"It's alive! Now go out and find a job."
News item:
President Obama announced (while he was riding some bus throught the Midwest) that he was going to announce his big jobs/economic program (after Labor Day and after he takes a ten-day vacation at Martha's Vineyard). One can only wonder what he will pull out of his hat. I have an idea.
He will encourage his "blue-ribbon commission" of 12 Washington politicians, who don't know anything about jobs, to come up with even more than the 1.5 trillion in cuts, as previously mentioned. Whatever the cuts are will not be specified.
He will push for a "balanced approach" to the budget deficit, which means raising taxes.
He will recommend the establishment of a Department of Jobs.
He will say we need to build more highways to nowhere, bridges to nowhere, and on/off-ramps to nowhere. Maybe he will announce the building of a beltway around Bakersfield, California. (Oh yes, that's already been done.)
Oh yes. There will be another trillion dollar stimulus package. After all, FIAT needs a bailout since they have taken over Chrysler. (Tony has to be paid to Fix It Again.)
He will announce the hiring of 3,000 new government attorneys to review and overturn those 300,000 deportation orders against illegal aliens (It's called amnesty, follks.) Then he can give jobs to those who are allowed to stay to build the highways, bridges and on-off ramps to nowhere while Tony fixes the FIATS (again).
Finally, that Syrian president Bashar Assad needs to quit his job.
We have to do all of these things, folks. If we don't, unemployment may reach 8%.
Only 10 days to wait!
I know what I would do:
ReplyDeleteI would announce a program to build high speed rail connections all over the United States. I have a map of routes in my head, but I won't try to list them all here. I would announce that anyone on public assistance who lives within 50 miles of any project will be hired as an apprentice trainee, and if they are physically unqualified, will have a job providing child care for those who are physically capable.
I would hire qualified masters and journeymen from all the relevant unions, including construction and railroad, and organize on on-the-job training programs for all the new workers. (People not on public assistance are also eligible of course). Part of the funding would come out of cost savings on the rapidly falling welfare budgets. We might even re-employ some of the laid off social workers laying track. (It's a shift from one union to another). The rest of the financing will be funded by a bond issue, with a dedicated funding stream to pay it off: a special, limited-term surtax on all income over $1,000,000. That's INCOME, not ASSETS, for all you UCSC community studies majors and UCI English students.
New jobs would also be created building the trains to run on the new tracks, with hiring and training handled in a similar manner. Those who build a good work record will be the first considered for training to run the new trains.
Of course there will be a surge of jobs which will decline as the primary lines are built. But everyone involved will have valuable skills, will have been spending their money, leading to hiring in other industries, and will have work experience that looks good on a resume.
And I would ALSO do what I've proposed her many times: exempt from income tax any income which is INVESTED, in the year that it is earned, in NEW CAPITAL, which actually creates new plant and generates new hiring. The more of their income the wealthy invest, in a manner that REALLY creates jobs, the less they pay tax on.
Something for everyone. Sweet.
President Obama won't do that because the tempest-in-a-tea-party crowd has him afraid to take bold initiatives. I say, $@#$@# Sarah Palin's twitters, full speed ahead!
Correction: that should be 10 days in Martha's Vinyard, not Camp David. That would be much too pedestrian and cheap for this imperious yet low class fraud.
ReplyDeleteA better and simpler way out, if it isn't too late, is to get out of the way. Stop all these ridiculous rules and regulations that inhibit enterprise. Lower taxes so that the people can make their own decisions about where they spend, invest, save, their own money. The notion that government must do SOMETHING about every problem supposes that government ( or Sialys) knows better than the sum total of
hundreds of millions of people making many decisions each
every day.
Americans are (or were) enterprising people but the more
the government gets involved the larger the fiascos and
losses become. The "planners" NEVER consider the consequences.
Steyn points out that Americans (a corporation) built the Empire State building, the tallest building in the world, in 18 months in the midst of the Depression. Now, 10 years later all we have where the twin towers stood is a giant hole in the ground. If they would have had all our rules and regulations it would not been done.
Miggie -- if he's going to Camp David, it hardly matters that you think he should go to Martha' Vineyard, and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteAs for the hole in the ground, talk to the Bush administration, which had seven years to get things moving.