Ain't Goin' Back!
From what I can glean from TV news, Obama's new jobs bill will cost $800 billion over the next two years. Although it contains tax credit for employers who hire new employees, it is geared toward creating more jobs in the public sector (put aside the dubious concept that government can "create jobs" at all). The federal, state, and local governments, in other words, will take on a lot more employees.
That's not what we want. Public employment jobs, especially when bolstered by union membership, are heavily-torqued one-way ratchet: once they're created, it's hard to get them to go away. It's like that with every government endeavor, which is why we should always be loathe to expand government an inch, but it's especially true when it comes to employment.
What's going on in Greece is a perfect symbol of how entrenched those public jobs can become. Niall Ferguson: "And just some of us predicted, no sooner did they try to start balancing the budget – and the Greeks have got to get their deficit down from 13 percent to 3 percent in three years – then, of course, the public sectors went on strike and took to the streets." Link.
Ask an employer what he dislikes most about having employees. He'll answer "Regulation," but after that, he'll say "Letting someone go." Nobody likes to let a person go. It's no different in public employment, but public employment is even harder because of the unions and because the employer isn't paying the excess cost of having that person around. If a private employer needs to let somebody go (for whatever reason: economics or incompetence), he's thinking, "If I don't do it, my bottom line will be affected, which will affect my family." That type of profit issue doesn't afflict the government sector. If the unit of government is very small (like a town or small county) you might get something that resembles it if the bosses are responsible, but in the vast majority of cases, public employment becomes entrenched, and you can't move that spending ratchet back down.
Grammar Corner
Some great Sobran. The subject: grammar. Sample:
Nowadays, “democracy” is what Richard Weaver called a god-term. To be democratic is to be good, and whatever is good must be democratic. Why? Nobody explains. In fact, it's rare to find a useful definition of democracy.
“Medieval,” by contrast, is a devil-word, the opposite of “modern.” Why is everything medieval assumed to be bad? Again, nobody explains. But St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Dante Alighieri, to name but three, were medieval men. To hear some people, you'd think all men ever did in the Middle Ages was pray and torture each other by turns. In the enlightened twentieth century, on the other hand, there was much less prayer and much more torture as man learned to fly, drop bombs on cities, and congratulate himself on his humanitarian achievements (such as making abortion easily available). Homicide is certainly more efficient now than in the Dark Ages. We can be proud.
