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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 19
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Editorial: Loss of public jobs another blow to local economy
When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results. — Calvin Coolidge
Our 30th president has bemused generations with what seems to be the observation that unemployment results from being unable to find a job.
Variations on the quote make a more substantive point.
When a great many people are unable to find work, that is likely to affect other people, even to the point of costing them their jobs.
After all, people who are out of work have less money to spend on the products and services that other people sell. At some point, the nasty cycle — unemployment feeding on itself — gets broken, as demand for goods and services builds up. But meanwhile lives can be changed.
That’s what makes all the recent and expected announcements about job cutbacks in the public sector all the sadder.
These cutbacks need to be understood not only for what they mean for the quality of services being offered, but for what they mean for the economy, still a central concern for just about anybody.
People can disagree about how much “fat” there is in various public budgets, about how much spending can be cut without actually reducing the quality of services below an acceptable point. Surely, there are economies that can be made, through greater cooperation between various entities, for example.
But what’s not in dispute is that when jobs disappear suddenly in large numbers in an economy that is not producing jobs in large numbers, that’s a problem for the public, even for the people who are still working.
Dayton schools are eliminating 294 jobs, including 139 teacher positions, about 10 percent of the teaching jobs. The City of Dayton’s plans aren’t as concrete, but involve similar amounts of spending cuts.
Fairborn schools planned to cut 33 full-time jobs for next year even before losing a levy May 3. Huber Heights has laid off 18 teachers and 16 paraprofessionals. Xenia closed two schools and cut 76 jobs. Similar stories are at play all around the Dayton area and all around the state.
It’s understandable. Cities, counties and schools alike are being hit by state spending cutbacks and other problems. Local authorities do not have a solution at hand.
Raising taxes does not seem to be an option, given voters’ rejection of all local tax increases in the May elections. And, anyway, while local tax increases might prevent the deterioration of public services, they can also take money out of the hands of consumers.
So using tax policy to move money around within a community is not a terribly promising way to spur an economy in the short run.
(As for the long term, of course, you get into a fight about whether offering good public services does more good than raising taxes does harm.)
The likely way for government to avoid job cuts now — and avoid having an anti-stimulative impact on the economy — would be for Washington to borrow some money and spread it around. And Washington is certainly doing that, through tax cuts and tax-cut extensions passed last year.
But when it comes to actually giving money to the states, the political will is gone, for better or worse, given where the national debt already stands.
The 2009 federal stimulus did perform the useful task of keeping some public workers employed through 2010, at a time when the economy was even more discouraging for unemployed people than it is now. In those years, the phenomenon of unemployment feeding on unemployment was in full bloom. Any more job cuts might have tipped the economy toward a longer, harsher recession.
Now jobs are growing in number, rather than shrinking dramatically. Still, job growth isn’t at levels anybody would like to see.
And the Dayton-area recovery, limited as it has been, now has new setbacks to overcome.
With people losing their jobs, as President Coolidge might have noted, unemployment results.
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