Obama's hostility to business is keeping joblessness high

Just as FDR's hostility did during the Great Depression

Businessmen just don't know what is coming down the pike from Obama and his minions ("Green" taxes and levies, exploding healthcare costs, new regulations on anything that moves) so they are playing safe and not expanding their activities until they feel some certainty about what environment they are going to be working in.

Obama's extremist EEOC, for a start, would make anybody nervous about new hires. The only safe hire right now would be a black and if you can't find a black with the right skills and attitudes, you'd be wisest not to hire at all -- JR

Obamanomics has done more than just keep unemployment high during a modest recovery. It may also be keeping high joblessness permanent by raising the costs to businesses of hiring new workers.

July's 9.5% unemployment level was bad enough. But the real problem is that the private-sector jobs machine, which is usually going full tilt at this point in a recovery, now seems to be broken.

To many, it's becoming clear that if President Obama's radical job-killing agenda stays in place, job growth will be nonexistent.

One of America's great advantages has always been its flexible, private-sector labor markets. From 1985 to 2008, U.S. unemployment averaged 5.6%. For the six largest economies in the European Union, the average rate was 34% higher, at about 7.5%.

Yet many of those countries now have jobless rates lower than ours. Why? They've been dropping Keynesian stimulus as a strategy and moving more toward cutting spending and, in some cases, cutting taxes.

Not Obama. He and Congress remain wedded to an outdated economic model that replaces the private sector's animal spirit and dynamism with the dead hand of government bureaucrats and their unions as the main economic forces in our country.

That's what last week's $26.1 billion state "bailout" was all about. We were told it was to keep teachers from being laid off and "for the children." In reality, it was a cynical taxpayer-funded payback to teachers' unions, which gave Obama and his party enthusiastic support and millions in donations in the last election.

This is Obama's New America — a government-run economy, with special benefits for unions and plenty of government jobs, but few private ones.

Businesses today face rising burdens — from ObamaCare, the financial overhaul, the expiration of tax cuts for entrepreneurs, the threat of new energy taxes or the surge in growth-strangling regulations on business — that discourage hiring.

"The real threat to a robust recovery on the labor side," Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, warned recently, "has come from employer and entrepreneurial fears that once the economic environment improves, a Democratic Congress and administration will pass pro-union and other pro-worker legislation that will raise the cost of doing business and cut profits."

It's never been costlier to hire and keep a worker employed. And as ObamaCare kicks in and Bush's tax cuts expire — not to mention the huge tax hikes that will be needed to make Social Security and Medicare solvent — businesses will simply quit hiring.

In this new system, the government will continue to raid the private sector for money to hire more federal workers and to support its union base. And businesses, rather than invest their $1.8 trillion in idle cash to hire workers, will continue to cut jobs.

Already, government is where the action is. Since the recession began, federal employment has jumped 10%. Private sector employment has fallen 6.8%. As USA Today recently reported, government workers in 2009 earned $123,049 in pay and benefits, twice the $61,051 earned in the private sector.

This Keynes-on-steroids model has been tried before, in Europe. It didn't work. It led to permanently high levels of joblessness — what economists call structural unemployment.

A recent peer-reviewed study in Sweden found that for every 100 new jobs government creates, 114 are destroyed in the private sector. Similarly, a French study of data from OECD countries from 1960 to 2000 discovered, on average, "creation of 100 public jobs may have eliminated about 150 private sector jobs."

In short, it was a disaster that the U.S. is now duplicating. The next Congress should have no greater priority than reversing it all.

SOURCE

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There are very few Christian churches where you will encounter the real power of the New Testament

Bob Burney

I have through the years developed a deep distaste for “religion.” A couple of fresh examples are rolling around in my head.

I just returned from a wonderful trip to the country of Moldova in Eastern Europe. It was my privilege to be the speaker for an incredible youth camp ministry. The camp is located deep in a remote area of the Moldovan countryside outside a village founded in the mid 1400s. For several years now, hundreds of young people come to this camp and have their lives transformed by the power of Christ. Kids hooked on drugs and sex are wonderfully delivered. Young people lost in a poverty-stricken culture find meaning and hope.

Over the course of 17 years, over 22,000 young people have come to Christ! Now, who could oppose such a life-changing ministry? Answer—religion. Just up the road from this phenomenal youth camp is a regional center for a particular “Christian religion” and every year these “Christians” do all they can to hassle, harass and destroy the work going on at the camp.

One afternoon while I was at the camp a zealous group of young people decided to go into some of the nearby villages and tell people (in a non-threatening manner) about Jesus. They were so excited about what they had discovered that they simply wanted to tell others. As they began to share their faith—a local priest tried to run them over with his car and told them they should “all be killed.” Yes, Anne, I quit that kind of religion too!

On the return trip to America, I had an overnight layover in Vienna. It has got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world with some of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Although I had seen it before, I had to make a visit to St. Stephens Cathedral in the heart of the city. Standing for over 800 years, its architecture is truly breathtaking. When you enter you experience sensory overload: Stained glass, rich wood, gold. There are priceless works of art everywhere. You cannot help but stand in awe realizing that this structure was built without any modern technology or machinery. There are so many adjectives and superlatives that I could use to describe the visual spectacle that confronts you. It is beautiful, magnificent and opulent—but it is also dead. It is more museum than church—a relic of ritual and tradition, filled with tourists, empty of worshippers.

As I stood in the midst of the medieval grandeur I thought back a few days before to the rustic camp in a remote region of Eastern Europe’s poorest country … teenagers singing so loudly about their love for Christ that it could be heard for miles … singing, not in a cathedral, but an outdoor tabernacle. No stained glass, no walls, primitive benches made out of discarded chairs and lumber. A magnificent cathedral, a simple camp “tabernacle.” In St. Stephens we see a symbol of religion; in the Moldova camp a living testimony of the power of a personal relationship with Christ.

My decision didn’t make international headlines, but I resigned myself from religion a long time ago. But it’s not about religion. It really is about relationship. There is nothing wrong with Biblical Christianity. The real problem is religion masquerading as Christianity.

SOURCE

In support of Bob Burney's words above, note that in my Scripture blog I have pointed out at length how greatly mainstream Christianity departs from the New Testament. Maintaining the day of the Sun as a holy day rather than the Jewish sabbath is for a start pure paganism, to say nothing of Christmas and Easter and the doctrine of the Trinity. I could go on....

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Liberal Claims to Altruism are a fraud

Ben Shapiro

Democrats, as we can see in virtually every bill, are more concerned with sending taxpayer cash to their political allies than they are in sending cash to those who need it. That's because for every dollar they send to their political allies, they receive a substantial portion back in the form of campaign donations. It's an easy trade: pretend to care about the poor, grab money from the taxpayers to pay off your buddies, let your buddies pay you back, rinse, wash and repeat.

It's no wonder that this week alone, we found out that a new housing program designed to help the unemployed will in fact go to the benefit of the banking system from which Obama received millions, and that heavy-spending unions were poised to receive billions of dollars more from government -- dollars that come from cutting food stamps. If Democrats were advocates for the poor, it would be nice if they would act like it rather than simply using the poor as a convenient political bloody flag.

Until the liberal politicians put their money where their mouth is and actually start promoting programs that help the poor rather than raiding the rich for their own personal benefit, their class warfare should be dismissed out of hand. It's posturing, pure and simple, and it's ugly posturing at that.

More HERE

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BrookesNews Update

President Obama's nightmare economy : It doesn't matter how low interest rates are, if there is too much political uncertainty about making profits then investment and spending will be severely curbed. Unfortunately the dismal expectations of business regarding Obama's policies are founded entirely on reality. There is no escaping the fact that the Democrats are about to strike the US economy with a blizzard of costly regulations and a barrage of high taxes causing business to batten down the hatches
Is deflation really bad for the economy? : A fall in the money stock on account of the disappearance of money out 'of thin air' is great news for all wealth generating activities since the disappearance of this type of money arrests their bleeding. Since a fall in the money stock undermines various non-productive activities it slows down the decline of the pool of real savings and thereby lays the foundation for an economic revival
Exports cannot save the Obama economy : Expanding exports are neither a panacea nor a palliative. The real cure for the US economy is an economic policy based on a respect for free markets. And this just ain't going to happen under the leftwing Obama
The Greens' policies would destroy the Australian economy : Australian Senator Bob Brown has emerged as a destructive parasite. A green fanatic living at the public trough whose economic wish list would destroy the Australian standard of living, which is exactly what they are intended to do. Not only has the media overlooked just how elitist and loony Brown's green economics really are so have our rightwing
On Cuban television, Castro predicts nuclear war and the MSM yawns : The Cuban missile crisis is another event that should live in infamy. This was when Jack Kennedy and his Ivey League advisors sold out the Cuban resistance to the Soviets. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro. After Kennedy's death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba
The US is facing an Argentina-like economic crisis : Most Americans still do not realise how dangerous economic conditions really are. The situation has even imperiled the survival of the political class. Eventually, anything that extends their rule will be tried. It is not concern for you or the economy that is driving policy, but the preservation of power of an increasingly wounded power elite. Their survival is now driving policy. Unfortunately, what benefits them is generally harmful for the economy
The two Great Classes in contemporary America : "There really are two America's: the ruling class and the country class (aka the patriotic class). The ruling class views the patriotic class as ignoramuses who are vicious, violent, racist, religious, irrational, unscientific, backward, generally ill-behaved, and incapable of living well without constant, detailed direction by their betters who — as Abraham Lincoln would have put it — need to be "ridden" for their own good

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ELSEWHERE

The Obamacare disaster: "The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false.”

The surprising Mr. Cameron: "It has been decades since any attempt was made to reverse the growth of government in developed countries. To the extent that leaders have shown reformist zeal, it has usually emerged at the local level — for instance, the commendable crusade by Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system, against the education bureaucracy. Given the long-standing reformist drought in rich countries, Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts in Britain deserve attention.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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