The evidence now mounts that the economic stimulus measures adopted by the Obama administration during the early months of his administration have failed. Economic growth is limited and sputtering. Unemployment remains high and rising in many states. This bad outcome was entirely predicted in the book co-authored by Charles K. Rowley and Nathanael Smith and published in September 2009 by The Locke Institute in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs (available at www.amazon.com).
Obama is cynically aware that his socialist agenda of healthcare nationalization, energy disruption through cap and trade legislation, union-empowerment through card check legislation, and trade protection through small-print clauses in the stimulus legislation, will bring the US economy down, perhaps irreversibly, to the poor performance levels of highly regulated France and Germany. This is an acceptable price, in the eyes of this left-leaning ideologue, for shifting the United States economy in the direction of socialism. The years 2009-10, for Barack Obama, are equivalent to Mao Tse Tung’s two year Long March to Socialism in China in 1934-35.
It is a sad commentary on the poor judgment of many US voters that they placed into the Presidency a person who finds capitalism and free enterprise repugnant, and who is no friend to individual liberty. Let us hope that the Founding Fathers structured the Constitution sufficiently well as to block the political manipulations of this dangerously narcissistic Manchurian candidate who actually succeeded in misleading the electorate of this once-great nation as to his true intentions.
Tags: economics, finance, obama policies, politics, public choice, stimulus packages
December 6, 2009 at 4:25 pm |
Unfortunately, it seems relatively sure that the Founding Fathers did not structure the Constitution to avoid this. The liberties we have already sacrificed are testament to that fact. The Constitution’s relative silence on the restrictions on Federal power – well understood to mean the power was granted to the States and individuals at the time – has been misinterpreted to mean Federal power is nearly unlimited. The Constitution, while brilliant and the best document of its type, is likely fatally flawed.
December 12, 2009 at 12:02 pm |
“Obama is cynically aware that his socialist agenda … will bring the US economy down, perhaps irreversibly, to the poor performance levels of highly regulated France and Germany.”
What poor performance level is that?
Growth in real GDP per capita since 1970
France 2.0% p.a.
Germany 1.9% p.a.
USA 2.1% p.a.
December 12, 2009 at 12:55 pm |
Nathanael Smith and I spell out the nature of the relatively poor performance of France and Germany in our book Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government. In a nutshell the differential performance is summarized by the following OECD per capita income statistics in 2006:
France $31,047
Germany $31,950
USA $44,054
US income per capita was 29 per cent higher than that of France and 27 per cent higher than that of Germany in 2006.