000 jobs were created last month. However if we look closer at the job report we’ll see that over 260,000 people completely left the labor force, which is the real cause of the lower unemployment rate. You’ll recall that the unemployment rate only includes those people who are looking for work. If someone gives up looking for a job, they aren’t in the labor force anymore and aren’t included in the statistic.

Adding 100,000 jobs to the economy is nothing to sneeze at. But when 260,000 people just give up looking for a job, a reduction in the unemployment rate is sort of meaningless. The fact is, this administration has made the economic recovery go much slower than it would have otherwise. Obamacare is causing health insurance policies to increase 30-60% which is slowing job growth. Obamacare is increasing paperwork costs for businesses above and beyond the cost of a policy, which is slowing job growth. The massive increase in the national debt that Obama and the Democrats has slowed job growth.

If government would have stayed out of the financial meltdown of 2008, the economy would be recovered by now and it would be stronger than it was. The Bush bailout did little more than keep failing businesses in the marketplace. Obama’s takeover of GM did little more than keep a dying company afloat. The economy is still feeling the negative effects of keeping these dying dinosaurs in the marketplace, all propped up with tax money of course.

Government loves to claim they create jobs and I’m sure Obama will take credit for all 103,000 jobs created last month. The fact is government doesn’t create anything. They take things away (taxes, freedom etc) while producing nothing. Obama didn’t create any jobs, private businesses with private capital created jobs. Private businesses with the freedom to use their private capital as they see fit would be producing even more jobs if it weren’t for government regulating their businesses and their money. Obamacare is but one example, the endless regulations the Federal and state governments have for individual businesses is almost unbelievable. For every page of law the Congress passes there are hundreds of pages of regulations. The cost of these regulations adds up and costs the economy jobs. Government doesn’t create jobs, they create conditions that prevent job creation.

Filed under Big Government, economy, jobs, Obamacare, Politics, Taxes, unemployment Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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