Obama’s “Bad Luck” On Jobs

He made it, and continues to make it himself.

In the last Congress we saw the passage of two of the biggest expansions in federal regulatory power in decades (and possibly ever). Obama’s health care law and the Dodd-Frank financial legislation were each about 2,000 pages of broad grants of authority and discretion to regulators, the implications of which are just now beginning to be felt.

On top of that we’ve seen an astonishing train wreck of new energy regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including an aggressive effort to discover elements of the failed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation inside the forty-year-old Clean Air Act. The EPA is now contemplating its most aggressively anti-jobs regulation: an out-of-cycle re-proposal of smog rules that would ratchet down levels so far beyond what is necessary for public health that nearly the whole country would be judged “out of attainment” and over seven millions jobs would be lost. The EPA is also attempting to impose an absurd 54.5 mile-per-gallon fuel economy standard that will take any car worth driving off the market.

Not to be outdone, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is intent on rewarding the union bosses with elements of the failed card check legislation, including an effort to allow unions to impose ambush elections – before workers have an opportunity to understand the costs associated with forming a union. Most chilling from the NLRB is the effort of their acting, not confirmed, general counsel Lafe Solomon to dictate to Boeing (and, by precedent, all potential employers) where they can locate facilities that employ thousands of people.

It’s worth reprising the old Heinlein quote: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’”

[Update a while later]

You don’t say. The Democrats’ “green jobs” plan is a bust:

The skepticism from Waters and Cleaver comes after a Washington Post-ABC poll, published July 26, found serious erosion in liberal Democratic support for Obama’s jobs policies. “The number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent,” the Post reported.

That skepticism is based on real-world evidence. “In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned,” says the New York Times in a new report from California. “President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream.”

For example, the paper reports that California received $186 million in the stimulus bill for the purpose of weatherizing homes. So far, the state has spent about half of the money and created the equivalent of 538 jobs. “The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry,” the Times reports. “Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on as homeowners balked at the upfront costs.”

Unexpectedly!

But of course, the president being the president, he doubles down on the idiocy:

Nevertheless, President Obama continues to focus much of his economic efforts on green jobs. When he travels the country to highlight various industries, he often chooses renewable energy firms. And when he talks to supporters about his work to grow the economy, it’s often in terms of green jobs.

What was that old saying about the definition of insanity?

[Update a few minutes later]

Atlas is sort of shrugging:

Every president lets slip a smear now and then. The key is that there should be little consistency or frequency in his targeting. But with Obama there is both monotony and predictability. He clearly does not like private businesses — except the super wealthy who are liberal and share his refined tastes and politics and have enough millions in “unneeded income” that they figure they will either die before or weather through our transition to European democratic socialism.

Of course, one Huey Long–like “fat cat,” an occasional adolescent “millionaires and billionaires,” a once-in-a-while juvenile “corporate jet owners,” a few 1960s-like “spread the wealth” or “redistributive change” slips, a single petulant “unneeded income,” or a sole pop-philosophizing “at some point you’ve made enough money,” or even on occasion the old socialist boilerplate “those who make over $250,000 should pay their fair share” in isolation are tolerable. But string them together and even the tire store owner and pharmaceutical rep are aroused from their 70-hour weeks, and start to conclude, “Hmmm, this guy doesn’t like me or what I do, and I better make the necessary adjustments.” And, believe me, they are making the necessary adjustments.

They’re waiting for a new president, and Congress. Less than a year and a half to go.

[Update a while later]

The president’s priorities:

It will not be lost on many Americans that the president found time before going on vacation to issue an order regarding racial bean-counting, but deferred issuing a plan to increase the overall number of jobs until sometime in September. The question is whether this is more a reflection of the administration’s priorities or of its competencies.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say both.

[Mid-morning update]

Regulators chasing farmers off the farms. More bad luck, I guess.

24 thoughts on “Obama’s “Bad Luck” On Jobs”

  1. I have a theory on why Liberals are so terrible at creating jobs:

    Liberals think that the way to create jobs is to do favors for businesses. For example, Boeing comes in and requests a no-bid contract. If a liberal wants to “increase jobs”, they give Boeing whatever they want.

    What they don’t realize is that now, since Boeing doesn’t have to compete as hard, the net effect is less jobs. Lockheed has to let someone go, Armadillo doesn’t grow as fast, etc. This is what that recent economic study showed, that doing favors for businesses doesn’t help the economy.

    Of course, this is obvious to most people: a business is hardly likely to ask for something that actually improves competition! And since there are lots of businesses, when the government picks the winner there will always be more losers than winners.

  2. Well we need all those regulations to justify the army of bureaucrats so as to take up the unemployment slack in a dwindling workforce of over-regulated private workers.

    1. Break private windows
    2. Create public, union-organized window makers
    3. Profit!!11!

  3. “They’re waiting for a new president, and Congress. Less than a year and a half to go.”

    Maybe that is why everyone from Bill Bennett to Scott Walker is frantic to draft Paul Ryan. Don’t know his grades, but he seems like the kind of person who got good grades.

    We are out of options. Not only are the grades of the President a State Secret, the known grades of the Republican front runner as of right now are nothing to brag about.

    A “D” in Feeds and Animal Feeding? You might be dismissive of Feeds and Animal Feeding as a serious course for a four-year degree-granting institution. But for all I know, the course could be quite rigorous in terms of biology and chemistry, and it may require some serious memorization to pass the exams.

    But the Land Grant Colleges and the system of agricultural education, practical training, and dissemination of plant and animal research in this great country of ours is best in the world. Agricultural is the foundation of our national prosperity.

    For a man who wants to be President of the United States, to have given the course in Feeds and Animal Feeding so little of his attention and personal effort so as to receive a “D”, for a man whose father was a farmer to have done this, for a man to show so little regard that it borders on contempt for a subject that is at the very core of our great nation, that is the very engine of our wealth and prosperity, such a thing is at the depths of, dare I say the word, treason!

  4. There is no known correlation between the grades someone got in college and their ability to be a good president. By far the best president of my lifetime went to Eureka College back in the days before grade inflation. The last four presidents have all earned Ivy League degrees and each has been something of a disappointment if not an outright disaster. Further, the more that an administration’s cabinet is populated by a bunch of lawyers that look like America instead of people with actual experience in those fields, the worse the outcome.

    What liberals and academics fail to realize is that government can’t be a net producer of private sector jobs. Oh, it can give money to one company that can create jobs but only after taking from from the economy first, either by taxation or borrowing.

    While government can’t create private sector jobs, it sure as hell can destroy them as Obama is proving. The best thing government can do is to get out of the way by reducing excessive regulations and taxation, the very opposite of what Obama is doing.

    The Republicans need to be beating Obama over the head with these facts. Every time Obama proposes more of his stupid policies, he needs to be countered.

    How will raising taxes on corporations improve the economy?
    How will raising taxes on “the rich” increase jobs?
    How will thousands of new regulations increase private sector jobs?

  5. They’re waiting for a new president, and Congress. Less than a year and a half to go.

    Less than five and one-half years: Obama is going to be re-elected.

    The Republicans are going to nominate .. the same guy they always nominate in this situation: the next guy in line.

    Whoever is this year’s Bob Dole or John McCain.

    Obama has not changed: he’s still the guy he was in 2008. The same people that voted for him then are going to vote for him again. He might loose some of them. But not enough.

    I’d like it to be otherwise. Ron Paul or a Gary Johnson could really light up the GOP and kick butt.

    I fully expect the Republican party to live down to my expectations and give them a big pass.

  6. “There is no known correlation between the grades someone got in college and their ability to be a good president. ”

    But to get a “D” in Feeds and Animal Feeding communicates an utter contempt for the principles on which the prosperity of our great nation is founded. Is this of such small consequence in a President? Are you one of those “vegans” who doesn’t eat meat?

  7. “We should all be in favor of more green jobs. Jobs that pay lots of green.”

    Then why do people around here favor the blanket Walker pay cuts?

  8. why Liberals are so terrible at creating jobs

    Liberals in politics are. Govt has no business ‘creating’ jobs.

    Liberals in business create jobs all the time. It’s strange that liberals that own businesses remain liberal. Then again, learning is not a life long process for some.

  9. Well, Gallup just released a poll showing Obama under 50% in support from Hispanics. If he is close to that level, combined with the double-dip stagcession, I am beginning to wonder just how badly he is going to lose and how many Senate Seats the Republicans will gain.

    This is starting to show early sighs of being an absolute electoral slaugher for the Democrats.

    I don’t think it will be quite Walter Mondale 84 but somewhere between McGovern 72 and Carter 80. At least 12 new Republican Senators too.

  10. @Paul,

    “We should all be in favor of more green jobs. Jobs that pay lots of green.”

    Then why do people around here favor the blanket Walker pay cuts?

    Because highly paid private sector jobs normally require the employee to be generating far more revenue than they’re paid, so well compensated employees are an indicator of high productivity.

    For example, employees who generate just $20 an hour in revenue aren’t going to be paid $30 an hour or the companies employing them go bankrupt.

    In contrast, until the public sector goes bankrupt (which it is rapidly doing), it can pay employees $100 an hour for $10 an hour productivity. They have no competition and can just bill the taxpayer. Public sector compensation is not an indicator of productivity, but of political influence. The money sucked out of the private sector to pay warm bodies is then no longer available to pay private sector employees whose productivity actually exceeds their wages.

  11. http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Seattle-green-jobs-program-falls-short-of-goals-2057897.php

    $20m grant from the feds.

    McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

    But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.

  12. “Then why do people around here favor the blanket Walker pay cuts?”

    Well it allowed WI schools to hire more teachers so why is the left against Walker? More teachers means a bigger base for the union, more dues, and more political influence with the Democrats. Why is the left going ape-shit about something that is in their own best interests?

  13. Good grades? The Duke of Wellington never went to university, Napoleon had an excellent formal military education for the time. But what Wellington did was read a lot. When he was sent to India early in his career, he took along a big pile of books for the six month trip by sailing ship. And we all know who won at Waterloo. As for Obambinomics, what he and the junior commissars he hung out with in Chicago want to do is enlarge the dependency class. If it weren’t for the political blowback, Obambi and his friends would be perfectly content with a permanent 7-8% unemployment rate, just like they’ve had in Europe forever. They were very surprised when most people outside the Dems hard left, and the their own inner circle didn’t buy into the less jobs, more govt benefits model.

  14. “Well it allowed WI schools to hire more teachers so why is the left against Walker?”

    It’s not just the Left, people.

    Hypothetically speaking, hypothetically now. Suppose there is some guy with a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering working at LockMart, whose salary is funded out of cost-plus defense contracts. Suppose, again hypothetically, that the poison pill came through on the Debt Ceiling Deal and the boom falls on defense spending. Yeah, yeah, national defense, yeah, yeah, China is invading Taiwan as soon as they find out we are too broke to deploy the JSF, but think of the grandchildren and the burden of public debt. Suppose, again hypothetically, that the salary of everyone at LockMart gets cut 8 percent no ifs ands or buts, and suppose yet again hypothetically, that it is the Machinists’ Union that starts hyperventilating. I mean, how dare they! They get to keep their jobs! This is about National Defense, and think of the grandchildren and the National Debt Clock!

    Suppose that this guy we are talking about is actually as wingnutty as our esteemed host and provider of bandwidth Rand. Suppose this guy thought all along that unions were stupid, but now that his PhD-in-a-hard-science-educated-self-actually-benefits-from-the-Machinists’-Union-stirring things up. Suppose Aerospace Engineering PhD guy is put out with the whole Right Blogosphere taking this patronizing ‘tude to anyone earning any money tied to a government function? Suppose the position of the Right Blogosphere is, “Hey, here is this dude who called himself a Conservative but he is as much a moocher-thug-leech-parasite as all of the rest of them, thank you very much. The dude should get a life and work for, dunno, Elon Musk if he had any talent.”

    I am telling you, the Right Blogosphere is on a tear of Purity of Essence, and who needs anyone in public service employment because they are all lefties, who needs the RINO’s in Congress because we have the Tea Party to kick backsides and take names (over at Hot Air, folks are tearing into Peter King right now, Peter King of all people for telling Rick Perry to cool it and take it down a notch)?

    Politics is about coalitions, politics is about smoothing over the rough edges and hurt feelings. By the time the Tea Party/Conservative Movement/Libertarian Movement/Right Blogosphere is through, we will have a shiny new hard-edged political movement, but with nobody in it. And with Mr. Obama serving a second term.

  15. “Politics is about coalitions, politics is about smoothing over the rough edges and hurt feelings. ”

    Which must be why the Democrats always try to drive wedges between race, gender, class, and religion.

  16. “Which must be why the Democrats always try to drive wedges between race, gender, class, and religion.”

    Yes indeed, the Democrats do drive wedges, I will concentrate on class here. Corporate jets. Millionaires and billionaires. Shared sacrifice. Make ’em pay. The Dems act stupid and so can we.

    So then the Republican/Tea Party plan is do drive wedges on PSEs? The thing about the Capitol Square protests is not how large they were but how small. For however many protesters, there were large multiples of PSEs not complaining publically, going on doing the jobs they are payed to do.

    All of them are not happy campers about the changes. I know one guy, one of those “technicians” in hard-science academia that we had such a good laugh at a couple of threads ago around here for thinking that he is Chuck Norris. He took his retirement at the end of the fiscal year this summer as did a large number of our highly experienced tech people, not so much of what had been done to pensions but what was being threatened. He told me that the hardest part was not so much the changes but the attitude with his pals back in the ‘hood where he lived (i.e. in rural Dane County outside of the Socialist Republic of Madison), the attitude that he was among the moochers, leeches, spongers, and parasites.

    So how are we any different than the Democrats? Those guys are going “rich!”, “rich!”, “rich!” as if they are saying “witch!”, “witch!”, “witch!”. Our guys are going “union thugs!”, “union thugs!”, “union thugs!” (my guy was what we called Classified Staff, i.e. one of the union people, instead of Academic Staff, i.e. one of the scabs in state employ).

    Along the line of Mr. Obama’s/Mr. Heinlein’s “bad luck”, I guess we have given up on growing the pie let alone preventing the pie from shrinking. We have bought into the idea that we all need to fight over what is left, with the Dems piling on “the rich” and our guys piling on any working stiff in the employ of the government. Good luck with that political strategy, and we will see how that all turns out, say, in the next 6 years at the very least.

  17. Paul M,

    Dude! You are typing all of this content, yet to be honest I can’t really figure out what your point is after reading all of this, you just have some kind of incoherent “I am not happy” theme that is high on finger-pointing and low on suggesting solutions.

    It is so much simpler than what you go on and on about: policies that are unsustainable must change. And that old adage proves its worth yet again…if someone is not part of the solution then that someone is part of the problem.

  18. This is known as ‘bad luck.’

    Yup. Never more true than today. Amazingly, actions do have consequences. …or should I have said, unexpectedly. It keeps being unexpected because these people are incapable of learning. Perhaps because they really have nothing to learn. Things are working out for them so far.

    In the case of jobs I do believe this admin wants more of them but only if it means more political support. That’s it. End of story. It is entirely about cronyism and constituency.

    Nancy Pelosi saying unemployment insurance is a net gain for the economy is the poster child. Does she herself actually believe it? Who knows and it doesn’t matter. What matters is their ideas will kill us but they don’t have a brake pedal. No matter what they will just push that gas pedal harder regardless of overall results or ‘unexpected’ direction it takes us.

    Enjoy the bus ride… ‘cuz we are not getting off for more than another year (I think of all the damage he did in just his first few months… but think that may be over and we’ll make it. I could be wrong.)

  19. Paul, every penny of public sector employee salary and benefits are paid by taxpayers. It takes the taxes of many taxpayers to pay the salary of a single public sector employee. Between union and civil service rules, it’s damned near impossible to fire them no matter how poorly they perform, and yet they demand higher compensation than the average private sector taxpayer. That’s simply absurd.

    If public sector employees were so good for the economy, why no do like Cuba and make virtually everyone in the country a government employee? However, a doctor in Cuba makes about $50 a month. Would your fellow PSEs be willing to work for that?

  20. I’m shocked as hell at that myself M Puckett. You can’t imagine what life is like living inside (not just under) this black cloud all the time. But I think they’ve gummed up the works to the point that they’ve run out of steam (like my mixed metaphors… I got a million of ’em.)

    I’m also coding again and having fun doing it. Haven’t done that for years. It’s not some drugs, the doctors are idiots and I’ve stopped taken all except diabetes medicine.

    I’ve had a version of this program in mind since high school when disco ruled. It’s coming together. Next year I’ll put the database on some provider and be looking for some testers. I hope some from this crowd take part.

    Thank you for noticing. It helps. In part because I myself would tend not to notice. You made my day.

  21. Paul, you wrote:

    Suppose this guy thought all along that unions were stupid, but now that his PhD-in-a-hard-science-educated-self-actually-benefits-from-the-Machinists’-Union-stirring things up. Suppose Aerospace Engineering PhD guy is put out with the whole Right

    Look for a new job and get back into the game. He’s done the right thing, saving for the future, right? So he’s got some room to maneuver. Sure, he can blame whoever he wants. It is a free country. But that doesn’t mean he’s entitled to a job at our expense.

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