The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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July 24, 2010

Expanding public sector not working

Dalton Daily Citizen

DALTON — If you listen to our leaders in Washington, they would have you believe that the recession is over.

They are telling Americans that we are on the road to recovery, even if that road will be long and bumpy.

That may be true if you take the 20,000 feet above the Earth view of how we are doing, although we doubt it even then, but down here, where for most of us the rubber hits the road, we don’t see things the same way.

In fact, for many of us, the tires are getting more worn and there are few signs that a good pit stop is in sight.

According to last week’s jobless report, the unemployment rate got worse in Whitfield and Murray counties in June, not better, and real estate figures show that home foreclosures are still on the rise and occurring at a greater rate than they were a year ago.

And if you listen to business people around town and the state, many say it feels like the economy is softening again, not getting stronger.

What’s scary for many people is that they have been unemployed for so long that they are finding it difficult to believe that this recession will ever end and it is only a little comforting to know that Congress has once again extended benefits for the long-term unemployed.

In Whitfield County, the unemployment rate in June was 12 percent, up from 11.5 percent in May. That’s down from June 2009, when the rate was 12.2 percent, but it hardly feels like we are making progress.

For Murray County, the June unemployment rate was 11.6 percent, compared to 11.4 percent in May and 12.9 percent in June 2009.

Statewide, the numbers are no kinder. For a 33rd consecutive month, Georgia topped the national unemployment rate, which currently stands at 9.5 percent, with 10 percent unemployment.

Even if you still have a job, there is a good chance that you are being paid for fewer hours and your take home pay has gone down.

At last week’s Home Rescue Fair, Gaile Jennings, executive director of the Dalton-Whitfield Community Development Corp., said the biggest problem in the Dalton market is that many hourly workers have seen their hours plummet.

“They went not just from overtime to 40,” she said. “But from overtime to 32.”

The problem, for all of us, is that job creation and real economic stimulation still hasn’t reached the front burner for politicians in Atlanta and Washington.

If it had, you would surely see more of an effort on all fronts to get the private sector moving again, not the public sector.

To really get the economy moving again, you have to get money into the hands of the companies and people who make money. For everything that government does for us, making money is not one of them.

There is too little talk on the campaign trail about how to loosen up capital so that businesses can start investing in people and projects again. There is too little talk about what can be done at the front end, the private sector, to make sure that the back end, the public sector, has money to work with.

We are going about this thing backwards. No matter how much money you pump into the public sector it doesn’t flow back through the pipe.

Our economy is built on private enterprise creating money and the public sector using its fruits to provide all of us with a higher quality of life.

No matter how hard we try, it will never work in reverse.

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