George Rebane

That is the short title to a landmark plan that Heritage Foundation published about a month ago.  In the popular media, it has received scant attention.  I believe this is so because it presents an utterly reasonable way for us to rescue America from its current financial freefall, and its ideological bedfellows are stuck in the NIH mode.  They want to get re/elected, Heritage just wants to put good policy on the table for all to draw from.   The socialists wouldn’t touch this plan with a ten-foot pole, its implementation may delay their global goals indefinitely. But we’ll come back to ‘Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity’ in a bit.

So, has anyone read the 20jun11 Time magazine’s cover article ‘What Recoverey? – The Five Myths About the Economy’?  Time started coming to our house spontaneously about three months ago; we have no idea how that happened since we did not order it.  But since it is a prominent national rag for liberal thought, we throw it on the ottoman with the other front room reading materials, and peek at it now and then to confirm our assessment of its direction and depth – beats watching MSNBC.

Time acknowledges that, given Obama’s policies so far, recovery from the Great Recession is nowhere in sight.  And it predictably concludes that more of the same is what’s required to pull us out of this insipient depression that was all Bush2’s fault.  In the process the magazine argues that placing our false hopes on any combination of its five myths is futile.  The myths are – 1. The downturn is a temporary blip, 2. The Fed can save us, 3. The private sector will make it all better, 4. We can move where the jobs are, and 5. Entrepreneurs are our greatest strength.

Each of these is dismantled in turn with the inevitable conclusion that what we need is another good dollop of government stimulus.  This new version would incorporate what those clever Germans do to make their corporations fly in tight formation with their government – not that this frees them from financial problems similar to ours, but they’re not that bad yet.  Of course, ignored is also Germany’s almost complete energy dependence on Russia, and its abrogation of all defense responsibilities within its own borders or contributing to NATO.  Uncle Sam is the dumb sheriff who will keep the peace.

I also had problems with myths 3, 4, and 5.  Dismissing the unhampered private sector’s contribution to our economy is a classical leftwing shibboleth.  The answer has always been government working with the mega-corporations full of unionized labor, each supporting the other in one big happy family.  Except, of course, when one them wants to build cheaper airplanes in an unauthorized right-to-work state, then it must be herded back into the corral.

Moving to where today’s two million unfilled jobs are is not an acceptable solution because many homes are under water and sunk costs do count, many households have two breadwinners and require the changing of two jobs, and finally, there are probably not two million unemployed out there with the right skills to do the jobs that go wanting.  And there’s more to be said about that a few pages later in ‘Life After High School’.  This survey article attempts an heroic effort to show that a lot of seeming airheads who graduate high school can wind up being productive in the 21st century, just look at Kurt Vonnegut’s accomplishments in the 20th century.  Yeah, right.  Some time ago I challenged readers to do their own informal survey of young people thinking and preparing for careers.  What fraction of them have decided to become government employees, or its inevitable wards?

Myth 5 denigrated the role of the entrepreneur in our recovery fortunes because stats show that most jobs are created by existing small businesses when they expand.  Forgotten from the analysis is that existing small businesses were started by entrepreneurs and built to where they could expand.  Time’s strongest point here is that big financial outfits have been draining the brainy talent pool of youngsters, leaving very few to get the skills to start the next Microsoft or Google.  The bottom line is, forget entrepreneurs and bet on the companies which have already survived the culling.  No one at the media giant realizes that technology is accelerating, and that it’s the entrepreneurs who think up and bet on the ideas that are now providing growth.  Competing with China in making cars or cutlery is not going to move the American peanut ahead.

So now let’s get back to Heritage Foundation’s ‘Saving the American Dream’.  To be able to fully understand alternatives to the progressive train wreck that is already cooked into our national attitudes, you really have to curl up with this report.  The facts are cogent, minimally necessary, and the graphics illustrating the main points are well done.  The covered policy aspects of recovery include tax reform, defense, and the major entitlements that include the most reasonable healthcare alternative to Obamacare.

The left’s response to such alternative plans goes beyond silence.  In fact, our favorite union SEIU has come out with a clever, complete, and compelling answer to “too many conservatives” in today’s political scene.  It is to co-opt the Republican Party with RINO middle-of-roaders as reported in the SacBee under a more moderately titled approach ‘SEIU California launches Republican PAC to back moderates’.  The tagline here is that they will simply “outbreed” conservative Republicans with those more to their liking.  Now there’s the plainest reason of all for them to oppose right-to-work laws; where else would they get the money to do that if not from forced union membership?