Is the Private Sector Doing Just Fine?
Posted on October 20, 2011
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday: "It's very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it's the public sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about.”He was talking about his plan to give more money to states so they can give more money to teachers unions and public safety unions.
Joe Biden breathlessly said yesterday that if you didn’t support this plan, the chances that you might get raped (if you are a woman) or held up at gunpoint (if you run a 7-11) will go up dramatically. He said yesterday in Washington:
“In many cities, the result has been — and it’s not unique — murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up and folks, there’s a simple reason for it. There’s been a perfect storm out there — these God-awful Ponzi schemes that the last outfit allowed Wall Street to engage in resulted in this gigantic collapse of the financial industry. Housing — the bottom fell out. Foreclosures increased, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. Abandoned homes are created. Drug lords move in. Arson increases. Budgets fall because the property taxes fall. Cops and firefighters get laid off. Response times increase from five minutes to 30 minutes, and people die, and people’s homes burn to the ground.”
So, according to Reid and Biden, the private sector is doing just fine and if we don’t pass the President’s jobs plan, you are more likely to get raped or murdered or have your house burn down.
In the meantime, Bloomberg New reports that the D.C Capitol region is now richer than Silicon Valley and is now the richest place on earth: “Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show. The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046. The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity, said Kevin Zeese, director of Prosperity Agenda, a Baltimore-based advocacy group trying to narrow the divide between rich and poor. “There’s a gap that’s isolating Washington from the reality of the rest of the country,” Zeese said. “They just get more and more out of touch.”
So, how do you think the private sector is doing? Who do you think is telling the truth?