Jobs are on everyone’s mind these days, and it would ordinarily be fantastic news to learn of a big new batch of them. There is one exception though, and it occurs when newly-created jobs are government jobs that threaten to kill private-sector ones.
A prime example lies with the Obama administration’s new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), headed by Richard Cordray. Created in the name of consumer security, the CFPB bestows on the Executive Branch unilateral power to regulate essentially all financial transactions in America.
What our government should be doing is encouraging and cultivating productivity—not hampering it. Business leaders across the country have been complaining for years about the regulatory hurdles our government already has in place, and how they have made hiring and growing difficult. Now, in committing itself to a massive new agency that can regulate private transactions big and small, our government stands to make the economy even more sluggish.
Regulation has an important place in our country, but at this current time of anemic job growth we need to get our priorities straight. Legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank may have spurred an increase in government jobs, but those jobs have not made our economy any more productive. Likewise, new bureaucrats at places like EPA are also not in the business of fostering job growth, but more likely to be putting up new governmental roadblocks businesses have to navigate.
I wish our government would make a resolution this year to commit itself to creating the right kind of jobs instead of the wrong ones. Until that happens, business leaders will keep struggling, and our economy will keep sputtering.