Recent Pope Foundation 25th anniversary speaker John Stossel devotes his latest column to efforts of proven job creators to fight back against government overregulation and cronyism.
Government has no money of its own. All it does is take from some people and give to others, leaving less money in the private sector for job creation.
Actually, it’s worse than that. Since government commandeers scarce resources by force and doesn’t have to peddle its so-called services on the market to consenting buyers, there’s no feedback mechanism to indicate if those services are worth more to people than what they were forced to go without.
The only people who create real, sustainable jobs are in private businesses — if they’re unsubsidized.
Some CEOs are upset that people don’t appreciate what they do. So they formed a group called the Job Creators Alliance. …
… Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, said he got started with loans from banks that took a chance on an unknown: “It is not an underwriting standard that can be dictated by Dodd-Frank with 55 pages. It’s kind of a gut instinct.”
But John Allison, who built BB&T Corp. into the 12th-biggest bank in America, says that “gut instinct” is now illegal.
“It would be very difficult to do what we did then today. It was semi-venture-capital thing. The government regulations [today] are so tight, including setting credit standards, particularly since the so-called financial crisis and since they … changed the credit standards in the banking industry, making it very hard for the banks to finance small businesses.”
