By now we are used to the most adamant supporters of Barack Obama expressing distress with their onetime demigod. Today even the NYT’s ultra-liberal Bob Herbert – whose knee jerks left so consistently it’s as if his patella were being perpetually hit by a personal southpaw hammer – expresses dismay about the president’s lack of job creation.
Of course, this dyspepsia spins off in many directions – such as this mythical job creation – because these supporters, just like their leader, are unable to face the obvious: Keynesian economics is over and the welfare state, as an idea and in practice, is over with it. This is what the Europeans were trying to tell Obama in Tornoto. We tried it. We know. It’s Greece, stupid. We’re in a global Ponzi scheme with an aging population. There’s no way out without stopping. This deficit spending dog-ma don’t hunt.
The Euros even forced the president to listen to some degree, not that he wanted to. Why would he? He is a lifetime beneficiary of government largesse. Only the largesse seems to have run out for everyone but him and a few friends in their deficit Alamo.
Rick Santelli once again has stated the obvious – “Stop spending, stop spending, stop spending”. But these supposed liberals remain trapped together in an ideological Catch-22. The only longterm solution to economic woe is free markets, but if they admit it, their values and lives disintegrate. It’s as if they’re bees trapped in a hive, someone (reality) has prodded it and now they are all buzzing off in opposite directions unsure who or what to blame.
They sting each other. They sting their opponents. Who knows what next? What will happen if the November debacle is actually as predicted?
“…expresses dismay about the president’s lack of job creation”
I am getting so frustrated that I might have to go out and buy ten bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 and drink them within the next hour. Politicians do not normally create jobs in the private sector. This is a near impossibility. Such jobs are created usually only when the government limits regulations and drops taxes—especially the corporate ones which are inevitably passed along to the consumer.
Actually, all taxes are ultimately paid by the citizens. The only taxes citizens don’t have to pay are consumption taxes on the stuff they don’t consume and lottery tickets if they don’t buy them.
This is why we should desire a tax system where the citizens directly feel the whole brunt of a particular tax. Too many naive people believe that corporate taxes and other such misleading taxes are being paid by someone else.
The only jobs that can be truly created by politicians are public sector ones. The only question we should be asking when the monthly economic figures are released is the number of private sector jobs—and especially those that are not seasonal.
Coreftion if I may: working people pay the vast majority of taxes and government fees.
What will happen after the November debacle? Well, the libs will have a fit that manifests in name-calling and finger-pointing. Then things will get dangerous.
A wounded Obama will lash out at his enemies and become increasingly erratic in his decision making. He’ll try to rule by executive fiat which has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis. If Republicans make any attempt to impeach him, Obama will pull the race card and our inner cities will burn.
It’s going to get much uglier before the situation sorts itself out.
Hopefully the courts reverse decisions by Obama that might provoke a crisis. Thank goodness we have a tri-partite government.
I was in my early twenties when the big race riots of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s took place. That was also the birth of the so called “black leaders” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. At the time I thought they were some sort of media creation, sort of like celebrities. It was several more decades before I realized that being a black leader meant being able to blackmail both national and local government with the threat of race riots. Although no one ever thought about saying it back then — or for that matter saying it now — when government officials no longer believe you have the power to start the black underclass rioting, then you are no longer a “black leader”. The bottom line of the Obama presidency is whether he is a black leader as well as a black president. No ethnic or racial group should be able to get its way by rioting or threatening to riot. We will not be a healthy society until the 1960′s decision to knuckle under to the threat of race riots is convincingly and decisively reversed.
1. David Thomson “…expresses dismay about the president’s lack of job creation”
One can reasonably argue that government can create jobs by spending. The Space program and military hardware spending will create jobs. Historically one of the ways out of recessions has been to start a patriotic war. In our current environment, even though it would be a good idea, that is impossible.
We are losing our technical edge alongside with our engineering and building capabilities. There are no jobs for our engineering/science grads.
We aren’t willing to defend our borders, our citizen rights, our due process and I don’t believe that we will have safe or fair elections.
I hope that I am wrong.
A Patriotic War???
Who are we going to fight?
We can’t even produce enough ammunition for small-arms for the war we’re currently fighting without going to suppliers from other countries, one of which (Israel) we are pointedly trying to piss off.
‘Who are we going to fight?’
my point was NOT to start a fight, it was the futility in the current administrations’ strategy.
They’ve canceled many space programs, air force projects and upgrades, infrastructure – whether military or civilian. These were high paying, high tech, and potentially lifesaving projects.
Even for those inclined that want ‘green’ projects, all this admin can do, is whistle pass the graveyard and make promises that will never be kept.
I can go on and on, but I’m too frustrated to write clearly.
Creating wars is not only immoral—but it also damages the economy in the long run. The economy is simply placed on a credit card sort of basis that must eventually somehow be paid. A war economy spends money that is now unavailable to the private sector for wealth creation uses. WW II did not “save” the American economy. Our debt grew at an astounding rate. Our economic situation improved dramatically only after we ended the policies of the New Deal in the elections of 1946 and 1948.
A nationalized space program is a rare exception. There is also plenty of waste. It is not standard economic activity. Trying to make it so will lead to huge deficits.
If the Democrats don’t face a debacle in November, we the American people will.
One clarification – job creation is easy. The government can pay people to do make work (the stimulus, the auto bailouts, ensus workers, and so on). The majority of local, state, and federal employees outside of the military and law enforcement – conservatively over 10 million of them – do exactly that.
The goal is to create PRODUCTIVE jobs. Only the private sector can do that. If the Bob Herbert’s of the world are getting close acknowledge that simple fact, we’re onto something.
Just think how many jobs the stimulus would have created if even 1/10 of it was earmarked for small business.
Things are changing, they really are. I work in one of those fields where people are dependent on payer sources like medicare and medicaid. A lot of these people want the government to get spending under control, because they are the first ones to feel the collapse.
>>The Space program and military hardware spending will create jobs.<<
Let's be more specific. These things do create jobs. So does a huge new federal bureacracy. The difference is, space and military hardware spending boosts valuable science and engineering skills and capabilities, which then spill over into the private sector. The private sector cannot do much of the raw research that NASA and the Pentagon do, and they cannot create a strong demand for the tangible products of that research. That comes later, when the technology has "matured". Thus, we have the Internet, initially created by the Department of Defense and maturing into a core component of our economy decades later.
Hiring thousands of people to install new window weatherstripping does not have this effect.
Thanks! You are much more articulate about what I was trying to say @3.
I completely regarding the space program. It was that rare exception when such government spending actually improved matters in the private sector. I would also include some bridges, dams, and other infrastructure projects. This is why I am roughly only 95% committed to libertarianism. The other 5% is still up in the air.
I confess to being all over the map where Obama is concerned; ranging from actually raising the question, “Under what circumstances can national elections be suspended or canceled?” in: Thinking the Unthinkable to wondering if Obama has already sealed his fate in my latest: “…and the sharks will come.”
To me, his very election is still a Monty Python nightmare from which I cannot awaken.
-
To those of you who saw my comment above (#9) and came over to visit, thank you.
Unlike visitors from many other sites, you actually looked around and checked out other posts on my site (including the “Thinking the Unthinkable” post I messed up the link on; you found it anyway). You show genuine curiosity and I cannot tell you how much that means to me.
If you check my post “On Reading…”, I’m sure you do NOT fall into the category of reading only what you have to, and never taking any real pleasure in it. I think I’ve found, in here, a site full of people who absolutely love reading as much as I do.
Thank you for nourishing my ego.
-
Swami @8 and f47 and David Thomson. I agree. Weatherstripping jobs are only slightly better “multipliers” of overall GDP than the old make-work of paying people to dig holes on even days and fill them on odd days. Where the gummint can make a difference is in the risky and long-lag work of basic research and infrastructure where we face collective action problems (none of us alone can afford, or see a profit, in building a bridge unless we can collect a toll: yet the whole region will be improved if somebody would build the bridge). Your NASA and DARPA examples can be supplemented (to a degree) by NIH funding for basic and translational medical research. It is very wasteful and has created a vast constituency of dependents holding their rice bowls, but it is what we’ve got. Private sector funding for medical research is drying up because the venture capitalists will fund only enough work to fatten the cattle for market; and the big biotech business model is broken. Their cash cows are dying as the patents expire, and the cost of bringing new products through R&D has become prohibitive. …Bottom line I believe in libertarianism as the starting point and in practice think it would solve about 90% of the problems (maybe, on a good day, 95%); but a well-regulated government, being occasionally useful to the welfare of a free society, the right of the People to get the bureaucrats to fund discrete and worthy infrastructure, should not be denied.
The problem with socialism:
1) You can never have more people taking out benefits than those paying in.
2) The bigger your program becomes the more unsustainable it will be.
To the rational thinker, these two items are completely contradictory, yet with socialism they are at the same time true. That is why socialism, or any other system where a man does not work to earn his keep, will fail.
A is A. If you accept that basic notion then liberalism and progressivism should not exist.
Thanks for taking the time to write that, I found it very detailed. If you get a chance you should check my site as well. I hope you have a good day!