After a few days of letting the dust settle, it has become pretty evident that Obama’s jobs speech was a dud.  Sucks to be Obama, I guess.  On Friday, the stock market dropped 300 points .. no not because of Dear Ruler’s speech, but the speech clearly did not inspire much confidence to counterbalance other issues in Europe. 

But after a speech on jobs, who else should we really be asking other than the people who would be creating the jobs?  Well if this headline in the New York Times doesn’t sum it up, I’m not sure what will: “Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Hiring Spur.”  First of all, yes you read that correctly .. the New York Times published that article.  Within the article it goes on to explain that employers believe Obama’s tax credits and payroll deductions are fine, but not enough to persuade them to create more jobs.  Ouch.  Wasn’t that the whole point of PrezBo’s lecture?  So let’s take a look at how a few jobs creators view Obama’s proposals, shall we?

Roger Tung, the chief executive of Concert Pharmaceuticals, said the company, a privately held biotechnology firm with 45 employees, would save $150,000 a year from the proposed corporate payroll tax deductions.

But that is still not enough to cover the cost of hiring even one additional employee at the Lexington, Mass., company, Mr. Tung said, once benefits and other expenses besides salary are included. He can hire, he said, only when investors become confident again and the company can raise more money.

Or how about this one …

To the extent these measures could be used, many employers said they would most likely support people whom companies were planning to hire anyway.

Chesapeake Energy, one of the biggest explorers of oil and gas in shale fields across the country, for example, said it had 800 positions open, and had already received tax credits for hiring the long-term unemployed.

But Michael Kehs, vice president for strategic affairs and public relations, said in an e-mail that the credit “does not drive our hiring.”

So there are just two examples of how Obama’s ideas are off the mark.  He doesn’t understand what drives hiring.  In the first example, it shows how a tax credit is fine, but doesn’t even begin to cover the true cost of hiring an employee.  In the other example, companies that were going to hire will still hire, but not because of tax credits.  You can get a $2,000 tax credit for buying a new car … but you still aren’t going to buy the car unless (a) you need it for transportation, and; (b) you can still afford the monthly payments and maintenance costs after the tax credit makes its way to your bottom line.  Simple economic concepts Obama just doesn’t understand.  Obama couldn’t sustain a lemonade stand on a 95 degree day.  He simply does not understand what drive companies to create jobs.  But these job creators in this article do.  So what do they believe they need in order to spur job creation:

• An increase in consumer confidence
• An increase in demand for their products
• Stock market stabilization (confidence for investors)
• Government getting out of the way (regulations)

I’ve said this for a while now.  The focus should be on growing the size of our economic pie.  Only then will our economy begin to improve and companies will begin to hire.  Temporary programs and more government spending aren’t going to do this.  Barack Obama is not interested in growing the size of our economic pie.  If he was, he would understand that government spending is only killing our private sector’s ability to grow because every penny of government spending had to come from somewhere … the private sector!  But in the world according to Obama, he knows how to better spend your money.  For example, he would rather spend it on …