By Charles Kadlec

Sometimes, the methods to produce results are counter-intuitive. For example, skillful pruning of grape vines is essential to the production of vineyards, and cutting back a rose bush promotes its growth. Based on experience, we can learn where cutting can lead to growth.

The following statement is at first just as counter-intuitive: A reduction in government spending will not slow job growth. In fact, the experience of the last two years provides compelling evidence that a reduction in government spending will lead to increased employment and output in the US economy.

Since 2008, annual federal spending less net interest has increased by $530 billion or 19%. Yet, even with February’s welcome gain of 192,000 jobs, there are 2.3 million fewer people employed today than in February 2009, the month before the Obama Administration turned on the spending spigots with the passage of its economic recovery plan. Over those 24 months, private sector employment has declined by 2.0 million. In spite of the rapid expansion of the Federal bureaucracy, government sector employment has fallen by 360,000.

Moreover, a comparison of these results to the recovery from the economic crisis of the early 1980s casts doubt on the Obama Administration’s claim that without the unprecedented increase in government spending, the recession would have been even worse and the recovery slower.

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By Jeff Opdyke

This is what drives me crazy about the people at the top of the totem pole in America.

The International Herald Tribune has a fine story today (Friday, Sept. 10, 2010) about China skirting World Trade Organization rules by providing various and vast subsidies to makers of clean-tech energy components (think: solar panels, wind turbines and such).

Whether or not China is skirting the rules, bending the rules or blatantly pissing on the rules is almost irrelevant. China is going to do what China is going to do in order to build itself into the world’s pre-eminent Economy of Tomorrow (just as the U.S. does whenever doing so benefits America’s unilateral interests).

America and Europe can wring their collective hands and fret loudly and complain to the WTO and the IMF and the check-out clerks at the local Wal-Mart, and all the sturm und drang won’t mean bupkus to this issue.

And therein lies the shame for America. Our politicians fight the economy of yesterday, and our bureaucrats moan about China’s aggressive incentives to build the technology of tomorrow.

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By Porter Stansbury

I’d like to make you a business offer.

Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can’t turn me down, as you’ll come to understand in a moment…

Here’s the deal. You’re going to start a business or expand the one you’ve got now. It doesn’t really matter what you do or what you’re going to do. I’ll partner with you no matter what business you’re in – as long as it’s legal.

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We are not especially happy that Obama won his famous health care victory. We are pro-market, not pro-state and any way you examine it, the new health care legislation reorganizes the marketplace and mandates US citizens make payments to insurers or face cash penalties – or worse.

Predictably the propaganda is revving up. Those who believe in an imperial presidency and the expansion of the state are apparently delighted by the idea that the US federal government now has a big stick with which to beat bloody one-sixth of the US economy.

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By Peter Schiff

With today’s unexpected decline in December payrolls, the cry for more job-related stimulus will grow even louder. But the sad truth is that any new stimulus or jobs bills will ultimately swell the ranks of the unemployed, thereby raising calls for an even bigger federal effort. If we are not careful, government regulations, subsidies, and spending, all designed to fight unemployment, could push the labor market into a death spiral.

Regulation acts like a tax on job creation. By subjecting employers to all sorts of extra expenses when they hire people, regulations increase the cost of employment far beyond the wages employers actually pay their workers. In fact, some regulations are specifically tied to the number of workers employed. This provides some employers with a strong incentive to stay small and not hire.

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By Herman Cain

The president, his administration and most members of Congress still don’t get it! So let’s try to explain job creation another way. You stimulate the creation of jobs by reducing an employer’s cost to keep people employed (less taxes), and then by reducing the cost of a business to grow their business (less regulations). If these two things happen then jobs will be created.

Job creation is not a complicated phenomenon, but the president and the Democrats have been convinced that less taxes is bad, and more regulations are good. It’s just the opposite and there is plenty of historical evidence to prove it.

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By Conn Carroll
The snowstorms that have already dumped over two feet of snow on the nation’s Capitol and that are threatening to dump another 12 to 16 inches, have grounded the legislative process to a halt. But that might not be such a bad thing. Senate Democrats had hoped they could pass President Barack Obama’s second [...]

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