The May jobs report [8] was supposed to be all happy and sunny, with Obama as the fearless knight on the galloping steed of economic recovery, and "Julia" riding a unicorn that farts rainbows.
Oops.
The private sector gained 89,000 jobs, the government sector lost 13,000 jobs, and unemployment rose to 8.2%. I'm staring at the horizon, and there's not a steed or unicorn in sight. Economists may have predicted something different, but this result is precisely what I expected.
There isn't a lot of optimism out there in Small Business Land. It's poignantly absent in Corporate Megalopolis as well. Everyone, from executives to janitors, is feeling bleak. Even the salespeople, fueled by expense accounts and single-malt Scotch, are less cheerful than usual. When THAT happens, the apocalypse is surely nigh. A couple of months of moderately positive jobs reports were supposed to cure the economic doldrums, but it didn't happen.
There are a lot of reasons for that. First, everybody knows somebody who's unemployed, or they are unemployed themselves. We're not talking millions of slackers here, either. Corporate America had already shed most of its dead weight. Then it shed a lot of good, hard-working people who just happened to be in the wrong job at the wrong time. I don't blame the companies OR the employees. I blame pessimism, government favoritism, and an anti-business culture.
Secondly, it's hard to be fiscally chipper when the economy is a perennial Prometheus. Sure, that liver grows back every night. Yay. Then the next day, the birds come and pick it to pieces again. And in this version of the story, it's not even the noble eagle destroying the regrowth. It's a bunch of vultures, taxing the most resilient, versatile, and hardest-working organ in the body, and never giving it a chance to fully recover. The vultures come from many places, but only one direction. They come from above, as in, government at all levels, against which neither Prometheus The Plumber nor his liver stand a chance.
Thirdly, a lot is riding on what the Supreme Court does in the next month. Pending rulings, such as Arizona's law regarding illegal aliens, and what becomes of Obamacare, are going to set the tone going forward for the relationship between businesses, individuals, states, and the federal government. Until those cases are decided, everything is in flux. Depending upon what the rulings are, we move forward in a more positive or more negative fashion.
But all of that is just backstory. The looming question is how to fix it. Have you ever been in one of those meetings where there's so much finger-pointing going on that you wish you'd brought your safety goggles so no one pokes your eye out? That's about where we are now. I'm shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you - that Obama hasn't appointed a Blame Czar. Granted, his job would be fairly simple. Every day, he would release a memo to the effect of "It's Bush's fault." But at least putting it in a memo would make it official, yes?
Frankly, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. One phrase I am fond of uttering when the meeting goes down the "blame" rathole is, "Who gives a {bleep} who shot J.R.? That's not important. What's important is that he's lying on the floor bleeding. Now, what are we going to do about it?"
I suppose the nation could bite the bullet and reelect Obama. He says he's just hitting his stride, and the REAL solutions will come in his second term. Three and a half years is a very long time to hit one's stride. Even if we're talking distance running and not a sprint, metaphorically speaking, and even if we allow for some very high hurdles, this dude is no tortoise plugging away against the hare. He's more like a snail: Slimy, destructive, and seriously slow. If he is reelected, we might as well fold up our tents, pot up our petunias, and seek bliss elsewhere.
In other words, no more Slimy The Snail, unless we want the jobs report (and everything else) to go from bad to worse. That leaves Mitt Romney. He's the Anti-Slimy: Dynamic, squeaky clean, and productive rather than destructive. But does he have a plan?
I sure hope so, and I hope the big picture looks something like this:
1) Lower taxes and a vastly simplified tax code.
2) Taking a meat axe to the budget.
3) Dialing back over-zealous government agencies, and eliminating useless government agencies.
4) Fomenting a culture of prosperity and creativity, both in word and in deed.
I'll leave it to Mitt to flesh out the details. But keep in mind, Mr. Future President, that simpler is always better. Also remember, to paraphrase the third-party candidate, Gary Johnson, government does not create jobs. Government's job is to get out of the way so the real job creators can do their thing. Heed Governor Johnson's wise words, Mittens, and do not forget that you were not everyone's first choice.
Anyway, there are five more jobs reports between now and the elections in November. All that you and I and Prometheus The Plumber can do when that gloomy news arrives is sit tight, hope America backs the right pony, and look forward to the passing of the storm, and the sun shining on all of us once again.
