Jobs and the Economy

Washington is telling us that the unemployment rate is about 8 to 8.5%, but the real jobless rate (U6) is closer to 15% or more. The unemployment rate remains steadily above 8%, but the labor participation rate has plummeted. Were the participation rate (the total number of jobs considered available in the nation) the same as it was the day President Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be over 11%. In my home town of Fall River, the reported unemployment rate is more like 11.9%.  But these are just statistics.

When I travel through my home town of Fall River, I see men and women looking for work who can’t find it, who are frustrated. In high school I had a job with one phone call. I loaded trucks 3rd shift for Anderson Little, a clothing manufacturer that shipped clothes all over the world. When I graduated from Providence College in 1983 with a Bachelors in Business Administration, I had jobs offered to me immediately. Except during my senior year at Durfee, and by choice while playing 3 sports, I didn’t go more than a month without a job. These jobs are no longer available because of a tax system riddled with loopholes and burdened by massive bureaucratic red tape. Bad regulation is often worse than no regulation at all. Without the freedom to grow, living in constant fear of legislative and executive tinkering to favor one company or another, people find themselves in a stall.

I will break the stall by simplifying the tax code, cutting red tape and foolish regulations, and eliminating funding for as many bureaucracies as possible, returning the taxpayer’s money to where it does the most good: in their own wallet, where it always belonged in the first place.