Why Obama Can't Create Jobs (or Money: It's Not Just for Democratic Fundraisers)

Sometimes clarity comes at the strangest hours. Tonight it happened when I fell asleep after enjoying a few libations while watching Anthony Bourdain's entertaining travel + food + booze show on the Travel Channel. If you've ever watched Anthony Bourdain's show before, you know he has a way of speaking plainly and saying exactly what's on his mind. Abrasive? Sure. But that's how the truth rolls sometimes.

Taking a cue from Mr. Bourdain's style of breaking down basic absurdities, I began to dissect President Obama's speech in Kansas the other day, you know the one where he said the economy has gotten too efficient to employ human beings and blamed the internet, ATMs, and technology in general for his three year reign over the worst streak of unemployment since the Great Depression, pining instead for the days of elevator operators, full service gas stations, and switchboards.

The president delivered his words where Teddy Roosevelt gave a famous (and often misunderstood) speech over 100 years ago, but I don't think we were expecting Mr. Obama to also champion the technology from that era. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn Osawatomie was Native American for "Soviet style economic planning." So much for winning the future.

As Pundette eloquently pointed out, Obama basically spent 30 minutes "lamenting that unions aren't strong enough to force buggy whip manufacturers to give raises to their employees." And who doesn't wonder what happened to all those great buggy driving jobs? They must have gone overseas to cheap labor.

If his speech clarified one thing, it's the president's complete failure to understand job creation. Having never worked in the private sector, he has no idea why jobs exist in the first place. Seriously. Someone should ask him - what is the point of employment?

If you listen to Mr. Obama, you are likely to think the purpose of a job is to provide someone with work. It's not. Nor is it to provide someone with benefits or to ensure every family gets to own a house. The point of a job is to make money, usually for someone else, and unless you are self-employed, that usually means a corporation. If the employer can't make a profit as a result of your labor, they won't hire you. If your labor loses them money, you aren't worth employing. And if government regulations make hiring more expensive, fewer jobs are created. It's really that simple.

But when the leader of the free world demonizes profits, when successful businesses are called greedy, when corporations that do most of the hiring are told they are not paying their fair share, when the private sector is told there will be a time to profit later, you end up with a business environment that stinks. Obamanomics discourages job growth and encourages stink. Period. Unless the government is doing all the hiring (and that's called Communism), you need profitable companies to hire productive workers who will increase profitability, allowing for the creation of even more corporations.

Computers, technology, ATMs, machinery, and the internet all increase productivity. They make businesses more productive and hence, more profitable. Therefore, "greedy corporations" can grow and keep hiring. I know, how dare they. Today's progressive, not too far removed from Marxism, will tell you corporations should only exist to serve at the government's whim.

Jobs aren't just for keeping people busy. The fact President Obama fails to grasp this simple economic reality is why we have a failing economy with such an anemic recovery. Mr. Obama can't create jobs, because like most leftists, he's never understood the purpose of work in the first place. He thinks hiring 10,000 people to dig a ditch and handing them all a spoon is the key to full employment. That's how we got a trillion dollars of wasted stimulus.

A president who values employment has to value profit, and Mr. Obama has proven himself incapable. There will be no job recovery until he is out of the White House.

Even in 2016, White House Admits Unemployment Won't Drop to Bush Era Levels

Two years from now, you'll wish it was still 2008, the last year of the Bush administration when unemployment was only 7%, at least according to a new report by Obama's economic advisers. That's right. The White House Council of Economic Advisers is predicting massive unemployment for years to come and an inability to correct the economy in a way that will create enough jobs to put most Americans back to work. As it turns out, 2008 was Obama's best year. Who knew?

In their new economic report, entitled Bush's Last Year: Those Were the Days! (okay, it's actually called the less flashy Economic Report of the President), the group forecasts 10% unemployment for all of 2010, with the number of people looking for full-time work much higher. Even worse, they expect unemployment to stay above 8% through 2012. Only by 2015 are they predicting the possibility of 6% unemployment, still almost a full percentage point higher than the average during the Bush years.

While employment is generally said to be a lagging indicator of a recovery, that's still quite a lag. In fact, what they are admitting is that their policies will fail. They are throwing up their hands and saying, "This is the best we can do. We can't bring the country back to the economic prosperity and low unemployment Americans enjoyed between 2000 and 2007." And here I thought Hope meant hope for the best, not hope for mediocrity. Does the president still want to give himself a B+?

The unemployment rate reached a low of 4.4% under Bush (which, by the way, Democrats laughably complained about), and now this White House is saying that benchmark is no longer achievable. Not even six years from now. In other words, the next president will "inherit" a worse economy from Obama than Obama "inherited" from Bush. Not to mention the massive amount of debt from the porkulus bill and runaway Democratic spending.

This is a rare moment of liberal honesty, and we should commend them for telling the truth. Their policies can't do any better, aren't designed to do any better, because that's not their intention. Redistribution of wealth doesn't create wealth. It kills the incentives to produce it. And liberal Democrats are okay with this. Progressives would be just fine with everyone making do with less. Unemployment in the teens doesn't faze them one bit, because there's less inequality when more people are unemployed. Besides, why worry about destroying the private sector when you work for the state? The private sector is for suckers.

Adds Douglas McIntyre at 24/7 Wall St:

"The numbers provided by the Council of Economic Advisers call into question not only the effectiveness of past programs but also those proposed to help stop the bleeding of jobs. Unemployment which could linger above 8% for another two years will continue to cripple consumer spending which in turn will make a full recovery as measured by GDP nearly impossible."

Under the best scenario of the Democrats plans, 1 in 12 Americans will be looking for work as Obama finishes his first (and hopefully only) term, and liberals are publicizing this as a success. So much for championing the working people. So much for championing work.

I'm a Casualty of the Obama Economy

My apologies for disappearing from the blogosphere for a while. I am in the process of closing a business, a retail store in Austin which did quite decent until this year. Since our lease is up at the end of December, I have been trying to clear all our inventory. The discounts are steep and I am probably losing money, but since most of it's massive handmade furniture, storing it will be more expensive. I think we will still have an online presence. It's fairly easy for me to call my manufacturers and have them ship something out, so if you are interested in distressed hacienda style furniture, visit the online catalog.

Anyway, I will write more about my experience on the front lines of this dreadful economy once I close and have a chance to clear my head. Suffice it to say, Austin did not experience a housing bubble or bust like the rest of the country. We are seeing population growth (as people move here from California or Michigan) and the recession in Texas has been described as fairly mild in regards to layoffs. But I can tell you from my perspective that President Obama has created a climate of economic uncertainty with consumers - they are afraid to spend while government messes with rules and regulations. Meanwhile, Democratic allies or leftist causes receive the bulk of our tax dollars in the form of porkulus money. This is anything but a stimulus.

When consumer spending is 70% of the economy and all that's in the news is more government intervention, regulation, and taxes, that's not going to encourage consumers to part from their hard-earned money. They are hanging onto it like squirrels gathering acorns for the winter. Without massive tax cuts, I fail to see how or why consumers will feel relief from this recession. I have written before that the worst of the banking and housing crisis is over, but Obama's policies are killing economic recovery in the womb.

That's one of the reasons that I am closing my store, a small business that has brought in and helped circulate over $1,000,000 to other small businesses and local craftsmen over the past five years, not to mention all the tax revenue that the government has collected off my success. Should enough small businesses like mine fail, you can see how that trickles down (yes, even poverty can trickle) and has a devastating effect on the economy. No spending or government interference coming out of Washington is going to prevent that. It can only make it worse.

Obama Jobs Tour: Hide the Decline in 09

The Obama Jobs Tour: Hide the Decline in 09! officially kicked off in Allentown last week with more tour dates to be announced in selected swing states. Nothing like a slew of campaign rallies to jump start the economy. Well, at least those peddling anti-Obama merchandise might make out with some quick cash.

The tour is free, but as everything goes with Obama, the cost to America will be great in the long run. The president promised more jobs as soon as private companies start hiring again. Of course, private companies aren't going to start hiring so long as President Obama continues to pursue statist, anti-capitalist policies like government takeover of health care, crap and trade, higher taxes, and more government bailouts.

Obama's policies have destroyed at least four million jobs this year. That's how many people have been laid off since February. Yet he keeps insisting that he's saved jobs, that it would be worse if not for his policies. Is this provable? Absolutely not. That's why he makes the claim. Just like the global warming crowd has been fudging the numbers, Obama wants to hide the decline, to be judged by an imaginary, immeasurable, and arbitrary number instead of the actual proof on the ground. It's a brilliant political strategy because the media lets him get away with it, but it's a lie. The lie may make Obama look better, it might even make him feel better, but it does nothing for out of work Americans or the 10% unemployment rate.

Here's a reminder for brain dead Democrats who still fail to grasp economics. The government doesn't produce wealth and can't create wealth. They only confiscate it from the private sector. Oddly enough, the private sector is the only place where wealth is produced. When the government confiscates this money, the private sector loses capital it would otherwise invest in jobs, research and development, and expansion. So how do you encourage companies to hire, reduce unemployment, and boost the economy? Stop confiscating the money by cutting taxes. There's your answer, Mr. President, and it has nothing to do with another porkulus or making homes more "energy efficient", which are just some of the lame, useless ideas to come out of his jobs summit.

No matter how much money the government spends on "Jobs Programs" or temporary financial incentives like cash for clunkers, they are ignoring free market principles, artificially boosting demand at the expense of market correction, which is necessary for long term stability and growth. You might as well just light a match and have a big bonfire with all the money this administration has wasted on "economic programs" so far. It's worse than doing nothing, because we are literally digging a hole that ends in bankruptcy and a next to worthless dollar.

The more Obama spends on expanding state bureaucracy and saving bloated government jobs, the more he is ensuring higher taxes in the future, discouraging companies from hiring in the first place. Stop confiscating the money in corporate and income taxes, let those who earn the money spend or invest it, and watch the economy take off. You'll still get credit for it, Mr. President, and it works every time it's tried.

But I guess that's too much to ask from an administration whose economic advisors have almost no experience in the private sector. In fact, only 7% of Obama's economic advisors have actually worked outside of academia or government. Let's put that in perspective. The current unemployment level is higher than the experience level of the men Obama has put in charge of fixing it.

In his autobiography, "Dreams of My Father", the president referred to his brief stint in the private sector as "going to work behind enemy lines." Which poses an interesting question. If Obama considers the creation of wealth the enemy, how does free enterprise even stand a chance, and who exactly will Obama let hire who without government interference?

Hat tip: Stefan Deeran at BNET Intercom.

Happy Labor Day, Goodbye American Jobs

The graph above is courtesy of Innocent Bystanders. It shows Obama's projections back in February for unemployment with or without a stimulus. As you can see by the data, we are way worse than any of his economic team predicted. The stimulus, which has rolled out too slowly and only stimulated government and special interests at the expense of the private sector, has been perhaps the biggest boondoggle in American history. It is an overwhelming failure, costing us (when figured with interest and lost GDP) more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has undoubtedly hurt the economy and hindered job creation.

As President Obama tries to control the economy by regulating markets, restricting profits, taking over private companies, attacking entrepreneurs and corporate executives, and replacing free enterprise with central planning by government bureaucrats, investors continue to pull their money out of the American marketplace. Banks, for the most part, still aren't lending.

We are seeing a nation gripped by fear, not fear of success, but fear they will be punished for their success by this administration. This fear is not just based on comments made by Obama and Pelosi demonizing profits. It is a fear that success will be regulated, that the fruits of private endeavors will be confiscated by out-of-control government expansion, and that the risk won't be worth the reward. Great ideas are left on the drawing board, capital risks are avoided, and this nation's potential, the greatest potential of any nation on earth, is left untapped. This is a crisis of confidence. The American Dream in on life support, and President Obama is sending his end-of-life counselors to talk us into pulling the plug on capitalism.

In order to create jobs, the American economy has to be free from the restraints and restrictions that statists like Obama are obsessed with controlling. Free markets have to be encouraged, not controlled. The incentive for profit has to be greater than the risks and liability involved in starting a new business. I wrote about this previously in an essay called America's Spiritual Drought. We must renew our spirit, a spirit to the founding principles of this nation, to liberty, and to free enterprise. It is this commitment to Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that has allowed the best and brightest ideas to rise to the top. It has improved all of our lives in ways that other societies, people, and cultures can only dream about. It's called American Exceptionalism, something Obama clearly doesn't understand as evidenced by this quote:

“I believe in American Exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British Exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.”

Can someone please tell the Ivy-league educated president that American Exceptionalism isn't the same thing as American patriotism, because that's what he described. If there's one thing I've learned from this fiasco of a presidency, I'm not sending my kids to Columbia or Harvard.

The Obama administration has lost all credibility. They have failed at renewing America's spirit. For a campaign about hope, they certainly have left a lot of us hopeless, as jobs shrink and family businesses close. I'm sure they will claim that the economy would be even worse if not for their stimulus. But it's not true, and there's a way to verify it. Take a look at this graph of several nation's GDP over the past two years. You'll notice that the economies of countries that did not pass huge government spending bills during the downturn are growing, while the U.S. and Britain, who both passed a stimulus, continue to be mired in recessions with increased deficits and poor job markets. In other words, America is lagging the global recovery.

Now economists are saying that it will be years before we see a substantial improvement in GDP and unemployment is expected to hit 10% by December. If Congress passes Obamacare and the proposed cap-and-trade legislation, I'm predicting that number will get as high as 14% in the next few years. Welcome to the Democrat-created depression, a lost decade of opportunity for American families.

Hat tip: Powerline