One of the biggest wastes of time imaginable is to read news stories about what's expected in upcoming economic reports. Late last week, we were regaled with stories about how economists were expecting news of robust job growth, and how this would be followed by serious consideration on the part of the Federal Reserve Board to finally raise interest rates--which have been kept artificially low for years in the hope of spurring job growth.
But as is so often the case, the reality didn't meet the expectations. Job growth stumbled again, with only 142,000 nonfarm jobs added to payrolls in September. And that follows an August that was even worse, at just 136,000. We're not even adding enough jobs to keep up with the growth in population, which means that glorious 5.1 percent unemployment rate you keep hearing about is only because so many people are leaving the workforce and no longer being counted.
Some folks are trying to blame China's economic problems for this, just like they've tried to blame George W. Bush, cold weather and whatever else they can come up with. Outside forces will always play some sort of role in your economic performance, but the fact remains that a fundamentally strong economy is going to do well over the long term. The Obama economy has consistently given us sluggish job growth and annual GDP growth of barely 2.0 percent.
And it's not hard to see why: Higher taxes, heavier regulation, intervention in health care markets, hostility toward businesses by the NLRB, EPA, IRS and others . . . and of course, the administration's refusal to embrace domestic energy exploration on federally controlled lands, which combined with Obama's war on coal adds up to higher and higher energy costs and an overall higher cost of doing business.
Take it from someone who has run multiple businesses: No one feels confident about adding to their payrolls in an environment like this. You never know if the federal government is going to do something to stomp out economic momentum or punish you for a run of success.
I've said many times that we could bring about a massive infusion of capital into the economy by getting rid of the tax on repatriated profits. That would suddenly bring home hundreds of billions that are sitting overseas--earned by U.S.-based companies, but not coming home because the companies would have to pay a tax on it just because they earned it overseas.
This is one of the dumbest economic policies I've ever seen. It's a fundamental principle of economic growth that earning money elsewhere and bringing it home helps to grow your economy. But in the United States, we punish companies for doing this. That makes no sense.
Then again, little does about economic policy as it pertains to business. The only thing politicians seem to understand is making targets out of business people in order to whip up populist frenzy. They've convinced an awful lot of people that when someone else gets rich, it somehow hurts them. In fact, when someone else gets rich, that's one more person who might be in a position to open a door of opportunity for you.
But that's not happening as much as it should in this country because our government is doing everything in its power to make sure it doesn't. And you can see the result. Where are those jobs? They're nowhere, and that's where they'll likely stay as long as business people don't feel confident their government actually wants them to succeed.
One of the biggest wastes of time imaginable is to read news stories about what's expected in upcoming economic reports. Late last week, we were regaled with stories about how economists were expecting news of robust job growth, and how this would be followed by serious consideration on the part of the Federal Reserve Board to finally raise interest rates--which have been kept artificially low for years in the hope of spurring job growth.
But as is so often the case, the reality didn't meet the expectations. Job growth stumbled again, with only 142,000 nonfarm jobs added to payrolls in September. And that follows an August that was even worse, at just 136,000. We're not even adding enough jobs to keep up with the growth in population, which means that glorious 5.1 percent unemployment rate you keep hearing about is only because so many people are leaving the workforce and no longer being counted.
