Thursday, August 30, 2012

Obama Is Clueless On Economic Funadamentals

The left is still railing about the right "lying" about Obama's remarks in Roanoke:



The left argues that Obama was not talking about businesses in the quote above, but about roads and bridges. It doesn't matter. Even straining credulity to concede the point for the rest of this post, it shows that Obama fundamentally misunderstands the economy.

In Obama's mind, the government is the key to prosperity, and American's owe it obeisance. Under either interpretation, it is crystal clear that Obama sees government as that which allows the growth of private enterprise and wealth. That is precisely backwards.

Every penny of wealth in our nation comes from private enterprise. The government creates, of itself, nothing - it is a parasite, albeit a necessary one, on the private sector. The dollar is worth more than the paper it is printed on solely because of the goods and services produced by the private sector, period. Moreover, before government can build a road or push out a defense contract, it must first collect tax - and those taxes are wholly taken from wealth that first arises in the private sector.

This is not a 'what came first' question, 'the chicken or the egg?' For example, go to England and you will find countless very narrow roads. None of them were originally "built" by government. They were, for millennia, roads cut by individuals on horse and cart taking goods and services to and from market. As this developed, the famed medieval markets were co-opted by the king - so that he could tax the private enterprise that went on there.

Government is wholly dependent on the private economy for tax dollar one. It is not, as Obama and the left seem to think, a goose that will always lay golden eggs solely for the benefit of government. It turns reality on its head. The key to government revenues is through growing private sector wealth, not raiding it and demanding yet more. For Obama to make the remarks he did in the video above show beyond doubt that he doesn't grasp this most fundamental of concepts, irrespective of what he meant.

And if there is any doubt about his inability to grasp basic economic concepts, later Obama made the following comment in an interview in July, claiming that Romney's business experience has nothing to do with job creation, adding that “[a]s the head of a private equity firm his job was to maximize profits and help wealthy investors."

How does Obama think jobs are created - by government without the private sector footing the bill? Does he think a single job in the private sector is not tied to the creation or protection of wealth? This is not the Soviet economy, where the old joke was, "I pretend to work, the government pretends to pay me." That economy failed for precisely that reason. Jobs don't come first, the creation of wealth does. No one in the private sector creates a job simply for the sake of doing so. Make work jobs are solely the province of governement.

At any rate, the left is daily screaming the mantra that the right is "LYING" about Obama's remarks in Norfolk. It doesn't matter, as any way you slice it, Obama is an economic special needs child who needs to be removed far from the reins of government if we are to have any chance to recover.





1 comment:

Paul Gordon said...

Excellent posts; both this and especially the preceding one on Paul Ryan's speech.

Now, to cut to the chase: ...

After a four-month absence which made me suspect the worst, it's so great to see that you are still with us.

Welcome back! :-)
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