New Mexico Sprouts New Credit Claiming

In today’s Albuquerque Journal Rick Homans is claiming that he and the Richardson Administration have created new jobs. It is easy to see the results of government action when it creates government favors for particular interests whether they be movies, spaceports or what not. The people who get jobs as a result of the government favors are readily identifiable and happy about it.
But how about the jobs that have gone begging because we do not have a good tax and regulatory climate? Government does not create jobs. Unfortunately our bad economic climate makes it easier to dish out favors and then claim credit. Despite Homan’s claim about our low unemployment, New Mexico remains consistently above the nation and region over time when it comes to the rate of unemployment and the rate of labor force participation and below the nation and region when it comes to per capita personal income. And our situation will not improve relative to other states until we get out of the big-government, dishing-out-of-breaks to favored interests and get into lower tax rates, less regulation and equal tax treatment under the law.
BTW did you happen to notice an irony? While touting governments success on the opinion page, the front page contains news of the difficulty of making jobless claims to the government. A labor department spokesman is quoted as saying: “the call volume has increased dramatically compared to last year, although the number of new claims filed still remains at about 1,400 to 1,600 a week.