Just Leave Us Alone
That’s my view about government these days. It seems like the more government does to try to help, the worse things get.
Some of that is because of government’s misguided idea that they know better and we should just be grateful for their benevolence. Some of it, frankly, is incompetence.
This is nothing new, but I thought of it again this past weekend when folks in Washington floated the trial balloon of a four-day work week for Americans. Notice, this is not taking the 40-hour work week and spreading it out over only four days, which has been popular with some aspects of the workforce…no, the idea is to make life easier for workers by only making them work four days…32 hours.
Never mind that we can’t find enough workers now to staff the jobs that need to be filled…let’s cut current workers’ hours by 20 percent and see what that does for productivity and our ability to compete in the global marketplace.
And presumably, those with the genius idea would say that if 32 hours was the normal maximum work week, then overtime gets triggered sooner…and the level where employers would need to provide benefits would go even lower, perhaps to 24 hours.
Then of course, and it is more complicated than this, but all the tinkering by the Fed with interest rates has the bond market so out of whack we have bank failures…but no worry, deposits will be covered beyond the federal insurance level, and taxpayers won’t have to pay a cent of it. I saw one commentator suggest that this is being done through the economic principle known as magic.
And beyond that, the Biden Administration’s economy-killing proposed tax increases on job creating businesses…complete in the face of the last century of data about the adverse impact of increasing corporate tax rates.
So thanks, but no thanks…stop trying to help the free market, which does really well when left alone. The rest of us really do, too.
