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Parting Shots

By Wm. R. Lowry
Editor & Publisher, MiBiz
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note-able quotes

“... This (extended unemployment benefits) is one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy. Economists will tell you the money is spent quickly, it injects demand into the economy, and is job-creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name. So it has a double benefit: it helps those who have lost their jobs but it also is a job creator. And for those two reasons at least it should be passed.”

— Nancy Pelosi, Speaker,
U.S. House of Representatives

“For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is a hook in every benefit that sticks in his jaws that takes the benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.”

— Dr. John Donne (1572-1631) English Poet and Preacher

“The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.”

—Voltaire (1694-1778) French Enlightenment author and philosopher

“To accept a benefit is to sell one’s freedom.”

— Publilius Syrus (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

“A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.”

— Barry Goldwater (1909-1996) U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate

math problems

The official DELEG Michigan employment report for June hit my desk just as I began writing this column. I was initially encouraged by the good news that the state’s unemployment rate decreased slightly — four-tenths of a percentage point to 13.2 percent — and that the number of unemployed Michiganians declined by a significant 21,000 persons during June.

The reality check hit, however, with the revelation that total employment was little changed, edging upward by a mere 1,000. Moving the needle were some 20,000 folks dropping out of the official labor market.

Michigan’s numbers covering June 2009 to June 2010 (our so-called recovery) show unemployment fell by 42,000 or 6.1 percent, while employment has edged up by a paultry 7,000 persons. Fuzzy, huh?

math teacher

If we are to believe the figurings of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (second in the presidential line of succession) that paying unending benefits to the long-term unemployed represents a viable means to economic success, Michigan officials should quickly brainstorm new and innovative ways to keep the idle listed on their official workforce roster.

When the spigot of extended benefits is again cranked wide open in Washington, D.C., and as sure as it is an election year, it will be, Michigan will need all the unemployed it can muster in order to maximize this federal economic development bonanza. (This new math takes some faith).

note-able quotes

“All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.”

— John Calvin (French ecclesiastical Statesman and Theologian, 1509-1564)

“A true measure of your worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your success.”

— Cullen Hightower

“A benefit consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(3 BC-65AD) Roman Stoic Philosopher

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