More On Liberals And Their Views On Government and Economics

Liberals are up in arms about the latest employment numbers.

Good. It’s about time. They’ve been atrocious for quite some time. And the White House keeps saying that “we’ve turned the corner” and “we’re headed in the right direction”. Well, we’ve turned so many corners now that we’re obviously completely lost, and have no clue what the right direction is anymore. That’s the only conclusion I can gather from the unending bad news about the economy.

There’s very little good news in any of the reports from the last six months. We’re hovering at or around 9.6% unemployment, and the only reason it’s that low is that people keep giving up and leaving the work force. We continue to hover around 450,000 people making new jobless claims each week, and there are over 5 million people receiving unemployment insurance.

So, the liberals are up in arms. They were, of course, up in arms in 2004 when unemployment was around 4.8%. Now that it’s double that, and has been for 14 straight months why wouldn’t they be up in arms?

Well, let’s take a look at what they’re upset about, shall we?

Ezra Klein is always good for getting the heartbeat of the typical liberal. So, what does he have to say?

The government is now impeding an economic recovery. But it's not for the reasons you often hear. It's not because of debt or because of taxes. Nor has it scared the private sector into timidity. It's because, at the state and local level, it's firing people. There are more than 14 million Americans looking for work right now -- to say nothing of the 9.5 million who have been forced into part-time jobs when they want, and need, full-time work -- and the government just added 159,000 more to the pool. Consider this: If we only counted private-sector jobs, we'd have had positive jobs reports for the last nine months. As it is, public-sector losses have wiped out private-sector gains for the past four months.

So, Ezra Klein is upset that state and local governments are cutting jobs. Don’t get me wrong. I feel bad for the 159,000 public service workers who lost their jobs last month. But…

Ezra’s solution to unemployment is for the government to hire everyone.

But wait, don’t we keep hearing about cities and states that are going bankrupt? Isn’t the US government coming closer to default with each passing day?

How’s Ezra going to pay for this?

He can’t. As Margaret Thatcher said [paraphrased], the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

I for one, am thrilled that state and local governments are cutting their budgets. They need to cut much deeper, as does the federal government. Unfortunately, this will likely keep the unemployment rate up for a while. But making government cost less helps us all in the long run, and even in the short run.

Liberals can’t see that. They think bigger government is the answer to every problem: unemployment, health care, global warming, home mortgages, and the list goes on and on.

If you think that we can borrow our way out of a recession that was caused by too much borrowing, then you’re in total agreement with Mr. Klein and Mr. Krugman.

If, however, you have some semblance of sanity, then do something about it. Vote the libs out of office. November 2.

22 days until the flood! (if that picture is starting to look redder, there’s nothing wrong with your monitor)