#Private sector bleeding badly — but Democrats are still looking to milk it to death

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The US economy shrank 33 percent in the year’s second quarter over where it was in 2019.
Christopher Sadowski

It’s not surprising but it’s still stark: The US economy shrank 33 percent in the year’s second quarter over where it was in 2019, the biggest drop in records going back a century and a half.

Then again, America had never seen lockdowns like those implemented starting in March, just before the quarter began.

Even with lockdowns relaxed, more recently, the jobless rolls just crossed the 54 million mark, with new unemployment claims rising for the second straight week.

Consumer spending and business spending are way, way down, as well — by a third and a quarter, respectively.

And no one’s sure how to turn it all around as long as the virus is still out there.

All of which should add up to a clear warning that, whatever else it does, government absolutely must not slam the private sector.

Yet top Democrats at all levels of government are looking to do just that. From the Green New Deal to Joe Biden’s other plans for trillions in tax hikes to the talk in the Legislature of “asking those with more to pay their fair share” (as Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie puts it, though he really means telling, not asking), progressives aim to make sure government sacrifices as little as possible — or even grows.

And to do it, they mean to milk the private sector even though it’s bleeding out.

In the city, it’s vindictive penalties for late property-tax payments, when people just don’t have the cash. On a state level, tax-the-rich (which means the middle class, too) is nuts, as Gov. Cuomo warns: These are the people best able to move away.

Nationally, it’s just as foolish: The United States desperately needs every bit of real economic growth it can foster.

We know it’s not why progressives run for office, but government at all levels has to do some serious belt-tightening, or the country faces an endless downward spiral.

Don’t kill any more taxpayers’ jobs.