Small-business owners are more concerned about the administration’s emerging $1 trillion healthcare plan, which will drive up their costs, and with the new taxes that are aimed squarely at the income groups into which owners of small firms generally fall. So they won’t expand or hire.
Which is why the White House is so unhappy. The only indicator that matters to the president is jobs, jobs, jobs, about which he quizzes his staff every day. That’s another way of saying votes, votes, votes. The latest polls show that the portion of Americans approving Obama’s handling of the economy has dropped from 58% to 50% in the past six months, approval of his handling of the deficit is down from 49% to 40% and that 67% believe it is “not possible” that his healthcare plan will not add to the deficit. Nevertheless, the president remains personally popular. He would like to keep it that way and is considering a programme that would give tax credits to employers who add to their workforces.
Consumers are the third unhappy group, completing the gloomy business-political-consumer troika.
Well, let’s see…
Americans are coming off of a decade where real wages shrank while inflation marched on, despite “good” economic numbers and low unemployment. Now, the unemployment rate exceeds 10%. They have seen their pensions reduced or eliminated. They have seen their investments halved and their home values decimated. They have lost 80% of their manufacturing base to NAFTA and GATT. They have watched their white collar jobs be outsourced as they were downsized. They have watched the SEC turn a blind eye to Madoff and Enron (et al) scandals until it was too late. They have seen their tax dollars wasted by AIG executives throwing extravagant parties, despite having bankrupted their company. They have watched the MSM cover for and propagandize for the current administration. And they have been treated to the recent fact that their tax dollar was again wasted by the government to produce jobs at the cost of $160,000 each, while the accounting for the number of jobs “created” has proven to be a pack of wild fabrications.
Gosh, why so gloomy?
why on earth does Stelzer (or the headline writer) conclude the news is “good”? there seems to be a paucity of evidence for that…..