RALEIGH – North Carolina Democrats have apparently concluded that challenging the Republican legislature’s record on job creation will have big political payoffs. But I’m not sure it’s in the interest of Gov. Perdue or other Democratic leaders to bring up the subject.
For one thing, to assert that GOP initiatives to challenge ObamaCare, ease the regulatory burden, expand parental choice in public education, or draft a no-tax-hike state budget conflict with GOP campaign promises to prioritize the issue of jobs is simply to assert the critics’ left-wing ideology, not to establish an actual contradiction.
If ObamaCare proceeds to implementation, thousands of jobs will be lost in North Carolina. Thousands of jobs have already been lost thanks to the tax and regulatory policies of past governors and legislatures, policies that the new General Assembly seeks to roll back or reform. And in the long run, the quality of North Carolina’s labor force will have a substantial effect on the state’s competitiveness – so real education reform, based on rigorous academic standards and vigorous school competition is a pressing economic issue.
Of course liberal politicians and activists are free to disagree that these conservative policies will boost economic growth and job creation. But to assert that these policies aren’t intended to boost economic growth and job creation is ridiculous.
By which I mean that the liberal politicians and activists making the charge deserve ridicule. By which I mean that I’m about to ridicule them.
If they believe that North Carolina’s economic performance reflects past public policies they favored – policies such as tax increases, new regulations, corporate-welfare games, and costly education “reforms” that strengthened vested interests against those of parents and taxpayers – then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Our economy has been a laggard, not a leader.
Just last week, Triangle Business Journal reported that the state lost more jobs from 2007 to 2010 than previously estimated. Based on December-to-December data, North Carolina’s net job loss was about 310,000 jobs, up from a previous estimate of 273,000.
Since then, there have been some months of job growth, but it has been neither consistent nor significant. If present trends continue, for example, it will take five to six years simply to offset the 310,000 positions lost during the recession. That would still leave the unemployment rate higher than in 2007, as it wouldn’t accommodate the thousands of new workers entering North Carolina’s job market every month.
Now, the liberal critics could take a different tack. They could argue that past Democratic policies in North Carolina didn’t have much to do with past economic performance in the state – that policy decisions made in Washington, or economic decisions made by producers and consumers around the world were the main determinants of economic trends in North Carolina.
If true, however, there would be no reason to believe that state policy has suddenly become more determinative of economic performance now than it was in, say 1996 or 2003. If the course of job creation in the coming months and years will again be set overwhelmingly by national or international decisions, not by legislative action in Raleigh, then I suppose Republicans ought to go ahead and work on other matters.
Either way, the criticism loses its sting. Either state policy matters, in which case Republicans ought to hasten their efforts to repeal past Democratic mistakes, or state policy doesn’t matter, in which case the criticism is irrelevant.
Perhaps I’m being too hasty, though. Perhaps the criticism is simply being voiced as a means of raising more money from disenchanted liberal donors, thus allowing liberal organizations and the Democratic Party to hire more people so they can continue to lob such criticisms at conservatives and Republicans.
As none of the individuals in question seems greatly interested in the concept of opportunity cost, the scheme probably seems like a wonderful economic stimulus.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.