Petey, Nice to know your knee-jerk reflexes are working well. But let’s try this again. The subject is jobs creation as it relates to economic uncertainties. The hypothesis is that economic uncertainties are what’s causing business owners to defer hiring new staff, thus prolonging the “jobless recovery”.

1. The objective fact is that business owners are unsure, even at this late date, whether Congress is going to extend the Bush-era tax rates for them, or whether they’re going to pay an additional 3% or 4.6% tax rate on tax brackets which start at a lower dollar figure. The point I was making above is that it’s this uncertainty which is contributing to keeping business owners from committing to hire new staff. I know that may be a little subtle for your “Talking Points Memo” mind, but I can’t be arsed to dumb everything down to your level.

2. Fines, penalities and higher premiums are also a part of the health care bill. Why won’t you acknowledge those, Petey? It seems to me that if you were the “fair and objective” guy you claim to be, you’d at least admit that there are some significant new expences in the health care legislation as well as tax credits. It’s that constant ignoring of the negatives which makes you look for all the world that you’ve got your nose firmly wedged in Mr. Obama’s buttcrack, Petey.

By virtually everyone’s analysis, the fines, penalties and higher premiums more than offset any tax credits the bill provides, meaning that providing health care insurance for your employees is going to get more expensive, not less expensive. The problem is that people aren’t really sure how much more expensive it’s going to be.

At the same time, insurers are having to raise premium rates because they now have to include more minimum coverages and they have to provide guaranteed issue insurance. The news outlets have been loaded with stories of 20%+ premium increases all over the country.

But again, it’s the uncertainty which is causing employers to freeze hiring until they’ve sorted out how the increases are going to affect the total cost of hiring. Again, maybe a bit subtle for your “Talking Points Memo” mind.

3. You have a crystal ball and can tell you with certainty that the Fed isn’t going to raise interest rates? You have a Tarot deck which tells you what inflation rate the Fed wishes to support? Once again, Petey, it’s the not the absolute interest rate, or the absolute inflation rate which is causing business owners to defer hiring – it’s the uncertainty about them both which has a paralysing effect on business owners – they can’t prepare budgets for next year if they don’t know what capital is going to cost them or how much value they’ll lose to inflation for the year.

4. Petey, as long as cap and trade is still lurking in the wings, which it is, most businesses are going to take a pass on elective major new building projects and major equipment purchases. Why? Because they’re concerned about the long-term energy operating costs associated with such capital investments. If I’m considering building a new facility and purchasing new equipment for that building, and the president has said that he’d like to see the cost of electricity “necessarily skyrocket” as a result of cap and trade legislation, then how hesitant must I be right now about biting off an unpredictable operating expence that I have to pay every month? It’s that uncertainty which kills new job creation, Petey. It’s not the absolute cost of energy which kills jobs creation – it’s not knowing how to budget for next year which is the problem.

5. You do understand that the higher wages those unions obtain for their workers come at the expence of a certain number of jobs, don’t you, Petey? If the cost of each unit of labour increases by say 10% because of unionsation, then in order to maintain profits at the same level, most employers will look at trimming their workforce (usually over time through attrition), or trimming staff hours, so that the total labour cost still fits within budget. And you do understand that over time, growth in the number of jobs will be slightly lower when each individual job costs more, don’t you?

Hate to be a broken record about this stuff, Petey, but here’s the uncertainty factor again. If there’s a chance that Congress is going to pick EFCA back up and pass it during the lame-duck session, most sensible non-union employers are going to consider that a possible risk to future business profits and they are likely to defer hiring until the business environment is more clear to them.

I know that dealing with uncertainties doesn’t fit within your rather dogmatic “Talking Points Memo” approach to dealing with issues, but it’s a very real concern for business people such as myself who have to make our businesses (or our parts of our businesses) fit into a budget and report to shareholders at the end of the year what we’ve done with their money. To the extent that Congress has left a number of large uncertainties for businesses to deal with, they’re creating a circumstance in which most business owners, you know, Petey, the people who actually create jobs, are taking a cautious stance. Even though their revenues may have picked up in the past year, they’re hesitant to commit to new jobs until they understand better what those jobs are going to cost them next year and the years after next year. This Congress has loaded business owners plates with uncertainty after uncertainty and then they seem to scratch their heads and wonder why people aren’t hiring. To co-opt an old saw:

“It’s the uncertainties, stupid!”