Earlier this week, a panel of economists came to the consensus that the recession ended over a year ago, in June of 2009. Why is this important? Because it means the lack of a recovery, the continued high unemployment, the decrease in wages, and the record low consumer confidence Americans have experienced for the past 14 months is not the result of the “great recession.” How could it be if it had already ended? No, it must be the result of an environment of economic uncertainty and hostility towards businesses created since then. In fact, if these economists are correct, the recession ended before even a dime of Obama’s $900 billion “game-changing” stimulus could be circulated through the economy.
If only we had stopped there. Business would be in a full recovery. Of course, the turtles wouldn’t have gotten their tunnels, the military bases wouldn’t have gotten their spas and saunas, and the Austin hippies wouldn’t have a new Frisbee golf course to sell and purchase their hydroponic. But we would have jobs (come to think of it, maybe some slackers wanted the stimulus to keep from getting jobs).
In every previous recession, once adjusting for market irregularities, America has bounced back. Well, except for the Great Depression. Unfortunately, instead of letting the markets dictate business activity, this administration has done everything to intervene, to basically arm wrestle the free hand of enterprise into submission. They have used the economic downturn as an excuse to push their Big Government, far left agenda, fundamentally transforming the relationship between the individual and the state, and not in the favor of the individual.
All of this is supposed to lead to some grand utopia down the road if we can just be patient enough, if we can just learn to be dependent on food stamps and unemployment benefits for the next four of five years. We are told the sacrifice of this transformation will be worth it, that the government will take care of us until that day of glory comes.
“Don’t give the keys back,” we are told by Obama... not to the businesses and wealth producers and individuals who want Americans to succeed or fail based on free market principles. No, instead we should let the government artificially prop up losers and steal from winners. We have to rule and regulate firmly if we are ever going achieve equality.
This is the same promise of every socialist state, from Venezuela to Cuba to Moscow. I don’t have to tell you that day never comes – and why would God let it? A society of equality of outcome is a society absent of consequences for good or bad decisions, providing no incentive for moral behavior. It only encourages citizens to turn on each other in hope of currying the favor of the almighty state. It’s no coincidence that the workers’ paradise promised by the October Revolution led to the most hostile working conditions on the planet in the Soviet Union.
As I wrote last year, an economic recovery will come eventually so long as President Obama and the Democrats don’t kill it in the womb. Now that we have the data, it looks like it’s too late. Like all neo-progressives, they think they know better than the people. They are the smartest guys in the room. If no one has been able to bounce a square ball before, it’s only because they haven’t tried it with the right people in charge. And while it fails, they work even harder to create the illusion that progress and wealth are just around the corner.
In some corners of the world, they call this a captive mind. Here in America, we have seen it at work in cults and corrupt business practices like Enron. What we end up with either way is an economy bound by the chains of ruling class elites.
