George Rebane
For the last year plus we’ve heard from Team Obama about how his policies have improved the economy by “creating” 4+ million new jobs since 2009. It is on the other side of astounding how his supporters lap this up as being some kind of improvement rather than the actual disaster that it is.
We have over 4 million people annually entering their working years. For the economy to keep pace with this influx, it needs to create 200-250K jobs each and every month. And that requires robust GDP growth in the 3% per year rate. This is not possible with ever higher taxes and more regulations arriving at an unknown time in the future. And most certainly not possible with the US business taxes and labor costs being the highest in the world. Not one of Obama’s lemmings asks ‘why should a business take on new risks in the US when way more friendly environments and markets beckon overseas?’
Right now the economy is somewhere around 24 million jobs short of where it should be had the recession not started in 2008. This growing number must be made up, otherwise America will fundamentally transform into a state with a systemic unemployment rate that is just under 20%.
FDR screwed up by deepening and extending Depression1 with his massive Keynesian intervention. Having learned nothing in the interval, Obama is reapplying Keynes – the federal government is pulling out 25% of GDP for its wealth transfer programs – with equally devastating results. By that I mean that the real unemployment iceberg is mostly not visible since people have opted out, gone on more government distribution programs, entered the gray or black markets, and generally doing everything they can do to survive by gaming our increasingly centrally planned and very gameable system. And as I mentioned, businesses are doing their part to escape the pain.
All that leads to everyone seeking alternatives to the historical norm of making things work for them and their families – hearken back to the USSR and how its economy did not work. This is not the way to run a country that is supposed to be on the road to recovery instead of edging closer to a full-blown Depression2. Which brings us back to the question of what Obama and his cadre of elites are really trying to do with America. Even wholesale stupidity – always a good short answer – doesn’t explain everything that the feds and state governments like California’s are doing.
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