We Can Do This

posted at 10:56 pm on December 4, 2009 by Doctor Zero

President Obama has another speech about the economy lined up, announced at the end of his recent “jobs summit,” from which critics of his policies were pointedly excluded. The summit was attended largely by the architects of the disastrous “stimulus” package, which funneled nearly eight hundred billion dollars into the pockets of preferred Democrat constituencies, but had none of the predicted beneficial effects on the economy. The Democrats are talking about another $300 billion stimulus spending bill. The unemployment rate recent slipped back by 0.2%, but it remains in the double digits, and the number of long-term unemployed actually increased.

We don’t need more speeches, meetings, and reckless deficit spending. It’s time for Democrats to admit the truth – painful to them, exhilarating and a bit frightening to the rest of us: Government can’t fix this. Only the free citizens of the United States can. It’s time for government to get out of the way, and let us get to work.

All these government attempts to stimulate, subsidize, and regulate are bleeding investment capital and consumer spending power from the economy. Government is an inefficient investor, by definition. It follows many criteria beyond efficiency and profit potential when it spends money. The need to reward political allies, and deference to ideological concerns, are likely to play more of a role than increasing “shareholder” value. The government does not earn the money it spends, or secure the backing of investors – it seizes that money from the private sector, or runs up massive debt to be repaid by generations to come. This leaves it with none of the incentives or discipline required for success.

There is one other component of economic growth that is utterly foreign to the government: risk. Politicians risk nothing, beyond slightly diminished chances of re-election, when they shovel billions of taxpayer dollars around. Entrepreneurial success is a contest, which requires the possibility of loss to reward risk-taking. A government that speaks of racking up another $300 billion in debt after the previous $787 billion in spending was a failure is not an entity that accepts risk, and therefore cannot achieve reward.

The creation of jobs requires an expanding economy. The economy expands when investors take risks to meet consumer needs. Government extracts taxes from the population, finances debt with foreign investment, and spends the money to meet constituent demands. In the difference between needs and demands, you will see the difference between growth and stagnation. Successful investing is difficult, and scary. The pursuit of reward, and the energy of inspiration, drive investors to dare the consequences. It is a vocation wholly unsuited to politicians.

A million plans to generate new industries, and increase the demand for jobs, are brewing in the minds of American citizens. Some of those plans will not pan out, while others will succeed brilliantly. The challenge of freedom and capitalism declares that sacrificing the chance for brilliance, to reduce the possibility of failure, is a foolish bargain that leads only to decay. It’s fitting that the President who worships the power of the State more than any of his predecessors speaks of “hope.” An increase in unemployment benefits is something you hope for. Success and growth are things free men and women aspire to.

Political control is the death of aspiration. How can we calculate the risks and rewards of long-term investment, when we know the government can change the rules at any time? Where is the motivation for sacrifice and transcendence, when political support can earn billion-dollar subsidies? How can we focus on our long-term plans, when the government’s future is a core dump of impossible debt and fragile currency? How can we nourish the aspirations of our children, when we know their future is already mortgaged to pay for current spending that failed to produce any of the results we were promised?

A corporate executive who squandered a year of his investors’ income on a failed attempt to fix unemployment would not be rewarded with a new contract, six times as large, to manage health care… especially when a review of his firm showed a century of nothing but costly failures and fraudulent “business plans.“

If Barack Obama truly wanted to help the economy, and reduce unemployment, he would stop giving endless speeches that only reinforce his image as a man who has no idea what he is doing, but is relentlessly determined to do it. He would remove the threat of a cancerous national health care system, rapidly growing to consume an ever-greater share of the economy. He would abandon his view of modern America as a helpless fossil whose life support must be paid with her grandchildren’s credit cards. He would understand that jobs are not benefits, to be given, taken, or created… but rather a commodity, to be bought and sold.

We are the same people who split the atom, defeated the Axis, rebuilt Europe, planted our flag on the Moon, and threw down the Iron Curtain. We stand on the same land that nourished the dreams of our grandfathers with wheat, corn, oil, and coal. We are the authors of a radiant web of knowledge that encircles the world. We are the greatest enemies that War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death have ever faced.

Step aside, Mr. Obama. We can do this.

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