Federal stimulus prolonging hard times by delaying state restructuring?
The New York Times ran an article today on the $787 billion federal stimulus program, which has created or saved 640,239 jobs. If the spending continues at roughly the current rate, it looks as though each job “created” has cost future federal taxpayers $1 million. In a country with 15 million unemployed, will saving 640,000 jobs cut the hard times short? Maybe. Let’s look deeper.
According to the article, most of the jobs “created” have in fact been those of unionized public employees, such as school teachers. Due to union contracts, states cannot cut workers’ pay, so when they run short of funds they must lay off workers. The same union agreements usually stipulate that the youngest workers be cut first and those workers are the cheapest so massive numbers of them have to go before significant cost savings are realized. By spending federal money, Michigan was able to retain 22,514 teachers that it could not have afforded on its local tax base.
Suppose that you’re a business trying to decide where to invest in a new facility. You’ll pick a place with the lowest costs and most stable environment. How does Michigan look? Counting the underemployed and discouraged, perhaps 25 percent of the citizens are jobless. Yet the teachers are the 4th highest paid in the nation (source). The situation is clearly not sustainable. Greenwich, Connecticut can have highly paid teachers indefinitely, but Flint, Michigan cannot. Our potential investor knows that eventually this federal money will be exhausted and Michigan will have to fall back on whatever taxes it can collect locally. Will there be new property taxes on factories? A local corporate profits tax? Additional payroll taxes? Crushing property taxes on residential real estate? Crushing income taxes on workers? Once these taxes are imposed, will citizens flee the area, leaving the remaining residents with even larger per capita obligations? Who knows? And why take that kind of risk when it is possible to build the facility in a state whose expenses are in line with the locals’ wealth?
The stimulus money is apparently not being used to invest in infrastructure that can be used by the future generations who will be paying for it. It is being used to delay restructuring by states whose payroll and pension expenses cannot be sustained via local taxation. The overhang creates fear among private investors. Fear causes them to hold back, thus prolonging the recession, as noted in The Forgotten Man, a history of the Great Depression.
Does that make sense?
[And if you don’t believe this argument, there is no shortage of investment opportunity in the Great State of Michigan!]
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