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Thursday, February 5, 2009
How to create jobs (in China)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Obama Administration’s dangling the goodies in the Democrats’ $900 billion spending proposal, hoping that mayors and state legislators will push their Congressional delegations to quickly pass it into law. Otherwise, says President Obama, an economic “catastrophe” looms.
Administration officials say that for Georgia the legislation would mean a $2,500 tax credit for college for 120,000 families, an extra $100 per month in unemployment benefit for 500,000 jobless and an extra $1,000 for 3.3 million workers. The Administration argues, too, that 113,000 new jobs would be created.
The spending in the proposed stimulus bill amounts to $10,500 per family in America, according to the Heritage Foundation and would be enough to give every high school junior and senior in the country a private-college education, with $150 billion left over.
By any measure, the numbers are staggering. Beyond the question of whether it provides any meaningful stimulus to the larger issue of whether real jobs will be created in the private sector, it’s necessary to look elsewhere.
Big Labor, pushing its top legislative priority — the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act — took hundreds of unionists and petitions they said contained 1.5 million signatures to Capitol Hill Wednesday. United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard told a rally across from the Capitol that the legislation is needed “to put an end to the illegal firing of workers, to the harassment of workers, to the intimidation of workers” who attempt to unionize companies.
The bill will be a jobs killer — in this country, at least — because it will permit Big Labor to unionize companies without the inconvenience of secret ballots. The alleged “intimidation of workers” will, therefore, shift from the board room to the labor hall. Workers can be coerced into signing union cards, if it passes, because their names and their “votes” are clearly known to union organizers.
Employers obviously object to the proposed legislation. In addition to eliminating the requirement that elections be by secret ballot, it will also force the company and its new union into binding arbitration if they don’t agree on a new contract in 120 days. “I want $70 an hour. You’re offering $10. Let’s go to binding arbitration and split the difference.” (Binding arbitration is a major reason MARTA’s labor costs are uncontrollable.)
During the campaign, President Obama supported the legislation.
An enormous tax burden and a whole set of new business regulations — to combat “global warming,” for example — are on the way that will push up business operating costs. Add the workplace organizations that have been major contributors to the demise of American auto industry, and the future of jobs creation in this country becomes pretty clear:
Build a store-front here, hire private contractors to market and sell a product, but manufacture it overseas. Public policies here create jobs in China.
