THE UNEMPLOYMENT CONSPIRACY

I thought these tidbits were interesting:




A Theory on the Unemployment Numbers [Jonah Goldberg]

From a reader:

I don't know if you're interested in this, but I feel like I'm actually ahead of the game here, so I have to share.

November unemployment numbers were terrible... the steepest in almost 35 years.

Of course they were! The Obama tax platform stressed significant tax advantages for companies who "create jobs". What is the best way to "create a job"? How about destroying a job, going for a couple months short handed and then creating the job again when you can get a big tax break out of it?

Don't believe me? That is exactly what influential entrepreneurs are recommending to one another as a matter of survival.

We are naturally going to see huge job shedding as a matter of business tightening until business are sure they will get money back from the government just for doing business.

You may not care, but I'm excited that I know what is going on.

Me: Just for the record, I have no idea how much of a factor the tax breaks for job creation are. Though I'm sure that the unemployment numbers would still be bad if John McCain had won. Nonetheless, it wouldn't shock me if the reader is right that this is a contributing factor in some hiring and firing decisions, at least at the margins.




I Lift My Lamp Beside the Unemployment Office [Mark Krikorian]

So 533,000 jobs were eliminated by employers last month. Guess how many new workers the federal immigration program adds to the labor market over the same period? As many as 140,000. Per month. Now I'm not one of those who thinks you can game the business cycle by admitting more immigrants during an uptick and shedding them during a slowdown — if government were capable of that sort of thing, the Soviet Union wouldn't have collapsed. But how about stepping up enforcement efforts to get illegal workers to leave? The White House says no. Also, it sure wouldn't make sense, during what is likely to be the worst recession most of us will ever see, that we increase these artificial additions to the labor market further by, say, Sen. Menendez's demand to increase immigration by 50 percent. Or we legally anchor people here who might otherwise leave, as with the Dream Act, which would amnesty 2 million-plus illegal immigrants and create future immigration rights for hundreds of thousands more. Or that we give farmers an indentured labor force, as the AgJobs bill would do. And these are the "small" immigration bills coming up next year, not McCain's comprehensive extravaganza. Despite Harry Reid's confident assertion that "I don't expect much of a fight at all" on amnesty, I just don't think Democrats are going to want to hand the GOP a gift of such magnitude.

[link to corner.nationalreview.com]