The most destructive force in the American economy is not regulators, though they are certainly part of it. It’s not even the bureaucrats who order them around, though their hands are filthy as well. It’s the politicians who run the show, but more specifically it is the politician running for office or reelection who are the termites of jobs and economic growth.
The political promises made to voters create uncertainty about the future, the promises kept inevitably create the drain on growth, and politicians scrambling for votes who promise anything and everything are the foundational rot that makes it so difficult to have growth sustained over any length of time.
If they would just leave us alone, if they could get out of our way, we’d all be much better off. There’d also be a fairly large contingent of Americans who’d realize they don’t need nearly as much government as they think they do and they have. That’s what terrifies the political class more than anything – people realizing they create most of the “problems” they campaign to fix.
California is a prime example. There isn’t a bad economic idea that isn’t on the receiving end of a deep, wet kiss from the Democrats in control out there. State-provided health care for illegal aliens? Sounds great! A $20 an hour minimum wage? What could go wrong?
A lot, it turns out.
California is now spending $6.5 billion more this year than last on their “compassionate” health care plan. The state has a $27.6 billion budget deficit that they have no idea how to close, and Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic Party legislators who run the state just proposed a budget that “includes a $97 million cut to trial court operations, $10 million to the Department of Justice's Division of Law Enforcement and more than $80 million to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.”
What could possibly go wrong?
But promises were made, and that makes it a little difficult to feel sorry for a state that actively chose those people as their leaders. It’s not a coincidence that California also has the highest unemployment rate and, thanks to the politician-imposed $20 minimum wage is the fast food industry, the California Business and Industrial Alliance found nearly 10,000 fast food jobs have already been cut since the new wage went into effect earlier this year. That’s like walking into a wall with a big sign reading “DO NOT WALK INTO THIS WALL” painted in bold letters at eye level.
This is pretty common, actually, and not just on the west coast. It’s everywhere, to one degree or another.
Remember the sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel that had every politician all upset because Nippon is a Japanese company? There really wasn’t any other reason, it’s just an election year and the idea of an American company being sold to a foreign one plays well, especially among people not directly running risk of losing their livelihoods should the company ultimately go out of business without some company buying it.
The deal, which I’m sure you haven’t thought about since you first heard about it, is still in limbo because there’s political mileage to be made from it. Meanwhile, thousands of US steelworkers, our fellow Americans, have to live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads while the government, and even their own union, dithers and plays politics with their lives.
What’s the alternative, really? Bankruptcy is a real one. Or another company, a US company, offers significantly less money for the company and lays off some, most or all the steelworkers and strips the company bare by selling it for parts. What could go wrong?
The only other suitor to come forward so far, Cleveland-Cliffs, is watching its stock downgraded, which doesn’t bode well for US workers
I’m not one to care too much about someone banging their head against a wall while complaining about a headache, especially after I suggest to them that they might want to stop the banging and they don’t, but union leadership is not union membership, and union leadership is more interested in playing politics for their team than they seem to be interested in playing it smart for their members. As one Nippon executive called it, it sure seems like a “nightmare.”
Not all politicians work in government, and those who do and don’t in these cases sure seem more interested in an election than job security. They can push for wages under the guise of helping “justice” that ends up harming thousands of people their “help” was supposed to be for. And they can campaign and xenophobe thousands of Americans right into the unemployment line.
For politicians, election days are finish lines; points where their promises can become actions or empty, or become perpetual issues they can campaign on for years. For everyone else, we have to live in the world with the consequences of those promises, empty or kept. Unfortunately, none of this addresses the real problem of people looking to government to solve their problems, many of which were created by government, in the first place.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.