Job Losses For Everyone...Almost

The L.A. Times recently had an interesting story about job losses:

With jobs disappearing in numbers not seen since the end of World War II, pressure mounted on Congress and President-elect Barack Obama on Friday to overcome their differences and reach agreement on a massive recovery program to stave off economic catastrophe.

The nation's unemployment rate rose to an eye-popping 7.2% in December and brought the total jobs lost for the year to the largest number since 1945, the Labor Department said. More alarming than the bare numbers was the trend line: The economy has lost 2.6 million jobs in the last 12 months, but 75% of them vanished in the last four months, with 524,000 jobs lost in December alone.

Economists expect the employment picture to deteriorate further in the months ahead.

"No one is expecting it to turn around any time soon," said Harry Holzer, a labor economist with Georgetown University and the Urban Institute. "The labor market lags behind the rest of the economy. Absent any signs of stabilization, we can expect this to continue for some time."

The article goes into some detail about sectors that are experiencing more loss and less loss, and so on.  The thing that bears pointing out, however, is the handful of sectors that aren't experiencing difficulty at all:

Millions out of work

Breaking it down

So, despite this overall economic downturn which has given us 7.2% unemployment (the highest level since the early 1990s), there are four sectors that have still been gaining: government, mining and natural resources, education, and health services.  What do you notice about those four?

All of them are strictly controlled by the government.

Obviously, government itself has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years (one of the biggest failures of GOP 'leadership').  Education is unionized and a rat's nest of entrenched bureaucracy.  Health care is partially unionized, and smothered by insurance, which government also fouls up.  Energy and mining is the only one of those four that still retains a strong semblance of private industry, though it is horrendously burdened with government regulations.  And guess what?  Two of the Obamessiah's primary goals for his new administration are to socialize both medicine and energy, driving up costs even further in both.

So what's my point?  Let's say it altogether now: there are two sets of rules.  When liberals are in charge, they insulate themselves from responsibility by propping up their chosen industries (or unions) with taxpayer dollars.  By avoiding responsibility, they never take the hit that you and I and the rest of the American people do.  They may talk a nice-sounding game of equity and fairness (remember 'all of us having skin in the game'?), but when the rubber meets the road they always exempt themselves from the same rules they push on everyone else.

If Obama succeeds in pushing socialized health care and vastly restricted energy production as he plans, we will see prices shoot through the roof while supply drops through the floor.

Can you think of a single reason this is good for you, me, or anyone in America who isn't a liberal?

There's my two cents.