Obama to Economy: Drop Dead

The high unemployment rate (9.4% nonfarm payroll) persists with no letup in sight. Barack Obama says that jobs lag in a recovery. But Obama is not doing anything to help the employment situation and is doing and trying to do several things which would make the recession and unemployment worse:

A. The health care “reform” will necessitate substantial tax increases (according to CBO estimates, etc.), which, in addition to the changes that would be required to comply with the “reform” itself, will restrict economic growth and increase unemployment.

B. Even worse for the employment situation is the cap and trade legislation which has already been passed by the House. If the bill or something similar becomes law, taxes and utility costs will increase sharply on individuals and all businesses that use fossil fuels or produce greenhouse gases. This will lead to sharp increases in unemployment and business failures.

C. Obama’s claim that we must get the deficit under control is designed to achieve a blanket increase in taxes to cover the record-high deficits. The deficits themselves stem from unnecessary and unwise spending: the bailouts (designed to nationalize a substantial part of the financial industry), the “stimulus,” (designed to advance Obama’s political priorities by rewarding his political allies). They have talked about another “stimulus,” which would be no more helpful than the first. Also, many billions were spent on the auto industry takeover that netted nothing beneficial to the taxpayers, but rewarded the unions and cheated creditors and stockholders. These Obama efforts to “improve” the economy are mainly ploys to establish more socialism.

But we had “cash for clunkers,” sort of. That’s apparently about as brilliant as this administration’s economic remedies get. Forget tax cuts or anything that would actually encourage economic activity in a meaningful way. Get set for more nanny-state, more regulation, and less economic freedom. And we haven’t heard the last of Fannie and Freddie’s troubles.

Obama seems to have little intention of doing anything that can help the economy until his fascist program is firmly in place. The economy simply isn’t his main priority. Since his popularity is weakening, he may have some trouble getting his agenda accomplished. As unemployment increases and the economy fails to show improvement, people may sense that the Obama plan is failing. But they also may demand more government help to relieve their economic suffering, and that would increase Obama’s power and do a lot to accomplish his purpose.

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