In a recent speech, President Obama made this attack on the views of his opponents: "[They say] if we would just convert these investments that we're making throughout government in education, research and healthcare. If we just turn those into tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, then somehow the economy is going to grow stronger. That's the theory." In other words, that's what the opposition believes. Let's examine this a moment.
The only time cutting taxes--i.e., letting the people keep the money they have earned--is wrong is if it leaves the people in such a position that government cannot sufficiently protect their property rights. Otherwise, cutting taxes is always good. So yes, there should be tax cuts for the wealthy, and every other American who is paying taxes now. Of course, government spending should be brought into line with what government is supposed to do, and that is, again, to protect people's property.
But there's something even more insidious in Obama's statement above, and it's this nonsense about government "investing" in "education, research, and healthcare." I wonder what makes him think, except the narcissism and love for government that is so much a part of his being, that government knows better how to invest people's money than the people do themselves! This is arrogance gone to seed, the power-mad tyrant that thinks businesses (and the people) are too stupid to know how to spend their own money, that he can do it better, and more wisely, than they can. Barack Obama and most people in his government have never run a business in their lives. They've proven, conclusively, for three years, that know nothing about how to balance a budget, and many of their "investments" have gone bankrupt. His ignorance of "investing" is matched only by his over-inflated ego. Obama's whole economic theory is to put a gun to people's heads, take away their money, and invest it where he thinks it ought to be invested. That is not what government is for, and it is the main reason that the United States government is in such a tremendously precarious financial position right now.
He goes on to say in this speech, "Here is the news. We tried this for eight years before I took office. We tried it. It is not like we did not try it. At the beginning of the last decade, the wealthiest Americans got two huge tax cuts, in 2001 and 2003. Meanwhile, insurance companies, financial institutions, there were all allowed to write their own rules, find their way around the rules. We were told the same thing we're being told now -- this is going to lead to faster job growth, it's going to lead to greater prosperity for everybody. Guess what? It didn't." I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mr. President, but there was well over four years of solid job growth under George Bush, almost 6 million jobs created, so it did work (and compare especially the 1980s), and it wasn't until the Democrat/government-caused recession of 2008 hit that the economy went into a tailspin that Barack Obama has done nothing but extend and make worse.
His statement is, frankly, utterly ridiculous. This nonsense about insurance companies, etc. writing their own rules is pure demagoguery. Liberals have been trying to blame the current recession on the free market, on capitalism, on "laissez-faire," as if there were no government regulations on business at all. Mr. President, in case you don't know, there are at least 9 Cabinet departments, spending untold billions of dollars every year, that regulate various aspects of the U.S. economy. They are the Departments of: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, and Interior. In addition, there is the alphabet soup cluster of federal agencies such as: the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. And that is just a small, small, small representation. As Walter Williams wrote, "Tell me what a businessman, or for that matter you, can do that does not involve some kind of government regulation. A businessman must seek government approval for the minutest detail of his operation or face the wrath of some government agency, whether it's at the federal, state or local level. Just about everything we buy or use has some kind of government dictate involved whether it's package labeling, how many gallons of water to flush toilets or what pharmaceuticals can be prescribed" ("Capitalism and the Financial Crisis," 11/5/2008). And whether or not these regulations are good is not the issue here. The point is, they DO exist, in massive numbers, and for anybody to try to say America has a "free market capitalistic" economy today is a full indication that said person has no idea what a free market or capitalism is. But Obama intends to demagogue as best he can to get four more years in the White House. How, when what he says is so far from the truth, how can another four years of him be good for the country?
Barack Obama is either wilfully lying or he is wilfully stupid. Either way, he has absolutely no business being President of the United States.