The Book Of Jobs

Maybe not you, maybe not me, but tens of millions of people need jobs. It’s not just them that suffer from the lack of a job. Most have families.

It isn’t even limited to them. It affects the entire economy. That means it affects you and me.

Foreclosures mean the Great Recession lasts longer. More foreclosures means your home is worth less. Want to move? Lots of luck. You just discovered that you don’t own your house. It owns you.

Congress is our enemy. They shot down the elimination of tax incentives for moving jobs overseas.

The Republicans were very successful in the last election cycle. How? By promising jobs. How many job creation bills has Boo-hoo Boehner introduced in HIS House? None. Really? Not a single one.

Well, that may not be exactly true. Those family values bills he keeps giving time and attention to might create . . . Well, probably not.

Paul Ryan’s budget is predicted to end the deficit in Fiscal Year 2052 and only cause the loss of 2.5 million more jobs initially. That 2052 date is just to end the annual budget deficit. The national debt would be with us until 2087. We’re going to have to have a party to celebrate.

One representative tried to defend that by misstating that the number of jobs lost would only be 250,000. Then he claimed that the entire 250,000 would all be state and local government jobs lost.

He laughed as he claimed that was good, since they needed to go out and get real jobs. The ones that don’t exist? Who are these good-for-nothings that need to get a real job? Policemen, Firemen, Teachers. I can think of quite a few others on the government payroll who should get a real job. I wish I had saved the clip of that interview to share.

Maybe Peter King can help. His committee has announced another round of Muslim radicalization hearings. Maybe some Muslims will get pissed off and leave. Someone could pick up one of their jobs. I need to send him a thank you note for devoting all of his time to such a high priority.

Congressmen have successfully prevailed upon the SEC to ease back enforcing those new laws to restrict derivatives. That means that Wall Street will need a few dozen more parasites. Is someone keeping count of all our representatives are doing for us by making job creation their number one priority?

If we are not going to get more jobs from family value legislation, sending jobs overseas or by eliminating police, firemen and teachers, how are we going to increase the number of jobs?

Banks are sitting on $1.9 trillion that they refuse to loan out in this country. Other businesses are sitting on another $2 trillion that they are refusing to invest in job creation. In fact, big business is where most of those jobs losses are from. Sorry. No help from that quarter.

How about small business? Sorry. Did you know that a many of the small businesses are created by big businesses? They back some employees in start-ups for their own advantage; to get various breaks. Transferring one of their employees to a small one they create does not increase the number of jobs.

With most health care tied to employer-based insurance policies, would be entrepreneurs are reluctant to leave the nest. It happened to me in the 1970s. It is even a greater barrier now, with the high unemployment rate. Also, they can’t get necessary start-up funding.

Even that bastion of conservatism, Time Magazine, realizes that entrepreneurs are not going to be our salvation. They have an article on five myths of our economy. Let me provide a paragraph from that article:

Entrepreneurship is still one of America’s great strengths, right? Wrong. Rates of new-business creation have been contracting since the 1980s. Funny enough, that’s just when the financial sector began to get a lot bigger. The two trends are not disconnected. A study by the Kauffman Foundation found an inverse correlation between the two. The explanation could be tied to the fact that the financial sector has sucked up so much talent that might have otherwise done something useful in Silicon Valley or in other entrepreneurial hubs. The credit crunch has exacerbated the problem. Lending is still constrained, and the old methods of self-funding a business — maxing out credit cards or taking a home-equity loan — are no longer as viable.

That 1980s date mentioned in the article just happens to coincide with the frenetic push for deregulation initiated by St. Ronny, which lead to credit default swaps and other derivatives, ‘no doc’ mortgages, rescission of the Glass-Steagall Act, quadrupling of the Wall Street share of the economy and the other contributions to the economic mess. I would disagree with the article’s placing of the blame on Wall Street sucking up all of the talent. It sucked up the money. They pay more in bonuses than they invest.

Let me describe a typical small business start-up in the present. It’s an underfunded, one-man consulting firm. It doesn’t manufacture anything. It may operate out of a home office. The person may prevail upon a relative to help out. Most of these ‘entrepreneurs’ are doing this because they have no other choice. They come mainly from the unemployed and underemployed. Most will fail. It hardly seems right to count most of these as small businesses or think of them as hiring employees.

A significant number of these are financial advisers. They aren’t telling their clients anything that will help their clients. As when they were employed by the financial firms, their script is limited to advice that will benefit those in the industry. There has been a slight increase in business for CPAs. Many of these new businesses need the services of a CPA to keep them out of trouble with the IRS.

To continue carrying the burden of the real estate situation may very well lead to a double dip. With the government, the banks, big businesses and small businesses unable or just refusing to create jobs, it’s difficult to see how a double dip can be avoided. It’s hard to contemplate the misery that long-term unemployment will cause.

Our “leadership,” both public and private are sitting on their hands, They have no personal financial worries beyond reducing or avoiding taxes. I wish the rest of us lots of luck.

If you found this educational, edifying, interesting or otherwise worth your time, this geezer would appreciate a little supplement to those Social Security checks, They forgot to factor in the cost of publishing a blog. I would like to continue being able to afford my daily cup of coffee and pound of caviar.

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Thank you.

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