My Keynesian buddies keep telling me that the ongoing demoralization of the private sector has absolutely nothing to do with the $14 trillion federal debt and the $1.5 trillion annual deficit. That the Wall Street villains, who skated scot-free from the meltdown and then benefited from the bailouts, are primarily responsible for the loss of jobs, and that government has nothing to do with it.
Fooey. That presupposes that Wall Street and the feds are somehow natural antagonists, which is certainly no longer true, if it ever really was: Both the Bush and Obama administrations were and are a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs functionaries.
My New York Post column today takes a look at the underlying relationship among the lack of jobs, the stagnant economy, and the regulatory state’s parasitical demands on the private sector:
Meanwhile, long-suffering Americans living in the real world between Wall Street and Hollywood are crying: “When are the jobs coming back?”
Answer: Not until the government stops spending $1.5 trillion a year in money it doesn’t have and shows that it’s not going to “fix” the problem by sucking the life out of the private sector.
Last week, in a Bloomberg blog post that quickly went viral, Stephen Carter recounted a conversation with an executive who explained that, despite an improving business climate, he’s not about to add employees. “How can I hire new workers today,” he said, “when I don’t know how much they will cost me tomorrow?”
The pachyderm on the premises, of course, is the Great Society program known as Medicare, the visible manifestation of the law of unintended financial consequences.
Republicans need to turn the tables on the Democrats and make them pay at the ballot box for their fiscal malfeasance.
Every time the Democrats indulge in their emotional “MediScare” tactics — warning that the elderly (who are among the most well-off in society) will be forced to choose between dog food and health care — the Republicans need to come right back at them with the facts: Until entitlements are reformed and the regulatory state is reined in, we’re all in trouble.
For not only is Medicare doomed, but so is Social Security in its current form. Its trust fund will be exhausted in 2036, and its own trustees now warn that there’s little chance the trust fund will even exist beyond 2048.
So the mostly spineless Republicans — including House Speaker John Boehner, whose support for Ryan has been tepid at best — need to get with the program of truth-telling. Starting now, they must level with the American people about the parlous state of our finances and embrace — not flee from — the mantle of reform.
There’s nothing wrong with the Republican party that a leader or two won’t fix. What’s wrong with the party is that, aside from Paul Ryan, no one seems to want to step up and say: Enough.
The person who does that most forcefully will be the next president of the United States.