Currently hanging out in the nation's capital area. One odd thing about this joint is that, hanging here, you get to see every political ad made, even crap that you never hear about on the web.
The assumption is that the viewership of cable TV in the DC area may not all be power players, but if you throw your message out on these cable waves, you're bound to hit a few.
So I'm getting to see a lot of market tests and trial balloons up here, stuff I never see on the tube in New Orleans, I tell you.
A lot of the, um, material being shoveled down the pipe here is ginned up by Karl Rove's Crossroads operation, often in the guise of the "New Majority Agenda" front. The latest load is an ad clipping CBS' Scott Pelley announcing that we're in "the worst economic recovery ever," then goes on to blame (gasp) Barack Obama's "stimulus" policies for piling up debt which is preventing job creation.
Now, plenty of people have spent a lot of time and drawn up a lot of cool charts showing where the bulk of our debt has come from (generally speaking, every recent Republican president) and how Obama has actually flatlined federal spending. No need to go over that again for smart people who know how to use Google.
Still, there's a piece of data I haven't seen, and would be damn curious to see. Just what is the relationship between the national debt and US hires? It wouldn't be hard for a decent pollster to find out, or even a Forbes or Bloomberg reporter. Quick survey of CEOs, HR types, small business trade groups, etc. Simple question: "Are your personnel decisions, particularly the decision to hire employees, affected by the United States' national debt?"
I'm sure there'd be some noise in the stream, Tea drinkers and Galtians who'll aver, with straight faces, that they'd love to double their payrolls but that danged old debt clock keeps rolling over. But, even rolling those BS artists into the sample, I can hardly believe that the resounding majority would answer anything but, "Huh? What the heck are you talking about?"
Because companies don't hire and fire people based on the national debt. They hire and fire based on profits. Will adding X workers to the rolls increase production to meet a perceived demand so that revenue exceeds the cost of those hires?
But that's just my own opinion, based on common sense. I'd love to see some data.