Tag Archives: jobs

An Argument for Positive Immigration Flows

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James Pethokoukis, writing in a different context, presented evidence in his AEIdeas piece for us doing better with our immigration policies. First, see the graph below, with particular attention to the “Increases in the workforce (labor inputs)” part of the bars.LaborProductivityAndImmigration_BetterVersion

Pethokoukis’ argument centered on Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s promise to work toward a 4% GDP growth annual rate if he’s elected; Pethokoukis argued that would be hard to achieve because of shortfalls in the availability of actual laborers.

[A]bout half of US growth in the postwar era has come from higher productivity, and half from a growing labor force. But American society is getting older and working less. Given much slower labor force growth, much higher productivity is needed to make up the difference. If productivity growth just stays at its postwar average—and it’s been much slower lately—the economy’s growth potential is much lower than in the past. As economics blogger Bill McBride writes, “Right now, due to demographics, 2 percent GDP growth is the new 4 percent.”

That’s the evidence and the argument. Pethokoukis and McBride based their argument regarding demographics on birth rates. The fact is, though, birth rates aren’t the only source of new labor. Immigration not only would fill the gap; immigrants would do so promptly: they’re already wanting in (and 11 million of them are already here awaiting some mechanism to let them come out of the shadows and be fully productive—for the US).

We need to quit messing around, and find a way to strictly secure our borders while making it far easier than it is now for immigrants to enter our nation legally (which, incidentally, would put a very serious hole in coyotes’ and other human traffickers’ business), and we need to find a way to help the illegals here already (actually, the majority of them whose only crime is their illegal entry and who have otherwise been solid, productive members of their communities) gain legal status.

And get 4% GDP growth. The idea that “2 percent GDP growth is the new 4 percent” is just the contemptibly defeatist attitude of a quitter.

Progressive Tax Credits

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Targeting youth unemployment, Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to propose tax credits to encourage businesses to train young people and offer apprenticeships to develop lifelong job skills.

Clinton’s campaign said she would outline a proposed tax credit of $1,500 for every apprentice that a business hires….

Here’s a thought. How about lowering taxes altogether and getting the tax code out of the business of social engineering? With suitably low taxes, you wouldn’t need to play games with taxes as inducements to do this or as discouragements from doing that.

With suitably low taxes and the code out of the business of social engineering, businesses could spend their energies on sound business planning rather than on shopping around for a tax deal.

With suitably low taxes and the code out of the business of encouraging this or discouraging that, there’d be less need for special interest groups or lobbyists to push for this or that Very Important Consideration in our tax code. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)

There’s this, too, in Clinton’s plan:

The campaign said the tax credit proposal would require accountability for employment and earnings outcomes for businesses receiving the credit. Apprentices would need to be registered in order to be eligible.

The Progressive gives, and the Progressive takes away.   The savings gained from her tax credit will be fully recouped in the costs of compliance. However, the government will grow, and more IRS bureaucrats will be hired, so it’s all good.

Note, too, that this doesn’t begin to address jobs availability in the ensuing robust, growing economy.

Cowardice

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A brief post about the movie Aloha. This is a movie I don’t intend to watch anytime soon because I don’t go to theaters to watch movies. I don’t need to see it, anyway, for this post; I’m commenting on the hoo-raw surrounding it.

One such is the bellyaching about the movie’s name. Not supposed to name a movie about a Hawaiian person “Aloha” because that word has special meaning to Hawaii’s special snowflakes. I guess that means no one better make a movie about a Texan and call it “Howdy.” Boy howdy.

Then there’s this:

Cameron Crowe has apologized for offending anyone over his casting of Emma Stone in a partially Asian, partially Hawaiian role in his film “Aloha.”

Never mind that Stone is, by all accounts, a fine actress. Never mind, either, that one of her character’s hang-ups was the lack of any outward sign of her Chinese/Hawaiian ethnicity; the character looked like a white girl. Like the actress who played her does. Mm, mm. Gotta whine about that, too. In response, Crowe’s being downright chicken. And in his cowardice, he’s throwing Stone under the Oahu Bus.

In the end, this is folks wasting their talent and energy looking for excuses to be offended. It isn’t pure cowardice, not by the whiners or by guys like Crowe; it’s worse than that. It’s insidious, it’s a running away from the truth of life.

Government Unions

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Elizabeth MacDonald had some thoughts in a three-parter for Fox Business.

Wouldn’t you like to have a job where you get paid to slack off, and no matter what, have a powerful authority to back you up, winning battles to preserve your salary, benefits, and your every demand if your boss tries to fire you?

It’s a fact of life for many government workers.

Here are some of the horror stories she’s discovered.

[F]ederal labor unions are winning fights against federal agencies who try to fire their union workers for letting mentally ill military veterans walk out the door of psychiatric units in Veterans Affairs hospitals, or for not catching things like a major rat infestation in a food factory. Instead, union lawyers are getting their members’ jobs, back-pay, and benefits reinstated, all at taxpayer expense.

Plainly, it’s not only the VA that doesn’t give a hoot about our veterans.

[D]espite the fact that cyber attacks on the government are on the rise, a federal union recently won a case that stopped Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from immediately blocking workers’ personal email accounts on government computers, like Hotmail or Gmail. Such accounts are often loaded with computer viruses or malware.

Instead, the union is forcing these security agencies to first enter into protracted collective bargaining over the use of personal webmail accounts, putting the government at risk of cyber-attacks at a time when security experts note cyber criminals, terrorists and nation states like China are increasingly trying to break in.

Just last week Russian cyber thieves were blamed for the hack into the IRS, where tax return data for 104,000 individuals was stolen in order to get fraudulent tax refunds, now estimated at $50 million. Hackers broke into the IRS’s Internet service that lets taxpayers access their past tax returns.

On top of that, the People’s Republic of China, it’s only just been discovered, has hacked into OPM to steal the personal data of 4 million Federal employees.

Then there’s this naked threat from a Federal union.

“We are a force to be reckoned with and we are a force that will open up the biggest can of whoop ass on anyone” who votes against the interests of federal unions, J David Cox Sr, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), recently said, adding, “every time the ‘fools’ in Congress try to hurt the federal workforce we get bigger. We get stronger, and we fight harder.”

RTWT. All three parts.

These are completely sufficient reasons to do two things. One is to generally shrink the physical and employee size of the Federal government along with its scope so as to make it far easier for We the People to monitor and control it. The other thing is to eliminate government unions. Their usefulness is long past, and they have become actively destructive of good government.

Energy Subsidies

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Mr [Congressman Dave, R, WA] Reichert is co-sponsoring legislation to extend the PTC [Production Tax Credit] because the subsidies “reduce electricity costs and create jobs.”

But what jobs? Lower costs for whom? Who do you think pays that subsidy? Three years later, there still aren’t any in significant number. Electricity costs aren’t lower for the producers, and Reichert still hasn’t explained who’s paying for those subsidies (answer: we taxpayers are).

Mr [Congressman Steve, R, IA] King, who likes to advertise himself as a principled conservative, his line is that “Iowa is a wind energy success story” that only needs the federal government to “provide stable, low tax rates.”

Three years later, again left unanswered: if it’s so successful, why does it need federal subsidies? Why does it need subsidies at all? Why does it need continuation of subsidies as old as 1992—now 23 years on?

Oh, wait:

One need not literally seize the assets of businesses and install gov’t bureaucrats into management position to effectively nationalize those businesses. All it takes is to make them dependent on gov’t and/or direct their activities through regulatory constraints.

Or government subsidies.