Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute devotes his latest National Review Online column to an exploration of President Obama’s assertion during a recent news conference that the private sector is “doing fine.”
The president’s comments, of course, were not even within viewing distance of reality. After all, despite some recent hiring, the private sector is still 4.5 million jobs below its 2008 employment peak. And while public employment is also down from 2008, that ignores a boom in state and local government hiring from 2006 to 2008. The current decline still leaves state and local employment about where it was in 2006. Meanwhile, federal employment is up 88,000 jobs.
But a much bigger question is: Why is the private sector doing so poorly? Perhaps because most businessmen are not that dumb.
If one includes the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, this country’s real total indebtedness could run as high as $129 trillion (in current present value). Even under the most optimistic scenarios, our real debt exceeds $92 trillion. Measured as a percentage of GDP, our total debt exceeds the total debt of Greece or Spain. By comparison, the total book value of all U.S. companies is roughly $23 trillion. It’s not a perfect comparison (future taxes will be paid out of future wealth), but it does put things in perspective. Any business owner looking down the road, and seeing debt four to five times the size of his or her company, is likely to decide that this is not a great time to expand or hire new workers.
