Top 10 Reasons for Obama’s Jobless Recovery
1. Stimulus package didn’t stimulate: The economy is growing too slowly under President Obama’s failed government-spending stimulus because it lacks any incentives for increased private investment, risk taking, venture-capital formation and new business formation, the basis of new job creation. The mediocre economic-growth rate is not strong enough to drive down a nearly 10% unemployment rate. (It’s approaching 12% in Florida.)
2. Business uncertainty: Widespread uncertainty across the business community about Obama’s job-killing tax, spending and regulatory agenda that has prevented businesses from expanding and hiring more workers and reinvesting an estimated $1.8 trillion in reserve funds.
3. Tax uncertainty: No uncertainty is more paralyzing than the administration’s plan to allow President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 top tax cuts on dividends, capital gains and upper incomes to expire at the end of this year, raising them at a time when the economy and businesses are still struggling in a weak economic environment.
4. Tax impact: Private investment is the life blood of a dynamic and growing economy and the wellspring of all new jobs. If Obama goes through with his plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire, small business, family-owned enterprises, working families, investors and retirees will be hit by very large tax hikes that will weaken capital reinvestment and kill job creation.
5. Government spending: The more money that government takes from the economy to feed an insatiable spending binge, the less there is in the private sector to create new jobs.
6. Obamacare impact: Obamacare’s job killing impact on businesses large and small has been swift and undiscriminating. Soon after Obama signed the bill, major corporations were forced to take billions of dollars in new charges on their profit line to cover the increased cost of the new law. Major firms like Boeing, Caterpillar, John Deere & Co. and Illinois Tool Works, among others saw their tax deductions for companies offering drug benefits had been cut to pay for the plan’s nearly $1 trillion cost.
7. Financial regulation bill: This sweeping government regulation legislation will raise costs throughout the entire banking and financial regulation industry. That will mean higher costs for consumers and in turn force the industry to prune payrolls or other cost-cutting moves to bolster their bottom line earnings.
8. Energy cap-and-trade taxes: The so-called climate-change tax bill that Democrats passed in the House, and has been stalled in the Senate, was one of the biggest economic uncertainties threatening economic growth and job formation. It would impose sharply higher, job-killing energy costs across the nation’s entire energy industry, hurting producers, businesses and manufacturers, and consumers. U.S. businesses, to avoid the tax, would have to move plants elsewhere to avoid the tax, moving jobs out of the country.
9. Economic restructuring: One of the big reasons for slower job growth stems from our economy’s ability to boost productivity with fewer workers through increased technology, mechanization and other production innovations. Faster economic growth would increase hiring in all of business sectors and new business formation would lift our economy to a much higher employment rate. Lower business tax rates, faster depreciation of capital purchases for new equipment, zeroing out capital gains and dividend tax rates to unlock new capital investment for start-up companies would spark an explosion in new firms and hiring.
10. Minimum wage: No government initiative has killed more entry-level jobs than the higher minimum wage. Congress pushed up the federal minimum wage in the midst of a severe recession, from $6.55 in 2008 to $7.25 in 2009. Small businesses struggling to survive in the downturn were hurt most and quickly cut their payrolls. Unemployment shot way up for younger workers, especially among blacks, Hispanics and other unskilled minorities. Almost half of blacks between 16 and 34 are jobless, up 13% since March 2008.
