Andrei Cherny, the chairman of the state Democratic Party and unsuccessful candidate for state treasurer, believes he has finally cracked the code for creating those new jobs that have proved so elusive to members of his party.
Cherny, although not a member of any legislature, has nevertheless proposed the “Steve Jobs Act” to stimulate entrepreneurial activity. Writing in The Atlantic, he claims that his bill would give “a sense of larger purpose and direction” to an “America struggling to find its way in a bewildering, humbling world.” Wow.
But despite the pretentiousness, the bill itself is a hodge-podge of formerly bright ideas that have been thought of before and some that have already failed. The centerpiece is the National Innovation Bank, charged with providing funding to entrepreneurs deemed especially likely to create jobs. Unchastened by the experience of Solyndra, Fannie Mae and dozens of other government attempts to outwit capital markets, Cherny soldiers on in the mistaken belief that government aid is the key to entrepreneurial success.
Not all of Cherny’s ideas are bad. He touches on reforming retirement benefits, unemployment compensation and health care, where lightening the burden of Obamacare on small businesses would undoubtedly help.
He sensibly suggests excusing small businesses from the onerous demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, although it isn’t clear why larger companies should still have to comply. Sure, they have the lawyers and accountants on board, but those overly complicated accounting requirements cost us all plenty and have little demonstrated benefit.
But the point is that Cherny misses the point. Entrepreneurs don’t depend on special favors or subsidies from government. They mostly just need government to get out of the way and let businesses rise or fall on their own merits.
For example, take that famous entrepreneur, the real Steve Jobs. Near the end of his life, Jobs was invited to dinner with President Barack Obama, whose political future hangs on more Americans finding employment. Since he’s spent a thousand billion or so with no results, Obama decided to seek advice from people who actually do create jobs.
But what Steve Jobs wanted wasn’t the Steve Jobs Act. His particular issue was that he wanted to government quit making it so hard to find qualified engineers. Jobs told Obama that Apple alone exports 700,000 factory jobs to China because it can’t find the 30,000 engineers here needed to operate the plants. Meanwhile, the government insists that foreign graduates educated here return to their country of origin.
Obama’s answer was that he would not consent to loosened visa requirements without “comprehensive” immigration reform. So let’s get this straight. The president is willing to hold millions of good jobs hostage to his goal of turning illegal immigrants into voting Democrats.
So tell me again, who’s the bad guy here? No wonder that Jobs and the Facebook, Google, Cisco and Oracle execs at the meeting were put off by politics once again trumping sound economics.
Obama is almost comically clueless about the nature of job creation. In his mind, government actively creates jobs by manipulating, stimulating and cajoling business leaders into serving the common good.
But Jobs and the others realized their success hardly came from bureaucratic direction or subsidy. These are risk-takers and innovators who are already highly motivated to create products and services consumers desire and that naturally require workers to produce. They need a few basics from government — predictable laws, private property rights, access to labor and capital markets — but not much else.
Even President Obama agrees with economists that the explosive growth of regulation is a barrier to job creation. Yet on his watch thousands more pages of regulations have been added to the already crushing load.
A recent econometric analysis by the Phoenix Center in Washington showed that a 5 percent reduction in regulations — nowhere near the growth in the Obama years alone — would result in $75 billion of economic growth and would create 1.2 million new jobs.
Obama should call off his frantic, impoverishing search for jobs. The answer is right under his nose. Government needs to stand down and let Americans get to work creating jobs and wealth, like we’ve done so many times before.
• East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.
wdgnas posted at 7:59 am on Sat, Nov 19, 2011.
it would appear that "too big to fail" has been already forgotten.
Mike McClellan posted at 11:19 am on Sat, Nov 19, 2011.
While red tape no doubt is a barrier to job growth, Patterson parrots the Fox News/TEA Party/Republican line:
"Even President Obama agrees with economists that the explosive growth of regulation is a barrier to job creation. Yet on his watch thousands more pages of regulations have been added to the already crushing load."
Interesting claim, especially in light of the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report for 2010.
Which shows that only 1/3 of one percent of employers who laid off workers identified "regulations" as the primary cause of the layoffs.
But Patterson would rather toe the party line.
Leon Ceniceros posted at 1:43 pm on Sat, Nov 19, 2011.
As we can see from the ...Liberal-Progressive-Socialist-Democrat commenters....if it isn't a........"Government Give-Away".....it's no good.
Tax the American workers to give to the American "Hardly, if ever, Workers".
and if that wasn't bad enough but now these.......P.I.G.S.... (People Insisting on Government Spending).....feel that they are ....ENTITLED....ENTITLED....to sit at home all day long watching Mexican "Novelas", Jerry Springer, Maury, the View and Oprah....and wait for America's hard-working taxpayers to deposit the check in their bank account.
Entrepreneurs don't need another...."Hundred Billion Dollar Obama Give-Away"....go out there and get funding the old-fashioned way....your product ..."earns it".
Slabside posted at 3:34 pm on Sat, Nov 19, 2011.
Well said Leon.
samkat posted at 7:36 pm on Sat, Nov 19, 2011.
Tom: I find it interesting that you failed to note that the republicans have done everything they can to dumb down America by killing as much public educational funding as possible. Countries like China and India turn out engineers by the thousands each year. They have increased their R&D funding while American companies are cutting back. Guess who is going to win this war. Then, the BLS refuses to advertise engineering jobs domestically. It is no wonder we are losing to the race to remain the number one powerhouse.
Rich posted at 7:49 pm on Sat, Nov 19, 2011.
What you're all missing is "jobs" They come and go, Steve Jobs never had a "job" except as a tax dodge. If you are reasonably successful in business, you "employ" yourself, because the tax advantage is enormous. If you over produce, jobs go away until the lack of income (sales) eats enough things that you have to produce more things. It's not Obama alone, it's government on all levels. Who stops you from experimenting with solar cells and Tesla coils on your own roof? Basically a city government. Tempe, in this paper, wants to take alcohol education out of the hands of centuries old cultures and parents, They 'know' better than either. It's not just 'red tape' its the fact you turned your life, your culture, your children over to a bunch of clueless, ambitious, ultimately mental ill people, and expect that will work out.
mnjcpa posted at 5:32 pm on Sun, Nov 20, 2011.
Tom - kudos for being spot on. You get criticized as a FoxNews party liner but they miss the point completely.
Clearly they've never been in the position of owning a business or the herculean effort that it takes these days to be successful. And those reaping the benefits of unrealistic union pensions are going to dig in hard to protect their "benefit" regardless of the sustainability or how it is damaging our economy.
China and India produce math and science majors because American kids aren't coming out of school with those degrees. When our school system emphasizes moving kids along - whether they know a subject or not - what do you expect? We're more concerned about "Timmy" feeling good about himself than his ability to compete globally. So much for our "quality" educational system that's another government union boondoggle.
Every regulation that's supposedly built to "protect" the public has obstructed small business from effectively competing. It's insiduous - everything from Dodd Frank to Sarbanes-Oxley have ALL strangled small businesses. They can't necessarily identify it as a regulation - but the harm is there nonetheless.
But what can you expect? You've got someone running this country that hasn't had a second of business experience.
VofReason posted at 1:52 pm on Tue, Nov 22, 2011.
Did that guy up there pull out the we aren't funding education enough salvo. Please. Yes, lets put more money in the hands of other people who know nothing about business and expect them to light up the education lamp. Question, how has that worked as they spend more money every decade? Oh yah, that's right. We now have the dumbest kids ever coming out of public schools. But wait, they did get God and pride of country out of the schools. That is a plus, right? I mean that helped to enable the Wall Street Occupiers and that is almost like success. Almost.
Rational Human posted at 7:53 am on Wed, Nov 23, 2011.
There is more than enough education money to churn out many more engineers as we could possibly use. Obozo's administration basically says so when they state that foreign graduates educated here return to their country of origin. The truth is that Americans are choosing business degrees over engineering degrees. We don't emphasize math and science here in American, so we have to look to countries that do in order to find our engineers. It doesn't take anymore money to turn out more engineers here in America if that is our goal to do so.
Dale Whiting posted at 12:26 pm on Sat, Feb 18, 2012.
So Tom's president of the Goldwater Institute, is he? I can hear Barry turning over and over in his grave now!
Tom, Steve Jobs sent his jobs to China because 1) labor is cheaper there and 2) the Chineese government paid big bucks on developing facilities there for Apple as well as for other US companies. Here we call that "stimulous" money. We have a cousin to stimulus which we call "bail out." I call this smart Keynesian economics, economics that even China understands!