by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
A\u00a0year ago Barack Obama inherited a recession brought on by financial panic following the collapse of the housing bubble. The market crash was made worse by Wall Street shenanigans and recklessness at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Job losses followed.<\/p>\n
In response, Obama pushed through a stimulus bill that went well beyond the borrowing done by George W. Bush in his last months in office. In fact, Obama and the Congress borrowed an additional $787 billion to infuse the economy with fresh job-creating cash.<\/p>\n
The president warned us that without this borrowing, unemployment might reach double digits. Yet with the stimulus, unemployment has soared from 7.6 percent to 10 percent. That translates into over 4 million jobs lost in 2009 alone.<\/p>\n
In reaction, an embarrassed administration continues to cite hypothetical jobs saved, rather than the actual number of jobs lost this year. Just this week senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs and senior White House adviser David Axelrod variously claimed “thousands and thousands,” “1.5 million” and “2 million” jobs saved. If the White House insiders can’t get their theoretical numbers straight, how can anyone else?<\/p>\n
Why the continual job losses?<\/p>\n
First, the government can create only so many jobs by borrowing and spending. It is less efficient than private enterprise in reacting to market needs \u2014 new products, new services and new consumer tastes. Higher federal budgets eventually translate into more bureaucrats to shackle the private sector with more regulations that discourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the U.S. Small Business Administration claims that small businesses employ about half of all working Americans. Yet building contractors, orthodontists, local real-estate agents and small software companies (to name just a few types of small businesses) in the last year have not been convinced that it is time to start buying new equipment and hiring more employees to gear up for increased consumer demand.<\/p>\n
Why the continued depression among employers?<\/p>\n
Many may suspect that the administration does not appreciate how hard it is to be self-employed \u2014 an understandable conjecture when neither the president nor many in his Cabinet have had careers outside government or academia. Tenure and near-automatic annual pay raises do not exist in the world of the insurance agent, farmer or trucker.<\/p>\n
Instead, when employers listen to the president’s grand ideas for healthcare reform, they must quietly cringe at increased costs per worker. When they hear soaring rhetoric about cap-and-trade energy policy, they must silently fear higher power costs.<\/p>\n
Worse still has been the promiscuous talk this past year about all sorts of higher taxes.<\/p>\n
During the 2008 campaign and the president’s first year, we heard Obama promise new income taxes that would revert to the higher rates of the Clinton administration. But that would now come on top of recent new tax hikes by the states that have often upped their own income and sales taxes by considerable margins since 2000.<\/p>\n
During the healthcare debate, there were also promises of a special surcharge on “Cadillac health plans,” as well as making the upper brackets pay a surcharge to fund the care of others.<\/p>\n
And don’t forget Obama’s inheritance-tax proposals that would have reversed the scheduled one-year repeal (with what many expected would become permanent) of the inheritance tax to a 45 percent tax rate on anything that an individual leaves to his heirs beyond $3.5 million in value \u2014 capital that was already taxed during its acquisition.<\/p>\n
As a result of all this tax-talking frenzy, business owners have no idea what their new aggregate tax obligations will be or when they will kick in. They can only sense that the Obama administration wants to go after successful entrepreneurs to fund more federal entitlement for others \u2014 as if the 5 percent of Americans who fork over 55 percent of the aggregate income tax revenue don’t pay enough already.<\/p>\n
If President Obama really wants to foster job growth, he needs to get specific. Stop the borrowing and instead tell the business community exactly what income, payroll and surcharge taxes he proposes, when they will begin \u2014 and how much he appreciates those who will pay them.<\/p>\n
When it comes to creating a psychological climate to encourage employers to start hiring again, a little certainty and a little praise are lot better than uncertainty and talk of taxing even more those who now already pay the most.<\/p>\n
\u00a92010 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1645,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/give-em-hell-barry\/","url_meta":{"origin":1860,"position":1},"title":"Give ‘Em Hell, Barry","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Recently both First Lady Michelle Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis went to the key swing state of Florida to blast the president\u2019s adversaries. For the first lady, Obama\u2019s opponents were concerned only with \u201cthe few at the top\u201d and care little for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1099,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/an-existential-dilemma\/","url_meta":{"origin":1860,"position":2},"title":"An Existential Dilemma","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's The Corner Unemployment is at 9.8 percent, and the figure is even higher when the long-term unemployed and dispirited are added in. What does President Obama do now? He has already tried massive government spending, borrowing $3 trillion in just 22 months in order to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2010"","block_context":{"text":"December 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/december-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2032,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-becomes-the-fall-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1860,"position":3},"title":"Obama Becomes the Fall Guy","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing \u2014 even lampooning \u2014 Barack Obama as a one-term president (\u201cone and done\u201d). Centrist Democrats up for reelection in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the new pariah lose them votes.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6553,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-late-great-middle-class\/","url_meta":{"origin":1860,"position":4},"title":"The Late, Great Middle Class","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It's never been harder to find a decent job making something real. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The American middle class, like the American economy in general, is ailing. Labor-force participation has hit a 35-year low. Median household income is lower than it was five years ago. 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