Readers weren’t surprised to learn that wages are shrinking and employers are reluctant to hire, the focus of a recent Atlanta Forward economy page. Here are some comments from last week’s blog.
Jack: Small business is the backbone of our economy. So, we're right back where we started from: President Obama's whole program of paying for health care is that the cost of health care should be on the shoulders of employers and policed by the IRS. It's not going to work. The program will crash from its own weight. My employees know that if I should have to pay their insurance costs, it will come out of their pay. If that doesn't work, I'll close the doors of a business I started 45 years ago. Most people have no idea how close the margins are for the self-employed. If the demand for doubling the minimum wage takes place, there will be more closings. If our Harvard-educated president had to own and operate a small business, his whole liberal notion of reality would change.
William Smith: Don't blame any one politician for this problem. This has been a cooperative effort by both parties. Both parties passed laws allowing companies to outsource jobs with government help. Both parties have allowed our education system to produce students without needed skills to compete in a world economy. Both parties have allowed our health care to become so expensive that many of our citizens who have jobs and work must decide between health care and food. This health care problem hits the elderly the hardest. It seems the norm that the only time both parties have any desire to accomplish anything is to go to war. A friend of mine returning from the Afgan conflict told me they are building a super hospital. How strange that both parties can find funding for this.
Rafe Hollister: Had President Obama followed tried and true remedies, as employed by presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, this would have been over much sooner. But Obama allowed his ideology to take precedence over economic growth. We have been debating for five years on how to equably divide the pie instead of concentrating on how to grow the pie. Obamanomics, plain and simple, is largely to blame for this unemployment and wealth disparity.
Don't tread: I'm sure the labor market in China is booming and wages are expanding at the expense of the U.S. worker. You can thank President Bill Clinton for that. Add President Obama's fiscal "stimulus" and regulatory policies, Obamacare, and accumulated federal debt to the mix — along with a side helping of automation — and presto! You now have the "new economic" diet. Get used to it.
SAWB: President Obama has tackled some important issues like health care reform, green energy and other worthwhile projects. However, he has not focused enough on the economy. In his zeal to promote his agenda, he pushed through ill-designed and unsustainable programs that have now become an impediment on economic growth.
