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What should be done to combat unemployment?
Scott K Fish
What is necessary to rebuild Maine’s economy is not, and never has been, a mystery. Maine, like the rest of the globe, has two basic ideas on creating an environment—a place where we can pursue life, liberty, and happiness; and fulfilling jobs. One of those ideas accepts that a civil society needs some laws and government so we don’t melt down and kill each other. Beyond the costs of maintaining a limited government, we should keep the fruits of our labors to do with as we please. And there is no end to good ideas Mainers can/will come up with when given the chance, i.e.:
• Starting a business building quality
low-cost gear for the disabled.
• Buying a house, a car, land, a piano.
• Saving for a rainy day or retirement.
• Buying a motor home to visit all the neat places in America.
• Giving pay raises to employees.
The other idea in Maine is to have BIG government the hub of most, maybe all, economic activity, where even the college student washing dogs as a summer job must be licensed by government. Maine, for several decades, has chosen this latter view as its dominant “job creating” action plan.
J. Scott Moody, chief economist with the Maine Heritage Policy Center, wrote on his blog September 3, 2009: “My new study was released today showing that over the last decade [Maine] government spending has soared by $2 billion—a whopping increase of 45%. As a result…Maine’s government payrolls…expanded by 3,400 workers while the private sector…lost 13,000 jobs. [For] every new government job, [Maine’s] private sector lost four jobs. There are now fewer Mainers employed in the private sector than a decade ago.”
We remember hearing or reading, many times, news reports of government funds “creating jobs” in Maine. Such jobs are always reported as great news. But are they? How does the government pay for government jobs? By taxing the private sector. Taking money from private sector workers and giving it to public sector works. Every dollar the government takes from the private sector to pay for a public sector job has consequences. Bigger government is one consequence. Bigger government always working to hang onto and grow its bigness, its power, is another consequence.
If government must feed on the fruits of private sector job creators to sustain itself, we can see how government grows at the expense of the private sector.
Maine, as J. Scott Moody shows us, is past a tipping point. We have fewer private sector jobs on which the government can feed. As private sector jobs go away, or are not created at all, the tax and regulatory burden on Maine’s shrinking private sector jobs must be greater. In time the burden is so great, the government maze through which job creators must jump so awful, that they just stop trying to create jobs.
The way to more and better jobs is clear. The question remains: Does Maine have the will to get there?
Scott K Fish is owner/editor of the political web forum asmainegoes.com.
Carrie Jones
Last year while I was canvassing during a political campaign, I met up with a man working outside in his yard. Metal was strewn everywhere. Pieces of cars lined up along his driveway. A radiator rested against the leg of a swing set. He looked up at me and smiled when I walked toward him.
“I bet you’re thinking I’ve got a lot of junk here,” he said, laughing.
“A lot of stuff,” I offered.
“Yeah…It’s my new job. I’m selling scrap metal,” he explained. “Couldn’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs.”
He’d worked in a boatyard and been laid off. He was a skilled carpenter, but there weren’t any jobs for skilled carpenters at the time, so he figured he’d do the best he could with what he could find.
He’s not the only one.
As of October, Maine had an unemployment rate of 8.5%, which was below the national average of 10.2% but still pretty darn high. According to the nonprofit New England Economic Partnership, 346,000 New Englanders have lost their jobs since January 2008. That number only counts through September 2009. It doesn’t take into account wage cuts or benefits that are cut.
So, what do we do? Keynesian eco-nomics tells us it’s the government’s role to create jobs at times like these, but our national debt makes the government hard-pressed to stimulate this economy. Government-run labor-placement programs don’t work if the government doesn’t have the funds to support them.
What Maine needs is a diverse and green economy. We rely so much on tourism and retail, and when things go south for the country, so do tourism and retail. Long-term planning that will grow the tax base as well as lowering state debt will help keep the state on track. Promoting a diverse mix of transportation, technology services, light manufacturing, health care, and financial services along with retail and tourism will make our state stronger and more flexible for recessions and unemployment. It will also bring jobs.
In order for new businesses (and jobs) to spring up, we need to restore credibility and confidence in both our state and banking communities, but we also need to make Maine an attractive place to produce goods and services. We need to invest in the jobs that still exist, and help the unemployed acquire the skills that will be needed to promote a changeable economy. We need to consider green projects to fix our failing infrastructure, especially our cyber-infrastructure, so people out in rural areas can work via online businesses.
We have to invest in our assets: our kids. Putting more of an emphasis on our public school system at state and local levels is vital to the state’s economic development. The Maine Online Learning Program and the Farm-to-School Initiative, which benefits both local growers and kids, are good solid steps.
Skilled craftsmen shouldn’t have to go garbage picking to survive. As a community and as a state, we need to actively work on providing jobs for ourselves and our neighbors, now and for our future. It’s no time to sit around twiddling our thumbs.
Carrie Jones is an award-winning novelist from Ellsworth. She’s also a police dispatcher. Find her at carriejonesbooks.com.
