The "Jobs" Bill makes it through the Senate

From NPR:

Companies that hire unemployed workers will get a temporary payroll tax holiday under a bill that easily won final congressional approval Wednesday.

The bipartisan 68-29 vote in the Senate sends the legislation to the White House, where President Barack Obama has promised to sign it into law.

It will be the first of several election-year jobs bills promised by Democrats to be enacted into law, though there's plenty of skepticism that the measure will do much to actually create jobs. Optimistic estimates predict the tax break could generate perhaps 250,000 jobs through the end of the year, but that would be just a tiny fraction of the 8.4 million jobs lost since the start of the recession.

The measure is part of a campaign by Democrats to show that they are addressing the nation's unemployment problem...

Here we go again. More political running in place to "do something" about the weak job market. Congress sure has passed many laws to move the economy into a positive place with little, if not weak, results. But here we are again with half measures and soap box speeches. That's OK, it's not like they're spending their money anyway. And besides, the farce of "pay-go" was once again obliterated by reality. Liberal economists are hoping that a cyclical recovery and low interest rates by the Fed move the economy along--we can already see plenty of postive indicators--so that soon to be laws like the "Jobs" bill, will look like it was just the right thing to do. Sorry, but any recovery will not be due to a "Jobs law" or a massive pork program like the "stimulus." It will be due to the business cycle and the private economy. So for those that voted for this bill and the stimulus, thanks for nothing.

Blue Staters running to Red States...and fast!

From Forbes:

For the past decade a large coterie of pundits, prognosticators and their media camp followers have insisted that growth in America would be concentrated in places hip and cool, largely the bluish regions of the country...This narrative, which has not changed much over the past decade, is misleading and largely misstated. Net migration, both before and after the Great Recession, according to analysis by the Praxis Strategy Group, has continued to be strongest to the predominately red states of the South and Intermountain West.

This seems true even for those seeking high-end jobs. Between 2006 and 2008, the metropolitan areas that enjoyed the fastest percentage shift toward educated and professional workers and industries included nominally "unhip" places like Indianapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis, Tenn., Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo.

The overall migration numbers are even more revealing. As was the case for much of the past decade, the biggest gainers continue to include cities such as San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. Rather than being oases for migrants, some oft-cited magnets such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago have all suffered considerable loss of population to other regions over the past year.

It seems that the "smart and hip" like low taxes, jobs, and livable surroundings just like the hicks that they constantly vilify. One last point from the article:

Virtually all the top 10 economies that have withstood the recession come from outside the "youth-magnet" field: San Antonio; Oklahoma City; Little Rock, Ark.; Dallas, Baton Rouge, La.; Tulsa, Okla., Omaha, Neb.; Houston and El Paso, Texas.

I may be needing a change of scenery if employment doesn't improve around here.

Lost jobs may be gone forever

This is quite depressing as our national unemployment rate continues to rise.

(Graph is from the Wall Street Journal.)