Thursday, March 31, 2011

Employment, Spending and Our Pals at the Nursery

By most any measure the US economy is on a road of recovery. Yet you wouldn’t know that from some small business owners, including our nursery friends. They claim they haven’t been flattened by a customer rush for the roses. Yet we know that some discretionary spending is indeed booming, for example cruise bookings, or, nice jewelry which simply won’t stay on the shelf. What gives here?

Observers have for some time highlighted a so-called “two-tier recovery,” one which many claimed would collapse upon itself. It won’t but that’s not the point of this sketch.

Fact is that the top 10% of spenders happen to be those with a good deal of financial assets and are doing fine, in isolation from the rest. They’re buying jewelry and booking cruises. And the other 90%? Look no further than Barack Obama for the answer.

Corporations were scared witless by the administration’s statist agenda. This is no longer news. We have it from them directly. These potential employers had no guarantee that the election of Nov/2/10 would stop the damage, that repairs would be put in place. So 2008 and 2009 they made changes long delayed - not just improvements in productivity (common during the early stages of a recovery) but elimination of job slots permanently. Not knowing what would come next from an activist administration, one which never made a secret of its disdain for free enterprise, they had no choice. A new employee had become a ticking time bomb.

This explains why discretionary spending from the other 90% lags in this recovery and why plant and picture frame sales aren’t booming. We’ll get there, and now at a quicker pace given a new found affection for free enterprise at the White House.


Robert Craven

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