Losers Magazine (tm) Article No. 13 (10/6/95) by Carl E. Person

Why Things Are Destined to Get Worse for the Middle Class and Small Business

The major media, including Business Week, are telling Americans that things are looking up and to hold on, that the economy will rebound and restore many Americans to the economic status which they have lost.

This can't happen if currently government policies continue. These micro-economic policies (consisting of an untold number of specifically identifiable restraints) will continue to do their collective harm to the economy. The rich have prospered througho ut the economic malaise, watching the stock market hit all-time highs throughout the period, and the poor and midde class have continuously suffered from a declining standard of living.

To think that a continuation of these policies will change anything is obviously erroneous, and said by the persons in charge to be able to hold on, as long as possible, to their unwarranted economic status or positions of power.

The faster the country realizes that the problems are micro-economic and not macro-economic, the sooner we will be able to deal with the problems. Basically, macro-economic policy is highly debatable and with little scientific basis. For example, macro- economics would deal with the problem of what would the overall effect on the economy be in the United States if the average temperature of the land surface of the earth were to increase (or decrease) by 1 degree. All you get are a variety of opinions as to millions of consequences, and the best thing of all for economists and politicians is that nobody is ever proven wrong, or right!

Micro-economics, on the other hand, deals with the effect of something quite containable, such as the effect of passing a law which prohibits ex convicts (who have served at least one year in jail) from holding any employment which provides more than $20, 000 per year in compensation. I know of no such law (although the loss of citizenship rights is comparable, to some extent) but I and you can predict what would happen: the rate of recividism of the ex convicts would increase, because of the loss of comp etitive opportunity which would encourage or force the ex convict to return to a life of crime, with associated costs.

We must look at the micro-economic effects of government activity, and eliminate laws which cost more than they provide in benefits, and free up the economy so that the downsizees, underemployeds, unemployeds and unprofitable small businesses can compete effectively with such increased opportunity, and provide the new jobs which the economy needs and could easily have, in absence of the government's present industrial policy of favoring big business.

Copyright © 1995 by Carl E. Person. Permission is given for non-commercial users to send a copy of the data processing file for this work by electronic means to a specific individual for his or her own use, and then only if the entire file is sent, including this copyright notice, but no permission is given for anyone to copy or transmit this file for or to any person for public viewing or downloading. It is intended by the author of this work that the work shall be made available in electronic fo rm only through LawMall (tm).