What Can Be Done?

Reason asks economists, writers, and wonks for real ways to increase job growth.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/08/12/what-would-you-do-to-impro/print

The BLUF:

-Higgs:  Repeal Obamacare

-McClosky:  Eliminate the minimum wage for people younger than 25

-Shlaes:  Reform our Federal Reserve so that monetary policy is rules-based, not personality-based

-Stossel:  Close the Departments of Labor, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, and HUD, then eliminate three fourths of all regulations

-Boudreaux:  Replace all income taxes, including that on capital gains, with a consumption tax. But do this only if the Constitution is amended to prevent government from taxing incomes and capital gains.

-Caplan:  Cut employers’ share of the payroll tax.

-Bartlett:  Typical Keynesian crap

-Miron:  Policymakers should stop worrying about job growth. Instead, they should focus on eliminating economic policies that impede economic efficiency—runaway entitlements, a horrendous tax code, excessive regulation, impediments to free trade

-Berlau:  Repeal portions of the Bush-era Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Repeal portions of last year's Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Pass the bipartisan Small Business Lending Enhancement Act

-Meltzer:  A five-year moratorium on new regulation except for national security, a budget agreement that makes the debt sustainable, corporate tax rate reduction paid for by closing loopholes, and a credible, enforced inflation target.

-Stoll:  Stop extending unemployment benefits, and allow states to experiment with ways allocating the money so it creates an incentive for recipients to get a job.  Or, fold unemployment together with health, college, homeownership and retirement as expenses that people can save for in a tax-favored account.

-Olson:  Vaporize age discriminiation laws

-Schiff:  The government should pursue policies that allow the free market to set wages, benefits, and all issues related to employment. Just as employees are allowed to leave jobs for whatever reason, employers should be allowed to hire and fire based on any criteria without fear of litigation.

-Tabarrok:  QE3: Fed should buy lots of long term T-bonds.

-Smith:  Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline: 20,000 jobs created.

Quotes I love from this article:

"Employees do not qualify for special privileges (inappropriately labeled worker's rights) simply because they accept a job, and employers do not lose their rights and become subjected to special obligations just because they hire."  Schiff

""Jobs" are deals between workers and employers, and so "creating" them out of unwilling parties is impossible. The state, though, can outlaw deals, and has."  McClosky

The key - let free people make free choices to come to mutually agreeable terms, and they will do.  There are consequences associated with free humans making free choices.  These consequences are all better than those that result from government coercion.