The ‘recovery’ remains jobless

The U.S. economy grew by 3.5 percent from July to September, the Commerce Department reports. It would be a mistake to reject even this small a piece of good news. But, contradictorily, unemployment continued to rise, to a 26-year high of 9.8 percent.

Since the recession began in 2007, the United States has lost 7.2 million jobs. Unemployment has risen more than 2 percentage points since President Obama took office in January.

Economists project the jobless rate will exceed 10 percent by early 2010. And those are national figures -- things are a lot worse here in Nevada.

"Any positive signs for our economy are welcome," said John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, "but a jobless recovery is not what the American people were promised."

Even President Obama was wise enough to acknowledge "the benchmark I use to measure the strength of our economy is not just whether our GDP is growing, but whether we are creating jobs, whether families are having an easier time paying their bills, whether our businesses are hiring and doing well."

It's fairly clear why jobs are not rebounding. Investors are unlikely to start new businesses -- nor existing businesses, hanging on by their fingernails, to increase staffing -- till consumer spending rebounds enough to justify those investments.

But the unemployed are limited in what they can spend, and consumers in general are still sitting on their wallets, understandably uncertain about the economic future.

What's the source of much of that uncertainty? Ironically, the city that beats its chest and claims to be engaging in heroic measures to "save the economy" -- Washington.

Health insurance "reform" was supposed to trim costs, making medicine more affordable. But everyone knows that the costs of the new Democratic scheme will balloon -- just as Medicare and Medicaid did, before it.

Meantime, the scheme to "cap and tax" emissions of carbon dioxide -- supposedly to fight chimerical "man-made global warming" -- threatens to impose huge new costs on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity.

Talk about uncertainty.

Even the "good news" of GDP growth is at least partly attributable to one-time government gimmicks. The federal government spent money it doesn't have -- money it will have to eventually raise through new taxes -- to subsidize first-time home buyers and "cash for clunkers." But the government aid is only temporary.

Besides, nearly half a percentage point of the GDP growth in the third quarter -- 0.48 percentage points -- came from a 7.9 percent rise in federal spending. Should government spending really be counted as economic growth, since government only gets its money by grabbing it from the private sector, thus holding down growth, there?

A spot check by The Associated Press of the 30,000 jobs claimed to have been "created" by the stimulus determined 5,000 of the 30,000 -- one in six -- were bogus, some jobs being counted more than four times. One Florida day care center handed out raises all around and then claimed 129 "jobs saved."

We should not lose sight of the fact that claims of government "job creation" are usually false on their face, because all government can do is transfer funds that otherwise might have been used by taxpaying businesses to create their own, more stable jobs elsewhere.

Besides, if the "stimulus" cost $787 billion and is now seen as "running out of steam," are we wrong, or would even 30,000 jobs end up costing $26 million per job?

Surely the private sector could have done a little better than that.