Jobs Summit

It was announced sometime last week that President Obama was going to hold a Jobs Summit at the White House in the near future. His position is that despite saving the economy from a massive meltdown by an infusion of debt called the Stimulus Package, businesses are just not hiring. Unemployment is hovering in the low double-digits, and Obama and his advisors are scratching their heads over how to solve this problem. So they’re going to invite a diverse group of thinkers – economists, intellectuals, and even union leaders – to debate how the government can create more jobs.

Okay. Deep breath. Where to begin?

How about a disclaimer. I am not an economist nor am I active in politics. But I am an intelligent man, a college graduate and avid reader and writer, and I was laid off eight months ago for economic reasons. I’ve met with three headhunters. I’ve applied to over twenty jobs online, even to an opening with my wife’s employer. I’ve mailed out over 140 resumes and cover letters to targeted local businesses. All this effort has resulted in securing for me exactly one interview. I was one applicant among several for the position, and was turned down because I was overqualified. Which I was.

So I have direct experience of the Obama Recession. I am a victim. I am one of the underclass. Doesn’t President Obama view me, therefore, as a constituent? Don’t I make up his base, at least theoretically? So, shouldn’t he be interested in what I have to say?

I don’t think so, considering what you’ll be reading in this post.

I know how to end this recession, get the economy booming, and get us back to normal employment.

It would necessarily involve President Obama changing his game plan, though.

But first, let’s address the question of why businesses are not hiring. I think the reason’s pretty straightforward. They are uncertain of the future, so they maintain their status quo, try to make do with what they have at the present moment. Like ships floundering in a storm, they throw overboard all the non-essential equipment (and sometimes even personnel) that they can and row hard back to port with whatever’s remaining. Another way of stating this uncertainty, a way that I think is fair, is to say that American businesses are, by and large, scared.

Why this fear, this uncertainty of the future? The stock market is slowly recovering, sort of. But businesses are not expanding, not growing, not hiring. Heck, banks aren’t even lending to them to aid them to do so if they wanted. Banks are sitting on their money. The entire private sector is acting very, very cautious. Kinda like a socially awkward kid at a dance, trying to fade into the background, motionless against the wall to keep from being noticed. So, why all this fear?

I think it’s because American business is scared of President Obama’s agenda. By “agenda” I mean all that he and his advisors have done, are doing, and said they want to do. It also includes the discrepancy, both perceived and actualized, between their words and their actions.

Do you agree?

I think it’s as simple as that. If I’m wrong or off the mark, please, let me know.

So, how to turn this ship around, and get back some prosperity?

First, drop the overhaul of the health care system. Half of the population doesn’t want such a drastic and rushed razing and rebuilding of one-seventh of the economy, one so extremely vital and important to us all. If the pressing emergency is the xx million uninsured, address them. Fix Medicare/Medicaid and roll those uninsured into the new revisioning. Whatever. Then, begin work on a half-dozen separate bills designed to address specific problems in the health care system. An important bill should address tort reform, which is rarely mentioned in soundbites but I think is a big chunk of the problem. Keep the bills simple, specific, and unladen with pork. Aim to get two passed a year. By the end of his four-year tenure, President Obama will have fixed the leaks in our health care system. And businesses will not be terrified they alone will be footing the bill.

Second, cut taxes across the board by ten percent. Why the heck not? Put government on a diet and give the guy on the street ten percent more of his paycheck to put in his pocket. He’ll either spend it or bank it, so we’ll have that much more consumption or investment. Either way is a prescription for a bustling economy. Same thing for businesses. Let them keep more of their money. They’ll also consume or invest, and hiring employees is a major investment businesses will have to make to expand.

Third, give incentives for businesses to hire, in the form of tax credits. Again, why the heck not? Let’s assume an average new employee costs a business $100,000 a year in salary and benefits. Give the company a $5,000 tax break if they keep the employee a year. Or prorate rate the credit depending on the length of employment. It’s a drop in the bucket to a business but it will change perspectives and have a long-term positive effect. Right now, CEOs and CFOs are looking at every new hire primarily as a liability, rather than an asset.

This thinking is undergirded with the old-time American philosophy that we are not in a class war. Indeed, there is no such thing as class warfare. What is good for the upper classes, the “owners of capital” as one nineteenth-century German intellectual once phrased it, is good for the lower classes, the “workers” or “proletariat.” It’s a symbiotic relationship. How can it not be? How? How is the success of one not bound up in the success of the other?

This thinking also has a proven track record of success. Again, I’m not a political scientist nor an economist, but I have read that similar measures have been taken, successfully, going back to Calvin Coolidge, and more recently, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Even Bill Clinton stopped pushing through Hillarycare when he saw how unpopular it was throughout the country.

Can we just put the financial well-being of the country first, above ideology?

Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question. Besides, I think I know the answer.