An American Lion

There are no damned jobs.

Nobody has a job.

The economy is in the toilet, you see, so, no. I'm not going to hire you. I'm thinking of letting a few people go, actually. I'm a businessman and there are no jobs and I'm not hiring anyone because that's what everyone else is doing. I'm paralyzed by uncertainty. When you know what's going on, let me know.

Sound reasonable? Or does it sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy of eternal doom?

The nation isn't creating nearly enough jobs to reduce persistently high unemployment.

For the third straight month, the private sector hired cautiously in July. And those meager gains in the job market were nearly wiped out by tens of thousands of cuts at all levels of government.

Making matters worse: Many of the new jobs that are being created do not pay well enough to significantly jump-start spending by shoppers and stimulate the broader economy.

The unemployment rate was stuck at 9.5 percent for the second straight month, the Labor Department said Friday. Analysts said it would probably climb back into double digits because the private sector is not creating jobs fast enough.

Private employers reported a net gain of 71,000 jobs for July — far below the 200,000 it takes for the unemployment rate just to hold steady and keep pace with the growing work force.

How would I fix this? Well, I'm merely an expert, having employed hundreds of people for decades, but I'll venture a guess anyway:

Nobody is hiring because they don't need to hire right now.

That's right. It all comes down to what people need. And if employers have figured out how to get by with fewer workers, then there's almost nothing the government can do about it. And this runs counter to several themes that we have gotten used to in this country. The first theme is the one where we're all special and deserve to have full employment of all able bodied adults. Uh, no. No we don't deserve anything anymore. The second theme is the one where we can't accept the idea that government doesn't have the ready-made solution for us. No, the government really isn't able to solve this problem.

But, you're in luck because I can solve this problem.

What I should first do is acknowledge that the government can help save your job but it can't do much to create a sustained, viable job. The Obama Administration's biggest accomplishment so far is the saving of the American auto industry. This saves several million jobs, from the people who design cars Americans don't really like (but Europeans and South Americans seem to like) to the people who stock and deliver spare parts for those cars to the people who are at the retail lots that are still open. The government bail out of the auto industry was money well spent, and no good conservative should decry the auto industry; it's one of the few things we still make in this country.

Government can't create jobs outside of its own sphere. It can't start a small business in Podunk, Utah and make that company sell widgets to Utah residents who want widgets that are made by that particular business. Government can create several hundred positions in Utah by opening up a branch office of the Utah widget making watchdog agency, and they can hire a bunch of old guys to stand around outside of widget making companies, hollering about loose handrails and the like. Government can make those "shovel ready" jobs that are great for Vice Presidential anecdotes but those aren't the kinds of jobs we need.

We need an abundance of jobs that are useful and have purpose. We need jobs for people who can make, design, improve, or repair things that we need every day. This is becoming a society and a nation that is more about utility, less about fancy bullshit. Gone are the days of the company that could make a $45,000 motorcycle that looks like something out of a Mexican whorehouse. Yes, there will always be that one fellow with money to burn who can afford something bent and grotesque. But, as a rule, think small cars, practicality, and making things last.

What government can't do is create jobs at companies that are worried about the taxes they will have to pay in a couple of years or the cost of the health care they will have to provide for their employees. We have spent too much time dithering over the trivial. And health care is trivial--it's a no brainer. Fine, come up with a cheap way to keep employee x and his wife and his 2.4 children in some sort of barely affordable health care coverage that won't put them into bankruptcy. Now, onward and upward. The solution? Eliminate uncertainty. Establish clearly defined parameters. Your taxes, for the next five years, are going to be this and your health care costs for employees will be that and now you can sit and do your books. When you figure out what you need, we'll give you a tax break of $1000 per new hire or something to that effect.

If we focus on rewarding companies that hire people, and build incentives for them to do so, we will see modest increases in the employment numbers. Too often, government isn't working hand in hand with businesses to make that happen. There is still a slap-down high and mighty approach that has a government agency ripping a company to shreds over something that can be sorted out through mediation and negotiation. All too often, a labor union or an advocacy group gets in the middle of the process and brings things to an extreme conclusion. Let's celebrate the efforts of unions to keep people working through compromise and good faith negotiations, however.

I want a small business that has 20 employees to feel like it can expand or double in size based on knowing that taking that risk could pay off. It's always a risk to expand and go a little into the hole and I used to love doubling down and rolling the dice. I once hired forty people just so I could tell Father that I had built a West African Riot Control Vehicle division. We had to let them all go--West African nations use a lot of tear gas and a lot of burning tires to control restless populations. Riot control vehicles don't sell well, but hey--at least I tried to get Liberia to buy a couple of dozen assembled and marketed by those 40 hapless suckers I mean, employees, that I had hired.

Now is no time to take risks. No one knows what they will pay in taxes or health care and no one knows whether or not we will talk ourselves into another double dip recession. Until uncertainty is lowered to a certain threshold, the jobs just aren't going to come back.

Another one of my mortal enemies goes down in flames without a parachuteBack when Jon Meacham was the darling of Washington D.C. and then deliberately (I have no idea) stole the title of my Autobiography, I swore vengeance. Then I got bored and just went out and built a handful of fabulous blogs that people are going nuts over. This is how it is done nowadays.

I don't mind telling you that beating people has always thrilled me. I cried for joy when I maneuvered Father out of the family business and left him with nothing. I didn't do it for spite--I did it to gain his approval, which he grudgingly gave me of course. Did I really beat Jon Meacham? Probably not. Anyway, it's a moot point. 

He's done:

The Washington Post Co. has sold Newsweek to Sidney Harman, a wealthy industrialist and husband of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), and Jon Meacham will not remain as the magazine’s editor, the company has confirmed.

The terms of the deal were not announced, though in a statement the company said it retains the magazine’s pension assets and liabilities and “certain employee obligations rising prior to sale.”

“In seeking a buyer for Newsweek, we wanted someone who feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism,” said Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company. “He has pledged not only to continue to produce a lively, compelling and first-rate news magazine, but also an equally dynamic Newsweek.com – and he intends to keep a majority of Newsweek’s very talented staff.”

The sale is a painful acknowledgement of failure by Graham, who had stuck with the magazine, part of his company since 1961, through years of heavy losses. In announcing that Newsweek was for sale in May, Graham cited losses “in the tens of millions for the last two years,” and said that the company did not see “ a path to continuing profitability under our management."

Want to know what insanity looks like? The Washington Post just unloaded a significant media property, likely for peanuts, to a 91 year-old man married to a Congresswoman from California. Now, I'm sure he's a sweet fellow, but what 91 year-old man is going to bring the vigor and vitality necessary towards revitalizing Newsweek? My own Father is 95 or 96, depending on the records they kept back in County Cork, and if someone gave him Newsweek magazine, he'd turn it into fishwrap in about five minutes.

Now, don't think for a moment that poor Jon Meacham is going to be scraping burrito leavings out of garbage cans in Georgetown. It's true that he's somewhat done for now. The way it works is that someone will feel sorry enough for him to give him a job somewhere. He will displace someone less famous and less pleasant on the cocktail circuit. As long as Sally Quinn still has a job, Jon Meacham will probably have a job somewhere.

Meanwhile, this American Lion rolls on down the road, leaving bodies in its wake and fabulousness everywhere else. Go on--sneer at the hotties. The hotties make my whole day far more pleasant than it already is.

Did Meacham fail? Of course not. But that 91 year-old man is going to get rid of him anyway, just because you cannot institutionalize failure and keep the old regime in place. Merit means nothing to these people. How much do you want to bet Newsweek turns into a mishmash of nothing important and oatmeal ads and runs a lot of stories about how wonderful Jane Harman really is?