The Jobs Summit: Jobs Failure 2.0

J.D. Foster / December 03, 2009

The unemployment rate when President Obama took office last January was 7.6 percent and credit markets were in the throes of a global contagion. He immediately tasked Congress with passing a fiscal stimulus bill, and signed a $787 billion whopper in March.

Politicians rarely admit mistakes, especially big ones. Even so, Obama’s White House jobs summit on Thursday is just such an admission writ large. Stimulus 1.0 failed and now with unemployment having burst through 10 percent and climbing the President and the Congress are scrambling to cobble together Stimulus 2.0. The approach may differ from the previous failure, but if Congress legislates the policies floated so far, America’s unemployed should expect no help from Washington.

Washington repeatedly fails because it refuses to admit that almost without exception government actions do not increase employment on net. Only the private sector in pursuit of opportunity can create jobs on net. The best we can hope from government is that it keeps to a minimum the jobs it prevents and the income and wealth it destroys. (more…)