The recent report on the employment situation concluded that the unemployment rate in the United States has increased to 9.1%. The S&P Case-Shiller house prices index has fallen for nine consecutive months after a post-recession peak in the so-called “Recovery Summer” of 2010. Since then, the homes price index has fallen nearly 4%. The economy appears to be slumping into summer. After spending trillions of dollars in “stimulus” and relief packages, President Obama said in a news conference on June 7th that “I’m concerned that the recovery we’re on is not producing jobs as quickly as I wanted to happen.”
John Crudele sheds some light on the jobs report at the New York Post writing, “The government’s data on the economy is so bad it should be written in crayon, with happy face stickers next to it…In order to come up with growth of 54,000 new jobs the Labor Department had to assume the unlikely — that 206,000 jobs were created by newly-formed companies it thinks but can’t prove were ‘born’ in May…You can find that figure right on the Labor Department Web site at www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbd.htm. This is called Labor’s Birth/Death Model, and it’s the nearest thing to a fraud perpetrated by Washington…Without this generous assumption, the US.. would have lost jobs in May, rather than having created a paltry number of them.”
Audrey Hudson writes at Human Events that President Obama’s Interior Department, headed by Secretary Ken Salazar, is the administration’s “weapon of choice in a war on jobs.” She quotes Congressman Tom McClintock of California as saying, “I think they have constructed the most effective job-killing machine in the history of the country.”
Hitting out at the current administration’s failure, creating policy that would allow the private sector to create jobs, Governor Tim Pawlenty laid out a plan to generate growth in the U.S. economy. Philip Elliott of the Associated Press wrote:
In a speech heavy on specifics, Pawlenty proposed a three-tier income tax system:
• The estimated 45 percent of U.S. households that did not pay income taxes in 2010 would see no change in their tax rates.
• Individuals would pay 10 percent tax on the first $50,000 of income. Couples earning $100,000 would also pay that rate.
• “Everything above that would be taxed at 25 percent,” Pawlenty said.
He said he wants to cut business taxes from the current rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and he called for dismantling vast pieces of the government.
Elliott quoted Pawlenty as saying, “We can start by applying what I call the Google Test. If you can find a service or a good on Google or the Internet then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing that good or service. The post office, the government printing office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were all built for a different time in our country and a different chapter in our economy when the private sector did not adequately provide those services. That’s no longer the case.”
