Hiring in the Extended Obama Recession

I hired a scientist in December 2008 and another in April 2009. As noted above, we are awaiting the graduation of a new materials scientist who will begin working in June, if he accepts our position offering. Hiring people in a recession is a risky business, but it is when a small laboratory has its best opportunity to hire good people.

Given all of the best efforts of Obama and his socialist cohorts to create investor uncertainty, I am not being a good example of Going Galt. My laboratory is neither in an industry in Obama's gunsights nor large enough yet for him to try to milk us of all of our equipment and human capital. Of course, when he has stolen all he can from the bigger fish in the commercial realm, he will come after us and all of the other small businesses. And since some of my clients are pretty big fish, they have reason to be very worried in the near future. This is especially true if they have union workers, since Obama has made it clear with his handling of Chrysler and Government Motors that he will serve the interests of union leaders even if it means breaking long-established contract and property-rights laws.

The card-check law the unions want may result in the unionization of many small businesses. This in turn will put those unionized small business more and more in the socialists' gunsights, since they wish to find every opportunity to strengthen the unions with goodies taken from dirty, rotten capitalist pigs, such as small businessmen or any other businessmen. The unions will try to devour small companies using card-check to get to these goodies.

But, there is a countervailing effect which is going to surprise the unions and the socialists who back their avarice for stolen goods. Investors will understand the connection between the unions and the theft of capital which they will practice with the help of the union-pandering socialist government. The moment a company is unionized or it is clear that an attempt to unionize it is underway, its investors will seek to dump it. Investor discrimination against unionized companies will become much stronger. Investors will still want to invest, but they will seek out companies which will be hard to unionize, seek out non-commercial bonds, and invest abroad. All Americans will be hurt by this, but what else can an investor do given the strong-arm of brutal socialist government? Unionized companies will not be able to get adequate capital in the free market and will become dependent upon government to prop them up. Of course, this has been the case to a considerable degree in the past, but the flight of private, voluntary capital will be more massive and more and more only government will be able to keep unionized companies on life-support.

American workers have already seen the connection between company failure and unionization. This is why labor union membership in the private sector has fallen so drastically as a percentage of the workforce in the last 55 years. 35.7% of all workers in the private sector were union members in 1953. Now only 7.6% of private sector workers are union members. This is why the labor union leadership is desperate for card check, as are those Democrat politicians who are dependent upon the union leaders for campaign money and labor. They must do something to force workers to join the private sector unions those workers recognize as the cause of a slow death for the companies that employ them.

Thus, both investors and able workers will shun companies that are unionized. There is nothing new in this. This is a tried and true pattern. We have seen the effects in the U.S. in the big steel companies who came out of the 1950s and 1960s thoroughly unionized. We have seen the effects upon the American automobile companies. We have seen the effects throughout Europe. There is no rocket science involved in understanding what will happen.

I believe this recession was caused by the oil-price shock which preceded it by 9 months as explained by Alan Reynolds. See my earlier post on 11 April 2009 on his excellent article. The recovery from this recession was delayed by the lack of confidence in the private sector and the panic of Paulson and Bernanke toward the end of the last Bush administration. Then, incredibly, the people elected Obama to bring on change, which he has done with a socialist vengence against American investors, American manufacturers, American financial institutions, business owners and managers, non-union American workers, and all of the consumers of American goods who will hereafter pay higher prices for almost everything. This massive mistake by the American people will cost them dearly with a much delayed recovery and many added deadwood drags on all commercial activities and most of our individual efforts to pursue our happiness.

I strongly advise you to do a great job of insulating your homes and business buildings, because all of us are soon going to be hit by much higher heating and cooling costs, thanks to Obama and his allies in the uncompetitive wind generation and solar power industries.