Where’s the Jobs?

Probably around three percent of that 5.7 is government transfer payments, ie government spending. Take that away and we are right back in a depression again. Coming soon to a theater near you.

If I had my own business, a $5,000 tax credit would definitely not entice me to hire a new person if the demand is not there for there labor. And these days, demand is lagging, in case no one has noticed.

Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate real estate, liquidate farmers. I wish Andrew Mellon was still around. Purge the rotten from the system.

Obama claims 2 million jobs saved or created (impossible to verify).  His supporters have bumped it up to 3 million, according to some pundits.  Sounds like the 17-50 million range of beneficiaries supporters of health care reform claim will benefit.

There are no jobs because of so much UNCERTAINTY.   I found the following two quotes today to be very accurate, imho.

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 http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-economic-recovery-threatened-by-lack-of-clarity-from-washington/19340072

But what the economy needs right now isn't more fixes. It needs clarity -- in the form of targeted and effective regulatory, fiscal and economic policy that will allow American business to play its crucial role in the economic recovery.

As a small-business owner myself, in a highly regulated industry, I am hesitant to make long-range decisions as long as the following questions remain unanswered.

• Will my taxes rise significantly going forward?
• Will I be able to afford health care costs for my employees?
• Will government impose further regulation on my business, and how will it affect my ability to operate profitably?

Businesspeople must have the ground rules clearly defined, and know that impending reform will be constructive and beneficial without crippling their ability to grow, profit and, most importantly, hire. American ingenuity and risk-taking have always been the engine of American economic growth, and new rules must be developed within this framework instead of stifling it.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/opinion/31friedman.html

It is a shame because here we are as a country scrounging around for a few billion more dollars of stimulus to help our unemployed and small businesses — when the biggest stimulus of all is hiding in plain sight. And that is ending our political paralysis and the pall of uncertainty it is casting over everything from the cost of my health care to the cost of my energy to the way our biggest banks can do business.

If the two parties could get together and remove the clouds of uncertainty over those issues, remove the growing sense that our country is politically paralyzed, you would not need another dime of stimulus money. Investment and lending would take off on their own. If, however, the two parties continue with their duel-to-the-death paralysis, no amount of stimulus will give us the sustained growth and employment we need.
 

The gap bt Real GDP and Real GDP ex inventory is as wide as it has been in 20 years.  So while businesses decided to produce to replace depleted inventories, the consumer is not buying.  The consumer has two choices.  It can re-lever and/or it can stop saving.  Neither choice is optimal.  Therefore, unless the govt creates govt jobs, there is going to be a sustained period of higher unemployment.

Look in the Bureau-Crapper.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/burgeoning-federal-payroll-signals-return-of-big-g/

"From 1981 through 2008, the civilian work force remained at about 1.1 million to 1.2 million, with a low of 1.07 million in 1986 and a high of more than 1.2 million in 1993 and in 2008. In 2009, the number jumped to 1.28 million.

Including both the civilian and defense sectors, the federal government will employ 2.15 million people in 2010 and 2.11 million in 2011, excluding Postal Service workers.

The administration says 79 percent of the increases in recent years are from departments related to the war on terrorism: Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, State and Veterans Affairs."

I am outside the box

http://towneforcongress.com/economy/common-sense-fixes-the-job-market-1

Thanks, Jenn, and thanks StuckInNJ for the emphasis on the deleterious effects of uncertainty on business planning. That was a vital element of Amity Shlaes' critique of the failure of the New Deal in "The Forgotten American."

On January 29, Mark Steyn - as usual - said it best in the Washington Times.

Functioning societies depend on agreed rules. If you want to open a business, you do it in Singapore or Ireland because the rules are known to all parties. You don't go to Sudan or Zimbabwe, where the rules are whatever the state's whims happen to be that morning.

That's why Mr. Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president is proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of health care reform that would allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees' health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law; some of them won't. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: There are no rules.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Mr. Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge, but the message is clear: more Washington, more regulation, more spending and no rules.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliche, to "double down." What's the endgame here? Mr. Obama gave it away in his student loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college loan debts will be forgiven because public service is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into public service?

Why? In the past 60 years, the size of America's government work force has increased five times faster than the population. Yet the president says it's still not enough: We have to divert more of our human capital into the government machine. He's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swelling bureaucracy. Mr. Obama's proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It's the audacity of hopelessness.

If you want to strengthen an economy you have to unleash the most productive, profit-oriented sectors and reduce the sectors that are non-profit.

The largest segment of the non-profit economy is government.

Here's a 3-Step Plan: No new taxes for 5 years. No new regulations for 5 years. A 25% across-the-board force reduction in the civilian federal work force, with concomitant 25% reductions in all existing budgets, salaries, benefits and pensions for the remaining civilian federal departments and employees.

If you think that's radical, and needs to be tried on a smaller scale first...

I recommend Detroit, Michigan as the laboratory of economic freedom. Substitute state, county and municipal workers for civilian federal. Substitute police and fire for active-duty military.  

I don't agree that "uncertainty" about the future is the reason behind biznesses not hiring.  Rather, it is the CERTAINTY that the current economic model is not sustainable that puts a lid on any job creation outside of Da Goobermint sector.

Even dunderheads who get all their Newz from the MSM don't believe Obamouts can perpetually work to keep the economy moving.  There is no obvious market for any goods or services which are not downright ESSENTIAL right now.  Try this thought experiment on yourself: If Obama offers you an Interest Free Loan of $1M, what Small Biz would you open up to hire some workers so somebody would buy what you are selling?  With all the Small Biz Entrepreneurial Geniuses populating this board, I'd like to hear the Biz Ideas that are going to bootstrap up our economy.

Let's say you hire 10 UE Construction workers at $20K a year dirt cheap wage.  You are going to build Windmills.  The Windmills generate say 5KW each when the wind is blowing, enough to power a McMansion.  Parts for the Windmills cost say $5K each.  Your Value Added contribution here is building the Windmills from the parts, so say you charge $10K per Windmill. So you have $5K to pay your workers for each windmill they build, less the cost of fuel and all the tools they need to build said Windmills.  When all is said and done, lets say you have $1000/windmill to pay back the loan.  You'll need to find 1000 McMansion Dwellers in your market with $10K who want you to build a windmill for them.

Except WAIT A MINUTE!  Currently said McMansion dwellers are out of work and in foreclosure.  They don't HAVE $10K to invest in a  Windmill.  If they have $10K, they aren't going to spend it on a Windmill for a McMansion the Sherriff is soon to boot them out of.  So your only market here are the people in your neighborhood who all are secure enough they're not in danger of losing their jobs and have $10K to send on a windmill.  Said consumers of electricity though currently get it plenty cheap off the grid, maybe they pay $1000/year for it.  So it would take 10 years in their minds to pay off said windmill.  Will said windmill still be operational in 10 years, after numerous T-Storms, possible Tornadoes and Hurricanes?

When the grid goes down, no doubt you will have plenty of customers, but by then it is too late because said customers won't have money to buy your windmills.  All the IT workers will be UE, because of course the computers won't be working to program.

Building Windmills is actually one of the few good ideas here, but so far nobody including T. Boone Pickens has been able to sell this building bubble.  Could the small entrepreneurial Bizman with a $1M Interest Free Obama Stimulus Loan be able to succeed where T. Boone Pickens failed?  I doubt it, but even if possible it still requires Da Goobermint to start handing out $1M Interest Free loans to everybody to do this.  Isn't that Goobermint Interference in the Free Market?

Nobody is going to do any real hiring here because nobody can come up with any way to make a profit in a deleveraging economy, other than to Short the Phone Book.  When somebody comes up with a way to make a profit not by gambling on losses but on actual productivity, THEN you might get some hiring going on.  Its so far not happening in the Free Market, nor is it happening in Goobermint either.  It most certainly won't happen if/when Da Goobermint collapses entirely, because then there will be no money AT all around that holds any value.  Well, if you are a Gold Bug maybe the Gold holds some value, but how many people have any gold at all to pay you to build a Windmill for them?  Exceedingly few, and you will rapidly run out of customers, not to mention the fact the Chinese company which builds the motors you use will have stopped shipping here a while back.

The monetary system has to collapse COMPLETELY here before any real rebuilding can take place. There is no salvaging it.  I think most people while they do not understand why it is happening do viscerally understand it, and so everybody is just waiting for the final collapse to occur.  Nobody hires when Waiting for Collapse.  You just hunker down and pray.

RE

Jenn- more on Bloomberg on green jobs initiatives and how the jobs are not going to be made in the USA:

China’s Labor Edge Overpowers Obama’s ‘Green’ Jobs Initiatives

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is spending $2.1 million to help Suntech Power Holdings Co. build a solar- panel plant in Arizona. It will hire 70 Americans to assemble components made by Suntech’s 11,000 Chinese workers.

That gap shows the challenge Obama faces as he works to create “green” jobs. Asia makes more than half the world’s wind and solar energy equipment, and is gaining ground as U.S. factories lose out to cheaper labor and higher demand for clean energy. China for the first time topped the U.S. in wind-turbine manufacturing and installations last year, the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council said yesterday in a report.

Obama is giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wind and solar industries to create jobs in the U.S. even as production expands faster overseas. First Solar Inc., the world’s largest maker of thin-film solar-power modules, won $16.3 million to add 200 manufacturing jobs at its Ohio plant, yet 71 percent of its planned factory growth will go to Malaysia. The company employs 4,500 globally.

“The cost of manufacturing here is too expensive compared to Asia,” said Guy Chaffin, chief executive officer of Elite Search International, a Roseville, California-based executive search firm that has found employees for Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar and Solar Millennium AG. “As far as a flood of good jobs coming to the U.S., we’re not seeing it.”

just proves there isnt enough coffee pouring or burger flipping jobs to go around.

by the time this govt gets its shit together, it'll make my mowing lawns in the 50's for a buck an hour look like the bonus' we're being pilfired out of to pay the ass holes of the LEGAL kleptocracy.

1) How many people does it take to make one laptop?  The same number that it takes to make 15000.  In a high-tech world, we don't need lots of employment to create lots of objects.  The model that employment is proportional to GDP ignores the effect of computers and automation.

2) Those who are employed are working their fingers to the bone; productivity is enormous.  Boosting employment requires lowering efficiency, hiring unqualified people, and training them.  Even that may not be a solution in light of 1).

3) Has technology and efficiency gotten to the point that we need a different means of allocating resources than from-each-according-to-his-ability, to-each-according-to-his-productivity (or the generosity of transfer payments)?

4) And don't forget that to pay back $14 trillion of debt, we need to tax over $40k/person in the country in excess of services provided (or inflate the currency to the point were $14 trillion is irrelevant).

The consumer credit economy is dead; that is why nobody is hiring.  We have to transform our whole economy back into a nation that actually produces things and we have to undergo a mindset shift and stop referring to ourselves as consumers.  We need to be a nation of workers first.  A nation of savers second.  Debt and consumerism are destroying us. 

"We must start thinking outside the box and forcing politicians to do so also."

We must do more than think outside the box - we must act and do outside the box we are in. But by my observations that cannot be done until the system collapses. The economy is dying. Observe all the fast food places, restuarants, and businesses you drive by and observe empty parking lots.

The banking system was saved because it controls all the transactions and is the conduit for government control of regulating business and collecting all types of taxes. The problem now is the banks have no work to do because of all the failing businesses. Go inside your local bank and you now see people sitting at their desks with nothing to do.

The economy is really crashing in slow motion and the government cannot do anything about it. Soon there will be massive layoffs at all levels of government which will mean that the regulators will be out of a job. Many companies will be going out of business and when this happens along with large government layoffs then the demand for services by the companies and institutions still in existance is going to be great. That is when people who are productive and have skills to offer will not be impeded by regulations, because there will be no one to enforce these regulations, that have caused the economy to flop in the first place, because of the expense to keep these regulations in place.

We are fast approaching the day of reckoning for this capitalistic system that we somehow let suck us in.  

thunderbird; until thinking out of the box is made illegal in the u s, it wont happen.

Damn!  Here is an amazing stat I found moments ago.  Never seem it put this way before .....

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At some point, will  200 shovels employing 200 people be deemed more valuable than one caterpillar, the operator, and a whole bunch of gasoline to run it? 

Unfortunately, who is more apt to contribute to the democratic party?  The 200 shovels or the caterpillar company?  Probably Caterpillar (however once the shovels unionize then we have a whole new set of issues to deal with). The thing about the shovels is they promote a more healthy lifestyle (probably don't need to do it 8 hours a day either) and probably use less overall unrenewable resources.

Clothing those 200 shovel holders and providing the necessary cleaning materials after a day of work creates additional local jobs.

The caterpillar company promotes more higher paying jobs, more overseas purchases of expensive suits and cars, and more troops to fight for the fuel that goes in the caterpillar engine.

There will be plenty of private sector jobs when the private sector expands on the distribution of asset based money (PM's) and the resulting stimulation ripples throughout, not only benefitting that immediate sector. Liquidity rocks, especially when it's debt-free. This will be demand driven ! Buy !

Why make a simple issue complicated ?

@Thunderbird ....

"We must start thinking outside the box and forcing politicians to do so also."

The first step is to ignore the notion that you need politicians because as long as your paradigm resides there, you will remain supply driven in hierarchy.  Hierarchical structure is a supply driven concept that focuses power to the apex much like a lens focusing light to a focal point.
 
We will always reside in a supply driven economy as long as we have a supply driven money system. It governs. Power needs to be decentralized by restructuring within the private sector where there is the most market access to grass roots power.

This is really a big concern especially for women and children.Being a woman myself i have been looking for a job since Dec 1st.There is not anything out there.At least that's what they say. I just thank God my husband has work! Where are all the job's? And what is going on with this country?Being born and raised in this country i think more illegals have the jobs.I guess it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.The Rich companies don't want to pay the american people so they pay these poor illegal's as little as nothing.Slavery is not over it's going strong right here in the USA.