Unemployment has surpassed government and politicians as the most important problem facing Americans, according to a new Gallup poll.
The Gallup survey shows that nearly one in four Americans — 23 percent — say that jobs are the biggest problem, followed by “dissatisfaction” with government, the economy, and healthcare.
Government and unemployment: Aren’t the two related? Government intervenes in the economy. Government creates more and more regulations — often contradictory and based on paybacks to donors more than anything rational. As a result, businesses cannot hire as many employees as they otherwise would. Government robs from the private economy to distribute money (1) to itself and (2) to reward pressure groups. With less money in the private economy, how are private employers supposed to hire?
Obama ran not once but twice on the platform that there was too little regulation and too little taxation. Why is the majority who voted for him twice upset now, about unemployment? Unemployment is what happens when you shackle or hamper the private economy.
The dismay with “government, Congress, poor leadership, politicians, corruption, abuse of power” had topped the polls since the federal shutdown in October, according to Gallup.
It sounds like most Americans assume that the government creates jobs — presumably by spending money and taxing businesses. However, these things do not create jobs. They only take from what’s already there. Increasingly, government borrows more than it spends and taxes, because government wishes to spend far more than the hampered private economy can create.
People get mad at Congress — who always get the lowest poll numbers — because Congress supposedly fights over trivial matters instead of doing the “people’s business.” But the people’s business — defined as taxing, borrowing and spending other people’s money — is precisely what Congress is doing in record numbers.
So why the disgust and outrage when Congress is doing what their President — the man the majority wants in office — is telling them to do? And why the surprise when unemployment persists or even worsens?
The polling organization added, “Now that the shutdown is over, and the government has successfully passed a budget and avoided another debt ceiling shutdown, Americans appear to have shifted their focus away from the government and back to the still relatively weak job market.”
The fight over the debt ceiling ended because those opposed to government debt and spending lost; their leadership simply gave up the fight. Obama and his peers in Congress have what they want. Indeed, they’ve gotten most or all of what they have wanted all along. If all this spending, redistributing and socializing of medicine is supposed to be so good for creating jobs … then where are the jobs?
Granted, when Republicans were in charge, their spending, regulating, taxing and borrowing didn’t help things either. It actually made things worse, as the Bush years showed us. But how was doing the very same thing in greater numbers supposed to make things all better?
The poll showed that fears over unemployment and jobs had increased among Republicans, Democrats and Independents, but the jump was greatest among Republicans, to 24 percent from 11 percent in January.
Maybe these Republicans should push for new leaders or new representatives in their own party. Maybe they should try running a Presidential candidate sometime who makes a moral as well as economic case for freedom, private property, and individual rights in all spheres of life (personal and business).
Rounding out the top five in the most important problem category was the high cost of healthcare and bad healthcare in general at 15 percent, and then the federal budget deficit at 8 percent.
Why is health care a concern? The majority voted — not once, but twice — for a man who declared health care is a right, and that government will do whatever is necessary to doctors and insurance companies to make sure everyone obtains it as a right. If this is what so many people want, then why are they surprised, outraged, anxious or upset when government starts to do to health care the same thing it does to everything else it touches?
Immigration has become a bigger concern in the United States, with 6 percent in the poll saying it’s a major problem, compared to 3 percent in January.
In a free country with no redistribution of wealth, no entitlement state and a thriving private economy, immigration is not a threat. In fact, it’s a necessity. You can never have too many people to do the jobs required, or provide the brains needed, to keep an industrialized-technological civilization thriving and growing. Immigration only becomes a threat when government stifles economic growth, picks winners and losers and people consequently must watch their backs and keep away any threat of competition.
It’s ironic how the loudest opponents of racism and other irrational forms of collectivist thinking are the very ones who favor more and more federal control of the economy, taxation, and wealth redistribution. If I didn’t know better, I would think that these people weren’t really interested in multiculturalism or economic growth. I’d suspect that they simply want to acquire more power, in part by making impoverished but hopeful immigrants (focused on some kind of future or independence) dependent on them.
These poll numbers reveal shocking contradictions between what the majority of Americans vote for in elections and what they actually seem to want. What’s the saying? Ignorance is curable, but stupidity is forever. Are most Americans badly informed, or just plain stupid?
It’s time to clear up these contradictions with knowledge that can help us face the basic truth once and for all: If it’s economic growth, continuous prosperity and full employment that we seek, then we’ve got to get the government the hell out of the way.
[Source for Gallup poll findings: Newsmax.com 2/18/14]
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