Fudging The Jobs Data
August 29, 2011 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Government
The following is an interesting article from Investor’s Business Daily I would like to share with my readers.
Fudging The Jobs Data
Posted 06/22/2011 06:47 PM ET
Economy: When President Obama claimed he created 2.1 million private-sector jobs, the first transcript had the audience responding with “laughter.” That’s since been changed to “applause,” but the joke’s on us in any case.
In Obama’s speech at a DNC event Monday, he bragged that “over the last 15 months we’ve created over 2.1 million private-sector jobs.” Apparently, according to the revised transcript, the audience applauded. Instead, they should have booed him off the stage.
Sure, 2.1 million jobs sounds like a lot. But you don’t have to look very hard to see that it’s definitely not something to boast about.
For starters, the number of private-sector jobs is still down by more than 2 million since Obama took office.
In fact, he gets to his 2.1 million growth figure only by starting his count in February 2010, when the employment figure bottomed out, conveniently ignoring the 4- million-plus jobs lost during his first year in office.
Worse, over those same 15 months the working-age population grew by 2.3 million, which means that we’ve actually lost ground on the jobs front.
Worse still, at this pace we’ll never close the enormous gap between jobs and population growth that opened up after the recession started in late 2007. (See chart.) According to the liberal Economic Policy Institute, we’d need 11 million more jobs today just to get us back on track.
No matter how you slice it, the jobs picture has gotten bleaker — not better — since Obama took office.
In the pipeline, according to a study by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the agency has 30 major regulations and more than 170 new major policy rules that will create massive new costs for utilities.
With this regulatory siege, Obama’s EPA is trying to get “cap-and-trade through the back door,” ALEC says, referring to a Democrat-backed but business-opposed approach to controlling pollution with economic incentives. The EPA “has pushed ahead in its regulatory onslaught without regard to economic realities or democratic accountability,” ALEC says.
Such hyperactive regulation is taking a toll. According to the Heritage Foundation’s Nicolas Loris, new EPA rules force “utilities to file for significant rate hikes in years to come because of the upgrades they will have to make or the complete shutdown of older plants.”
Utilities aren’t the only energy sector being hurt by government regulation. Exxon Mobil just announced a massive new oil find: 700 million barrels of crude more than a mile deep just waiting to be drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Only problem: The Obama administration still has a moratorium on drilling permits.
Contrary to peak-oil promoters and other pooh-pooh-ers of American potential, our country is rich in energy resources. These include 1.2 trillion barrels of oil, 2,500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 486 billion short tons of coal — plenty to power millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic output for hundreds of years. Policies that prevent their extraction defy logic.
