Save or Create: Unemployment You Can Believe In!

Bad news: 1,600,000 jobs lost since the stimulus bill was signed into law. Good news: 150,000 jobs "saved or created" during this same period, or a negative ratio of about 10-to-1. We are now expected to swallow Obama's imaginary figure of 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days. Excuses like "it's only been 100 days" and "it's all Bush's fault" are becoming tiresome, people without jobs want results, and polls are starting to reflect this.

Obama has now begun his cry for Pay-as-you-Go, feigning a newly found sense of fiscal responsibility, as if his wild spending will be somehow be excused. We will certainly begin hearing more about the magical "Clinton Surplus" as an excuse to point more blame on the previous administration, and that Pay-Go is a way to just-as-magically erase the $10,000,000,000,000 of new debt his efforts have already created.

Today I read an article from a Washington economist which discussed the "ripple effect" on job creation by stimulus spending. Apparently, that extra twenty bucks in some paychecks is helping businesses around the country to lay off one less worker. Using White House math, that counts as a job "saved".  With a 10-to-1 unemployment ratio, I guess they forgot about the nine guys who were already laid off.   But, of course, those go on Bush's scorecard.

Obama's belief that Americans will swallow this horribly warped logic is quite insulting. Of course, there are more idiots out there than one might imagine. The fact that Obama is now sitting in the White House is proof enough. However, after enough people lose their jobs, Obama's halo will begin to fade. Layoffs did drop last month, with "only" 350,000 jobs lost in May, but that is to be expected since there are fewer people to lay off.

Panic dictated the immediate passage of the $787,000,000,000 stimulus bill, which was imperative to save our failing economy. Obama claimed that any delay might cause the US economy to collapse, implying that the orbit of the Earth could be altered and all life on the planet would end.

Injecting that $787,000,000,000 into the economy all at once may have indeed produced a brief upward tick in consumer spending. But, after nearly 5 months since passage, only about 5% of these funds have been used for 'stimulation'. Where are all the "shovel ready" projects that Obama promised would create 4,000,000 jobs? Oh, right. We're saving that money for the magical "Green Jobs" of the future, and as soon as we determine what those are, I'm certain Obama will whip out his checkbook for another round of do-nothing spending.

So, how should Washington "create jobs"? Buying GM won't help, as I don't think they're hiring right now. We can put some people to work as bail-out check couriers, and by using bicycles those might qualify as "green jobs". The truth is that government can only create government jobs. Jobs in the private sector are created through the growth and prosperity of the business. This can be encouraged with tax incentives or other business-friendly legislation.

In case you don't understand the concept, Mr. Obama, it is the people with money (the Evil Rich) who invest in businesses to create growth.  If you want to create an environment which promotes business, perhaps you can use the other 95% of your stimulus funds to pay for tax breaks and other proven methods to assist economic growth.

Or, you could stifle all growth, spend our money on entitlement programs, and we can eventually all become passive little comrades in the Obama Nation that was once the greatest country in the world. You can make the right choice now, or we can make it for you in 2012.