Corie Whalen

Originally published at the US Daily Review

To be blunt, the employment numbers released by the Labor Department today are absolutely dismal.

As the Washington Post reported:

“The Labor Department on Friday reported zero net job creation in August, far worse than the 68,000 net jobs analysts had expected to be added. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.1 percent. The July job growth number was revised downward, as well, to only 85,000 jobs added that month — not the 117,000 estimated.”

Of course, these monthly numbers are ‘unexpected’ to the chattering class disciples of Keynesian theory who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe that government looting private citizens and spending money we don’t have will create sustainable employment.

The scenario is dreadful. Anxious people are looking for a scapegoat. Enter the desperate Left-Elite, taking disgusting political advantage of the fact that being under and/or unemployed breeds resentment. So, who to blame other than themselves, they contemplate. Why, ‘the rich’, of course! You know, that nebulous collection of evil sub-humans who take advantage of the middle class by employing us. They’re the perfect target!

This is the path the Left-Elite goes down, of course, because it’s easier to spew poisonous class warfare rhetoric than to admit failures and change course in such a way that would involve diminishing some of their own power over the citizenry. Despite the fact that it’s been mathematically proven time and again that if we taxed every ‘rich’ individual at 100% it wouldn’t even make a dent in our national debt, the political elite continue to bite the hand that feeds.

Take, for example, this thought experiment from The Wall Street Journal in response to President Obama’s speech in April that he gave in lieu of submitting a palatable budget. (At the time of this writing, it has been 856 days since Democrats passed a budget because the President’s proposal was rejected in the Senate unanimously).

Per WSJ:

“Assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the “millionaires and billionaires” Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.”

Of course, beyond the fact that taxing all of these nefarious  “millionaires and billionaires” isn’t a sustainable solution to our systemic overspending problem, the President’s ‘plan’, doesn’t take into account the collateral damage. Maybe the reason I’m so incensed by all of this is the personal angle. While there was no net job creation in August per the aforementioned report, my full time job was created last month, in Texas mind you, by none other than a few ‘horrible’, ‘selfish’, ‘uncaring’ rich guys. And guess what? They’re a brilliant, well-meaning, incredible group of individuals whose success I find inspiring. They’ve created an opportunity for me to further my career in a meaningful way; a scenario that wouldn’t exist if more of their earnings were confiscated by a greedy government that just can’t seem to get enough (and continues to spend significantly more than it takes in).

The achievements of people diligent enough to acquire the kind of wealth these ‘awful’ rich individuals have should be held up as models – not torn down for political agendas that prey on jealousy and insecurity. Unsurprisingly, that same rhetoric serves to enhance dependency on government and thus the power of elite, often rich, hypocritical politicians. That correlation should be suspect and revealed at every opportunity.

Ultimately, the absolutely wretched job numbers for August reinforce something that those of us paying attention already know: class warfare policy exists in direct opposition to job creation. If we keep demonizing success, bailing out failure, and creating a culture of dependency, anticipate the economy “unexpectedly” faltering even further.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 6:55 PM and is filed under Economics, Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.