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From Politico 44: You’re invited — On the jobs summit list …

“CONFIRMED ATTENDEES INCLUDE: Eric Schmidt, Google; Randall Stevenson, AT&T; Surya Mohapatra, Qwest ; Frederick Smith, Fed Ex; Brian Roberts, Comcast; Bob Iger, Disney; James McNerney, Boeing; Andrew Livens, Dow; Peter Solmssen, Siemens; Stephanie Burns, Dow Corning; Phaedra Ellis Lamkins, Green for All; Reed Hundt, Coalition for the Green Bank; Larry Mishel, EPI; Alan Blinder, Princeton; Paul Krugman, Princeton; Joe Stiglitz, Columbia; Bob Greenstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia. PLUS SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS, including David Ickert, Air Tractor; Woody Hall, Diversapack; and Rose Wang, Binary Group. AND Anna Burger, Change to Win; Leo Gerard, United Steel Workers; Joe Hansen, United Food and Commercial Workers; Randi Weingarten, AFT; Mayor Frank Cownie, Des Moines; Mayor Julian Castro, San Antonio; and Mayor Ed Pawlowski, Allentown, Pa.”

In other (Grayling) words, we have (1) big contributors whose large corporations have been laying off workers, (2) union leaders who represent barely one-in-ten US workers and whose grasping has sent jobs overseas, (3) leftist economists, (4) war-horses of the DC policy establishment, (5) members of the red-green coalition, (6) political allies, and (7) a few small business people of whom nothing is known.

THE CRISIS IN EMPLOYMENT IS REAL. Nothing that will come out of this jobs summit will have any effect on it, however. Exhorting industry to hire will not. Shaming banks into extending more credit to business will not. Temporary subsidies and $3000 new-hire tax credits will not. Make-work schemes will not. Enterprises will not hire or commit any new resources as long as their tax and regulatory regimes are totally unsettled, as they are with this anti-enterprise statist administration. Business owners do not know what they face in terms of higher taxes and giant mandates for health care, cap-and-tax, and other pet “make-the-rich-pay” schemes of the left. But they do know for certain that these things will be burdensome, and maybe fatal. No sensible business person will hire or invest under such threat.

Better to milk your business for cash to consume while you can. Maybe now’s the time to move offshore. The Chinese Communists are more business friendly than the US Democrats, and probably easier to deal with than the United Steel Workers or United Food and Commercial Workers.

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