The jobs report yesterday was the latest grim economic news out of Washington. Even the supposed decline in the rate of unemployment cannot hide the fact that the numbers were terrible. The decline came only due to the departure of almost 400,000 people from the work force. They just gave up looking for jobs according to Washington. Indeed, according to the survey that produces the unemployment rate, there were 150,000 fewer people working in August than in July, but the number of drop outs was so high that the rate went down. August is just the latest in a string of lackluster jobs reports. And it is not just the employment report that has stunk. The growth of the economy is down around 1.5%; there is always hope of improvement, but even this paltry rate of growth has been declining over the last year. Take home pay for the average American has also been declining. That means that those who are employed are making less. Many categories of "good" jobs have been declining while the extremely low paying jobs are replacing them; manufacturing jobs were down by 15,000 in August but restaurant service employment increased. It is not that there is anything wrong with working in a restaurant, but a job in a factory earning 50 or 100 percent more than the restaurant worker is the type of employment needed to support a family. Countless millions of people have either given up looking for work or accepted jobs that are way below their qualifications. One recent estimate put the number of unemployed or underemployed folks at 20%.
So, with all of these terrible reports on the economy, you would think that Americans would be up in arms demanding action. There is some of that, to say the least, but it also seems as if big portions of the country are numb. It is almost as if these people have given up hope that things can get better. Poverty is the new normal.
Well America cannot give up. The sad truth is that there is much that could be changed to promote growth in the economy and the return of millions of jobs. It is not rocket science to do this; it is something that many countries including the USA have done in the past. The problem is that the needed actions are ideologically unacceptable to president Obama and the Obamacrats. The needed actions require America to release and support the energy of the private sector through individual actions of millions of people in business. There is no need for the hand of the government in all of this; indeed, government involvement in the economy will slow or prevent the very growth which is now so vital to our recovery. There has never been a time where a government-directed economy has grown rapidly in any modern country. Look at China as an example. After World War II, the China became a Communist country under Mao Zedong. Mao was a revolutionary; he held period purges of people with insufficient zeal for Communism. All aspects of the Chinese economy were turned over to the government. The Chinese economy suffered from all sorts of problems. There were periodic famines and there was not even the idea of consumer goods to improve the life of the common man. The government mandated a common outcome for all; it was a grinding poverty that afflicted hundreds of millions of folks. After Mao died, his successors came to the realization that the government directed economy would not work. They opened China to private initiative and investment. China became a capitalist country with a communist government. The result of this change was the unleashing of the Chinese economy. China now has the second largest economy in the world; thirty years ago it was not even in the top ten.
Last week in Charlotte, Obama and the Obamacrats sang hymns of praise to the government and what it could do. Obama is pushing for just the sort of government intervention in the economy that the Chinese abandoned in order to achieve prosperity. It does not work. It has never worked. It will not work in the future.
It is time for America to realize all of this. We need to return to a freer economy that promotes rewards for those who work hard and succeed. Tens of millions of people will benefit from this. Each new job created is a boon to the worker who gets the job, but it also creates all sorts of benefits for the rest of us. It is one less person who needs unemployment benefits. It is one more person to have money to shop in area stores. It is one more person with the dignity provided by a job who can be a proper parent to his or her children. It removes a whole family from despair. And that is just one person. Think of the benefit to America of a million or ten million new jobs.
We have no choice. Obama has got to go. Economic growth has to be restored if America is to remain America.
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