Noted economic genius Barack Obam blames ATMs for job losses

This argument that technology costs jobs is so old and outdated, they used to make Twilight Zone episodes about it.

“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”

Or you try to start a business but get buried in government bureaucracy and mandates instead. Or you currently run a business but the government bigfoots you with a permitorium banning what you do, or regulates you from one level of staffing to another. Or a federal agency decides to step in and stop a corporation from building a new assembly plant for political reasons, and because that agency thinks it can get away with it. Wait. The president didn’t bring any of that up.

All this prompts Stacy McCain to ask a simple question or two:

The recession is not equally bad everywhere. Why is unemployment nearly 12% in California but less than 6% in Oklahoma? Don’t people in Oklahoma use ATMs and automated airline ticket kiosks?

Go get some economics training, Mr. President. Or just ask any company exec who has chosen to move his or her company out of one state and into another, why they made that move. Start with Boeing and that plant in South Carolina that your NLRB is stomping on. You might learn a thing or two.

More: And another thing to echo McCain’s questions — Why has one state out of the fifty been the scene of 37% of all national job creation over the last decade? Did that state kick out all the ATM’s, or do its economic policies have something to do with businesses hiring there?