Posted on 06/03/2012 5:33:05 AM PDT by Misterioso
In a recent campaign speech, Obama said: “See, the question is not whether things will get better — they always do… The question is whether together, we can muster the will — in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics — to bring about the changes we need.”
This is a revealing statement. It reveals the assumption of all liberals and socialists, Obama included, that the money will always be there. Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.” This implies that the economy will get better, no matter what the government does to it.
Tell this to people in Communist or former Communist countries. Or to people living under religious or fascist dictatorships. The government throttles these economies to no end. The only economic growth that ever takes place is to the benefit of the rulers — mainly because of places like the United States, from whom they can beg, borrow and steal.
It’s beyond foolish to assume the economy can get better no matter what. To think this is to assume that economic growth and wealth creation happen automatically. This explains the attitudes of liberals like Obama. They resent “the rich” and people who have more because they got “more than their share” of the inevitable wealth. There’s no concept that somebody works to create the wealth, and maintain wealth and profit once it’s there. This is the attitude of a spoiled adolescent or a moocher. It’s not an attitude we should find in a President of the United States.
Liberals passed ObamaCare on the assumption that the American economy will keep on growing as it always has. Three years into Obama’s term, and it’s still not happening. The government is totally bankrupt and the currency is imperiled by the unprecedented and almost unimaginable national debt. There’s no money to pay for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the most expensive parts of the government. This is before the demand for these programs rises due to the aging of the population over the coming two decades. And it’s before ObamaCare, which will put millions more Americans (ultimately everyone) on government insurance, the most expensive social program in human history.
How much debt are we supposed to sustain? Hundreds of millions of trillions? What’s higher than the trillions? Do our economists even know? On our current course of little to no economic growth, and exponential growth in government spending, we’re going to get there sooner than you think.
Obama has criticized the idea of “American exceptionalism.” American exceptionalism refers to the idea that Americans are somehow different, that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. But this is the very thing Obama implies when he says that the American economy will come back, no matter what. He’s suggesting that America is somehow above the stagnation, unemployment and ruin that befell all other socialist countries and nationalist economies throughout the world. It can’t happen here, right?
The American people are not paying attention. Slightly more than half are ready to vote for his reelection, in an economy that has actually worsened under his watch. No Republican president and probably no other Democratic president would ever have enjoyed such a free ride. Too many Americans are just not thinking.
I’m not suggesting that the opposition, Mitt Romney, is any inspiration. Of course he isn’t. But voting Obama out of office ought to be a no-brainer to anybody who’s not a committed and ideological Big Government socialist. Polls show a huge majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. But Obama gets almost none of the blame, and a majority like him. If you were on a sinking ship and the captain stood there saying, “No worries. It never sinks,” how much support would you give this captain? Or would you look for another leader, or perhaps take matters of survival into your own hands, instead?
Liberals like Obama are in a bind. They hate the rich and they hate wealth. But the definition of a growing economy is wealth production. In a thriving economy, of 4 or even 6-8 percent growth a year, you see (1) the rich getting richer and (2) the poor and middle class getting richer. These are the trends. In a declining or stagnating economy, the rich stay rich while the poor and the middle class get poorer. That’s what we see happening now. Obama points to the fact that the rich are still rich and says, “See? I told you so. The rich need to pay more taxes.” This will not change a thing, and will only make matters worse.
Taxes have to actually be lowered. Of course the rich will get the biggest tax cuts — because they already pay for most of what the government does! Economic freedom will raise the standard of living for everyone. Socialism and government interventionism don’t do a thing, other than hamper or reduce the strength of the economy. Obama’s policies tend to freeze everything in place. The rich don’t mind this too much, at first, but the poor and middle class are the first to feel it. They’re the ones who will feel the inflation. Government welfare programs cannot save them, because government welfare programs do not raise the standard of living and can never hope to cover the cost of lost economic growth by all this Big Government interventionism in the economy.
The absence of a “populist’ or “blue collar” revolution for free market capitalism shows just how ignorant most people are, and how woefully ignorant their teachers, talking head intellectuals, and professors have been. The current President, a former professor himself, is the worst one of them all.
Can the economy get better and can the debt crisis be reversed? Of course they can. But not through anything Obama has done, or is proposing. To start with, we have to reverse every single thing Obama has done in office. Then we have to start reversing all the other things previous governments — Republican and Democratic — have done to hamper or harm the economy. We have to stop this cycle of insanity whereby government intervenes, makes things worse, the people scream “do something!” and the government proceeds to make it even worse.
We don’t need a bloody revolution, and we don’t need to overthrow our system of government. But we do need to radically reverse and revise almost all of our government policies of the last century in particular. Obama was supposed to bring “change,” but in reality he brought more of the same. A lot more of it. If most Americans are so convinced that the country is headed in the wrong direction, why can’t they see Obama as part of the problem?
“Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.”
Tell that to the Greeks. When you kill the golden goose, there aren’t any more golden eggs. Socialists and Communists have never figured that out, especially the university-educated ones.
“Why Obama Failed”
It has to be the color of his skin, right?
"Inevitable wealth" is the take away for me. Perfect description. Wealth does indeed come from government for the likes of public sector, afffirmative action man Obama.
If most Americans are so convinced that the country is headed in the wrong direction, why can’t they see Obama as part of the problem?
See: Bill Ayers
Taxes have to actually be lowered. Of course the rich will get the biggest tax cuts — because they already pay for most of what the government does!
Taxes need to be lowered on the "rich" not because of some fairness argument, but because the "rich" are our employers and investors-the engine of all capitalist growth.
Our economy could be fixed relatively soon. A Gingrich/Palin style energy policy would be a good first step. The rescinding of Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Obamacare would remove obstacles to credit and capital formation, and tort reform and an overhaul of the tax code could combine to spur unimaginable growth and thus, revenues to the treasury. The biggest plus for wealth creation would come with reigning in the spending.
Would Romney do all of the above? Probably not. But with control of the House and Senate, it's possible to achieve an awful lot.
Totally agree. One huge problem we have, which unfortunately is a problem around the world, is that we have created and accepted the concept of the ‘informed oligarchy’. In the US this ‘informed oligarchy’ consists largely of individuals who attended specific universities, or come from specific families. Propping them up and giving societal legitimacy to them are a connected circle of people who work for specific media outlets, or who belong to the accepted elite of the entertainment industry.
There is a totally unjustified credibility given to these people as being smarter or better informed than the rest of society. I'm sure that in their day, Ptolemy, Plato, and the rest of the geocentric science believers enjoyed this same stature as being smarter than anyone else.
Those who believe in the ‘informed oligarchy’ can be extreme in their defense of its members and of its dogma. We might not burn people at the stake for daring to challenge the informed oligarchy anymore - as we did Giordano Bruno - but we destroy them in other ways - such as the character assassination of Palin, Bush, and the ridicule of anyone who doesn't believe every word that comes from Hansen's mouth about global warming.
Going to Harvard etc. doesn't make you smarter than everyone else, and it certainly shouldn't earn you a designation as a seer. It's imperative that we not allow to continue this flawed manner of choosing to whom we give political and societal power. As long as we do, the same mistakes will continue to be made.
The economy grows when businesses make profits. With profits, businesses expand and hire more people. The piece of the pie grows larger.
Obama labels profits “greed”. He is an economic illiterate.
Obama failed because SOCIALISM ALWAYS FAILS...
Leftists see the free market economy as a kind of weed that will always grow back now matter how much they hack away at it — like kudzu. Conservatives see it like a fruit tree to be tended to and nurtured.
The economy reacts to government laws the same way that a computer reacts to software instructions - they respond to what was done, not what was intended ... and this naturally yields “unintended consequences”.
Congress passes “minimim wage” and “living wage” laws intending to provide the working poor with more money ... but which result in increasing unemployment among the formerly working poor.
Congress imposes a luxury tax intending to get more revenue ... and people stop buying luxuries in the US, resulting in less revenue, and killing the luxury businesses (yacht building, jewelry selling, ...).
New Jersey increased its truck taxes intending to get more revenue ... and people stopped buying trucks in New Jersey, resulting in less revenue, and nearly bankrupting the truck dealers in New Jersey.
Congress passed laws to prohibit large contributions to political campaigns, and require candidates to endorse each campaign ad, intending to reduce the impact of money and negative TV ads .... and people invented PACs and SuperPACs, which use unlimited funding for unending negative and misleading TV ads beyond the control of the politicians that they support.
We need to judge government policies, and politicians, by their results, not their intentions.
And we need to start insisting that politicians and bureaucrats begin to remove laws that do not live up to their advertised “intentions”. Every part of the Administrative State should include an Inspector General with an “Office of Deregulation” to listen to citizen complaints and hold hearings to remove regulations.
Similarly the Senate and House should have, for every Committee, a “SubCommittee for DeRegulation”, which listens to citizen complaints, examines legislative history of laws, hold hearings to evaluated promises vs results, and propose the repeal of laws not living up to their promises and intentions. [This includes government programs originally claimed to only cost $X, and wind up costing $5X.]
How about making this a Tea Party issue?
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