Even President Obama now seems to realize that rescuing America from its financial crisis requires getting Americans back to work. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that rejigging government spending to promote employment is just an artificial, short-term solution. So-called “green jobs” and other subsidy programs will not help put American employment back on a stable footing.
So what can the government do to promote real job growth? Quite simply, get out of the way. We don’t need to teach the grass to grow; we just need to move the rocks off of it. The rocks weighing down on the economy are government rules and regulations — in other words, bureaucracy and overregulation.
According to the Small Business Administration, federal rules and regulations — from the Fair Labor Standards Act to the Polygraph Protection Act — cost small businesses $10,000 annually per employee in compliance costs. To put that in perspective: That would take a company with 10 employees from making a $100,000 profit to just breaking even. Read the rest of this entry »
