printTrust the public broadcaster to report the facts in detail and accompany them with transcripts. High marks for that PBS service. However, the service comes with a high price: full-on Keynesian propaganda. PBS’s jobs report begins in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), with an employer who understands that the cost of doing business is increased with every little regulatory tweak issued in DC. Says Bobby Joslin of “Joslin and Son Signs”:
“Well, two years ago, three years ago, we had to have all our tow motor people certified to operate a tow motor. … A forklift. And that cost the company $3,600. Now we’re having to dispose of all our lightbulbs. We’re in the sign business. We create a lot of volume of fluorescent tubes. So we just got through spending $8,500 on a lightbulb crusher.
Then there’s “Obamacare. When we bring on a new employee, we don’t know what that employee truly is going to cost us in 2014. And we’re not in the practice of hiring people and then laying them off.”
But our intrepid PBS reporter can recognize a Republican ruse when he hears one. PAUL SOLMAN thinks the small businessman he just interviewed is one dim bulb. Solman editorializes as follows: “Uncertainty of taxes and regulation crippling job creation; it’s become a Republican talking point.”
According to such Keynesians, who have always struggled with the chicken or the egg problem, business is struggling because, well, because it is struggling:
“Joslin told us business is down 35 percent over the past three years. So of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? … lack of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? But if sales drive everything, how important can policy uncertainty be?”
There is always an expert on hand to expatiate about the mysterious cycle of poverty that starts with reduced demand, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Brownian motion of the DC wealth-consuming machine:
And every businessman I know says exactly that. Non-financial companies are sitting on over $3 trillion of cash, the latest IRS data shows. Companies are not investing that money because there’s no demand. It’s not because they’re concerned that tax rates may go up or regulations may change. They need to have people and businesses with money to spend in order to invest.
[More about Voodoo economics here.]
Voodoo economics, hoodoo economics or any other kind of economics the facts of life don’t change. Businesses all the way from Bruno’s Hot Dog stand to Standard Oil have to have a reasonable chance to make a buck before they invest in any kind of agressive action, be it hiring, research or anything else. Government interference smothers business. First, the overeducated yutzes in government have no idea what it takes to make an honest buck and second I believe our current crop of Washington leeches are actually trying to stifle the economy and business. If they drive us all into the poor house we become dependant on the government for everything. Current policies are destroying the very fabric of the country and the destroyers will be perfectly happy to place themselves in permanent control. They don’t care how bad it’s going to get just so they control us. We have no political party to fight this except the Republicans and that’s not very encouraging.
A few years ago, when regulatory changes went into effect for the new ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel, big oil and big government assured us that the price would not change significantly. Diesel has never resumed its prior price level of being below that of gasoline.
I read a Conservative book recently, “48 Liberal lies…” By Larry Schweikart. He spoke of how Rockefeller had started Standard Oil on the concept of providing oil that met standards. He formed business partnerships with other companies that could provide products, cheaply, efficiently and without harming the environment. This drove the price of oil down, destroyed the whale oil business because kerosene was much cheaper and available. His competitors got the government to put in the “Anti-trust law” which would allow them to compete without improving their own business. Rockefeller then bought the other businesses he dealt with and started the megacoporation system that we now love so well. His competitors still couldn’t compete and the legislation actually came back to bite them. PBS somehow misses that part. A few years ago some toys from a big company with lead paint came to the US, we enacted a law that all children’s products have to have a lab test for lead. No exceptions. It put almost all of the small independent US producers out of business. Even the Salvation Army can’t take and give away used toys because they have to be tested. No wood toys, children’s dresses, nada. Somehow PBS missed that too.
I am also a bit curious as to how PBS would explain the decimation that has taken place in many of the timber towns in the Northwest. Granted, domestic demand has fallen, but global demand is strong. Lord knows the price of timber products at the store has never been higher. Remember, policy is off the table here, so presumably inflation is off the table as well. It would be hard to argue inflation is not policy when policy directly controls the money supply by design. Higher prices and strong global demand ought to drive a timber boom in the Northwestern states, but there they sit with record high unemployment.
As a small business owner, I am amused by this idea that armies of us are sitting atop wads of cash. The notion that folks like myself are cowering in a corner with wads, paralyzed by fear, driven by our own ignorance, is ridiculous. The only thing I have heard that tops that whopper is the notion that we are all engaged in a coordinated, deliberate act of economic sabotage. Coordinating even a small group of small businessmen is like herding cats, which is why the bankers would much rather hitch their wagons to big business.