Market Anarchy

I posted some earlier about the U-6 unemployment rate being over 16% while the media has been spouting that unemployment is only 9%. 

John Lott asks the same question. 

This is the arrogance of socialist central planners: Obama believes he and his administration know better than individual companies how they can earn the most money. 

This pretty much sums up everything right here.

President Obama has a message for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today: You have an obligation to start creating jobs. The government has done what it needs to do and any failure lies with the private sector. 

Indeed, the job numbers are bleak. Unemployment fell last month, but only because Americans have given up looking for work in record numbers. On net, 319,000 quit looking for work and left the work force in December. In November, it was even worse, 434,000. Over 1.5 million American have left the workforce since August. 

Just 36,000 net jobs were added in December. — That is far fewer than the about 150,000 needed just to keep up with the growth in the population. 

This is a strange “recovery.” Recoveries almost always add people to the labor force. As more jobs open up, recoveries are supposed to mean that people who had previously left the labor force during the recession hope they now have a chance to get a job and start looking again. Thus, they officially rejoin the labor force. 

It is simply unprecedented that 19 months into the recovery, more and more Americans keep on quitting the labor force. (Here is a diagram that compares the growth in the number of people “not in the labor force” during the recoveries that started in 1982 and 2009.) 

But to President Obama, the failure for this anemic job growth is clear. He believes that government programs have created the ideal conditions for economic growth, and any failure to create jobs is the problem of businesses. 

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, after listing what he clearly regards as all the wonderful policies that were supposed to stir new investment and job growth, Mr. Obama added: 

“Businesses have a responsibility, too. If we make America the best place to do business, businesses should make their mark in America. They should set up shop here, and hire our workers, and pay decent wages, and invest in the future of this nation. That’s their obligation.” 

Making “America the best place to do business,” in Mr. Obama’s perspective, refers to the many wonderful economic interventions his administration has implemented. 

In his radio address, he mentioned subsidizing the research in green energy. To “win the future,” we just need to make “more efficient lighting and windows to heating and cooling…make buildings more energy-efficient… making windows and insulation and buildings that save more energy.”