“Obama Looking at All Options for Creating Jobs”
As a philosophical matter this has to be a lie. It is impossible for it not to be. But as a practical matter it is a blatant lie too. Is he really considering eliminating corporate income taxes? Is he really considering reducing payroll tax rates? Is he really considering lifting various workplace regulations? Is he really considering rolling back the minimum wage? Is he really planning on lowering tariffs and ending agricultural subsidies?
Nonsense. And I am the guy that is going to be painted as a partisan hack for pointing out something that should have been learned in basic economics. Can I just remind folks one more time that the job of the American President is NOT to try to create jobs. The job was designed to help administer and uphold the rule of law, nothing more. And look at the options we are considering to expand jobs. None of them have anything to do with rolling back the role of government, none. That is religion.
And I think they often confuse “employing people” with “creating jobs.”
Well said, Speedmaster.
I’ve always been skeptical when people talk about the president or congress influencing the economy, as if any of them have levers and buttons they can pull or push. It’s the progressive fallacy.
They can screw things up, building negative railroads, but seldom do they ever succeed. A notable exception to this rule occurred when Ronald Reagan took his hand off the progressive tiller and let the market work, providing incentives to work and invest.
That’s what creates jobs. You save some money and decide it’s a good time to open a store, because you see an opportunity that is not oppressively fettered with the chance that someone with a big gun will take away your fortune. Substitute “pelts” for money — it does not matter. You sell out of pelts, so you employ your relatives to get more pelts. You buy some feed to sell for your customers’ horses, and buy some land to grow the feed, and, since you’ve run out of relatives, you employ people to work the land and get more pelts. Eventually you diversify into selling Buicks and gasoline, and build a chain of convenience stores, and sell sugared flavored water and potato chips.
No Roman emperor, no lord of the manor, no commissar, or any member of the House Banking Committee ever did anything to accomplish anything like this. Like my cat, they did not have the slightest idea, beyond “Where’s the food?”