Jobs
This weekend, the White House announced that in his first State of the Union Address Wednesday evening, President Obama would focus on jobs. This is appropriate. Currently, unemployment - once the subject of a Presidential promise to rise no higher than eight percent - stays stubbornly in double digits, as it has for most of a year. Throughout the course of this year, the President has focused his attention on a doomed and badly designed healthcare plan, a plan no one wanted, on a doomed and badly designed cap and trade energy plan, a plan no one wanted, and on Nobel Prizes, grand tours of Europe, and on family vacations. Now, finally, he has decided to focus on jobs, something everyone has wanted for the full length of his year in office. Of course, his focus will be demonstrated in words and speeches. It remains to be seen if he plans any action not contained on a teleprompter.
In a letter to the editor in the Tribune Review, Dan Plazek comments on $1.4 million to train 120 unemployed in green jobs. Mr. Plazek correctly points out that these green jobs don't exist. He also suggests for the same money 275 people could be sent to CCAC for a two year "real" associate's degree.
Mr. Plazek is absolutely correct in his thinking. He calls the the $1.4 million, "indicative of a government out of control, wasting our tax dollars indiscriminately." The government is not the creator of jobs. Government creates bureaucracies that sap tax dollars away from private enterprises that can create jobs. It's a cliche but the government can not spend it's way to prosperity.
The Federal and state governments need to create an environment for private individuals and corporations to be innovative to create the jobs of the future. The best way for government to do this is by cutting taxes. As a business owner I feel the path the Obama and Rendel administrations have been on this last year have created an unstable environment for business.
First and foremost a business has a moral obligation to make a profit. Without profit the business is doomed to fail, employees are doomed for the unemployment line, creditor aren't paid and the downward spiral goes on and on. Businesses today feel like they are in a violent storm with uncertainty in every direction. Health care, Cap and Trade, bailouts promote this uncertainty.
Uncertainty is the enemy of prosperity. It is the enemy of planning. And it is the enemy of good government. We now look for President Obama to recognize that job creation is the business of private business, not government, and that his policies of retribution and partisanship will soon be a thing of the past.
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