George Rebane

Rahm Emmanuel is not the only one who does not want to waste a good crisis.  Businesses across the country have attempted to use this recession like no other one to get rid of deadwood employees and reconfigure themselves to be more competitive in the marketplace.  With galloping technology allowing fewer people to produce more, the economy should be screaming.  But all around the world and now here in America, it is the cold hand of government that promotes both stasis and statism.

America has about 150 million workers of whom more than 10% are out of a job, that’s over 15 million unemployed.  And the abnormal part is that almost half of these unemployed have been out of work for over six months.  At this stage of our supposed recovery, this is scary.

Congress and the administration, instead of making it easy for companies to hire, have put unheard of levels of friction into the system, and promise to do much more.  Government has never figured out where to ‘invest’ (aka tax and spend) in order to grow the economy; we have known this since the beginning of WW2.

So now, instead of leaving money in the private sector so that it can be put to the best uses, the feds along with many states (e.g. California) are taking it for their vote buying stimulus programs, increasing taxes, raising the minimum wage, mandating job killing nationalized healthcare, removing reward from investment risk, mangling the energy markets, imposing ideologically driven green industries, promising to rob taxpayers to make good on union extorted government employee pensions, and increasing the size of an already bloated government payroll.

As an example of the above, when the new $7.25/hr minimum wage took effect, the WSJ reports that teen unemployment jumped to 26.4% in May, and in the 24-34 age range it rose to 10.5%.  Exactly the opposite of what one would expect in a recovery, since the lowest wage workers would be among the first to be re/hired.  We need to be aware that this extra-ordinary result also is due to the fact that we are in the pre-Singularity years.  The approaching Singularity will only exacerbate unemployment for the under- and mis-educated workers.

Endnote – Last week I recorded a two program series on the Singularity for NCTV.  It will be shown on the Nevada County station within the next two weeks and also posted as streaming video on the station’s website.  I want to thank station manager Paul Minicucci and program director Gail Woodman for inviting me to do the series, and for their interest in informing the public.