Monday, May 16, 2011

Obama's Upside Down Economy

Hugh Hewitt's political guru chappie Clark Judge has three political-economic "data points" to think about this morning. Here they are:

First, there's a report on Obama's stimulus, reported by Powerline blog. The Obama stimulus created/saved a net 450,000 government jobs. The Obama stimulus destroyed/forstalled about 1,000,000 private sector jobs. So the net stimulus effect was to destroy about 500,000 private sector jobs. Nice going Mr. President.

Second, in the Wall Street Journal, Edward P. Lazear reports that in a healthy economy the US generates about 5.5 million jobs a year. Right now it is generating about 4,000,000 jobs a year as it has for the last two years. Nice going Mr. President.

Thirdly, the revision of unemployment and inflation data may be seriously under-counting both unemployment and inflation, according to the chaps at Economic Policy Journal. This is not necessarily President Obama's fault, but probably politicians ensuring that the high inflation numbers of the 1970s never happen again.

The point is that the ruling class is clearly failing, and failing badly. Conservatives say that the solution is simple. Don't let the politicians run the economy. Politicians deal in winning elections, and that has nothing to do with growing the economy. What we need is a greater separation of powers to keep the politicians from smashing civil society to pieces in their quest for political power. And we voters can help. Whenever some politician comes down the road promising to "fight" for us, we need to say No Thanks, chum. Because the politician is going to be "fighting" with our money.

Really, it's not that hard.

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