Shown below is his theatrical/real life role model.
Posted on 11/10/2008 5:06:38 PM PST by gbyrneg50
About a week ago Obama stated with the kind of smugness that tends to emanate from conceited economic illiterates that he would create millions of new jobs by closing a federal "investment deficit." The ancient pharaohs had an identical policy: they called it pyramid building. Creating jobs is the easiest thing in the world for a government to do. Roosevelt could have put every American to work had he been able to force them to endure the same horrible living standards and working conditions that Lenin and Stalin inflicted on the Russian people.
(Excerpt) Read more at brookesnews.com ...
Gerard Jackson BrookesNews.Com Monday 27 October 2008
I want to make it absolutely clear that this article is based entirely on what the Obama campaign calls economic policy and what any competent economist would call lunacy. Obama has not given the slightest indication that he would abandon these policies if elected.
About a week ago Obama stated with the kind of smugness that tends to emanate from conceited economic illiterates that he would create millions of new jobs by closing a federal "investment deficit." The ancient pharaohs had an identical policy: they called it pyramid building. Creating jobs is the easiest thing in the world for a government to do. Roosevelt could have put every American to work had he been able to force them to endure the same horrible living standards and working conditions that Lenin and Stalin inflicted on the Russian people.
The real trick — and one no politician can ever master — is to create more and more higher paying jobs so that living standards continue rise for everyone. Obama claims he can do this by raising taxes and spending the loot to close his imaginary "investment deficit." This is Keynesian claptrap. But then his economic advisors Jason Furmanand economist Austan Goolsbee are Keynesians. According to Keynesian folk lore this process sets off a magical multiplier that then raises everybody's income. (Even Keyness would argue that raising taxes in a recession is stupid. That's why he favour deficits. So what does this make Furmanand and Goolsbee?)
It's a myth. This is the kind of nonsense that has virtually wrecked the British economy. Two fundamental facts need to be understood: Firstly, if these so-called investments are paid for out of taxes then total spending remains the same. But the pattern of spending changes and the greater the taxation the great the changes. The more that is spent on his "investment deficit" the less can be spent on investment that raises real incomes.
Resources are limited and bygones are bygones. The federal government is spending more than it has ever done before in peace time. Yet Obama and his economic quacks say it is not enough. He knows taxes cannot cover his outrageous spending proposals. This is why Barney Frank — the deficit hawk turned deficit dove— now argues that "this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second seat". What the US needs, he added, is a "dose of Keynesianism". He said this after the deficit had reached $455 billion and is heading for the $1 trillion mark.
This is simply unsustainable. Attempts to close this kind of deficit with tax increases would crush the economy. Borrowing could send interest rates rocketing. I say could because if the economy has already been flattened there won't be any business demand for funds. Therefore interest rates might not enter the astrosphere. However, the government grab for funds would make sure the economy stayed comatosed, even though it is highly unlikely that it could raise such huge sums in the money market — or any other market for that matter.
This brings me to the second fundamental fact. Faced by an inability to fund the deficit out of taxes and borrowing an Obama government would turn to the fed. This is a sure bet given that Paul Krugman will be an influential though unofficial economic advisor. Considering Bernanke's Keynesian views and an apparent desire to join the Obama cavalcade, it's possible the fed would oblige Obama, and in doing so trigger off an inflation that could make the late 1970s look like a picnic.
There are deficits and then there are the Dems' deficit. Such a huge and unfundable amount could only have the most serious economic consequences.
He plans to hit oil companies, the corporations and capital gains. The economic genius who says he is going to close a federal "investment deficit" aims to savage the earnings of corporations and their investment funds, which is also a stealth attack on 401(k)s. How much do workers think these funds will be worth when the earnings of firms they have been invested with have been devastated by Obama's destructive tax assault?
The economy faces a crisis (I predicted in 2004 that it would strike in 2008) and unemployment is rising and company earnings dropping like the proverbial lead brick. You have to be pretty dumb with respect to economics to think that this is a good time to impose massive taxes. Now this is precisely what Hoover and Roosevelt did. They also ran deficits. The Democrats and their media toadies are still blaming Hoover for the resulting disaster.
Obama and his advisors have conned themselves into thinking they can raise massive sums from capital gains taxes. Apart from the obvious fact — obvious to reasonably intelligent people, that is — that capital gains disappear in recessions there is the not so obvious fact that capital gains taxes are transaction taxes. Therefore the way to avoid them is to not cash them in. But this is only half of it. But a transaction tax on capital gains is nothing but a resource allocation tax.
This will savage the existence of venture capital, consequently there will be fewer start-ups, fewer innovations and inventions will be funded, fewer risks would be taken because the risk capital won't be there, and business expansion will be greatly curbed. Only someone utterly clueless could imagine that eliminating capital gains taxes on start-ups — however defined — could in anyway offset the destructive effects of the tax.
Combine this stupidity with the rest of his tax and spend idiocy and the effect on equities and hence pension funds would be horrific. Not to worry, while this disaster would be unfolding Obama would be busy working on his imaginary federal "investment deficit." (I wonder if he also has imaginary friends?)
If I am wrong then statistics could easily be produced to refute me. The statistics do exists and they do support my economic reasoning. (Economic theory explains the statistics. The statistics do not prove the theory). In 1969 President Nixon raised the capital gains tax from 28 per cent to 49 per cent. Result: revenue from the tax dropped sharply with realised gains from the sale of capital assets falling by 34 per cent, and the stock issues of struggling companies fell from about 500 in 1969 to precisely four in 1975.
High-tech companies in Silicon Valley were hit particularly hard. Yet the Treasury had assured President Nixon that the tax increase would raise $1.1 billion in the first year and then $3.2 billion a year until 1975. This is obvious proof that taxes do affect behaviour. If you think about it, capital gains taxes are a great way to soak the poor. (During a period of significant monetary expansion governments can enjoy a tax windfall. This is because monetary expansion can greatly inflate capital gains).
In 1978 Congress slashed capital gains taxes; this resulted in an explosion in the supply of venture capital. By the start of 1979 a massive commitment to venture capital funds took place, from $39 million in 1977 to a staggering $570 million at the end of 1978. Tax collections on long-term capital gains, despite the dire predictions of big-spending critics of tax cuts, leapt from $8.5 billion in 1978 to $10.6 billion in 1979, $16.5 billion in 1983 rising to $23.7 billion in 1985.
By 1981 venture capital outlays had soared to $1.4 billion and the total amount of venture capital had risen to $5.8 billion. In 1981 the maximum tax rate on long-term capital gains was cut to 20 per cent. This resulted in the venture capital pool surging to $11.5 billion. Astonishingly enough, to conventional economists that is, venture capital outlays rose to $1.8 billion in the midst of the 1982 depression.
This was about 400 per cent more than had been out-laid during the 1970s slump. In 1983 these outlays rose to nearly $3 billion. Compare this situation to the period from 1969 to the 1970s which saw venture capital outlays collapse by about 90 per cent. All because of Nixon's ill-considered capital gains tax. But then Nixon never professed to know anything about economics, unlike most of his media critics.
In 1982 the US General Accounting Office sampled 72 companies that had been launched with venture capital since the 1978 capital gains tax cut. The results were startling. Starting with $209 million dollars in funds, these companies had paid $350 million in federal taxes, generated $900 million in export income and directly created 135,000 jobs. (This, Mr Obama, is how real jobs are created). When capital-gains tax rates were raised in 1986 from 20 to 28 percent the rate of IPOs stagnated.
There is a fundamental law in economics that every socialist, meddling do-gooder and arrogant political know-all thinks he can repeal: We call it supply and demand. If you want more of a good, reduce the cost of producing it. If you want less of it, increase the cost of producing it. The same goes for investment and higher paying jobs. If you want more of these things you must reduce the cost of producing them. That means eliminating capital gains taxes for one thing. But the oh-so clever Mr Obama and his coterie of Keynesian geniuses believe they can do what tyrants like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, etc., tried and failed to do, and at enormous cost to their victims. What can I say, except that Obama and his crew must love economic disasters.
As for Obama himself. The man is an intellectual sponge. He soaks up these ideas without being able to carry them to their logical conclusion. This severe intellectual deficiency of his is concealed behind a carefully cultivated aura of sublime cerebral confidence. What sensible folk call intellectual posturing. Even his appearances are nothing but studies in theatrics.
Things have come to a sorry pass when millions of Americans can be so easily gulled by a political joke, the sort of man the English speaking peoples used to mock South Americans for electing. Just think Peron and what he did to the once very wealthy Argentina.
WOOOOW!!!! You spooked me.
Let’s see, we can just a country wipe out a major metropolitan city with a nuke and then bring all kind of folks in to rebuild.
Good post but I asked a moderator a while back about posting the rest of an excerpted article in the comments and he said verboten! - violates copyright laws. He wouldn’t let me do it so, yes, I’m being a snitch.
Is it possible we can recall a president? If so, then the procedures need to be started now.
“Even his appearances are nothing but studies in theatrics.”
An apt description. He deserves an Oscar not the Presidency!
“This severe intellectual deficiency of his is concealed behind a carefully cultivated aura of sublime cerebral confidence.”
I thought it was rather obvious. It made me insane that others either did not notice or did not care. I hate people referring to him as intelligent. Crafty is more like it.
We can impeach a president - but we need impeachable offenses.
The case against Obama - and the case for conservatism, needs to be a solid argument for conservative values communicated logically and consistently.
A crime to which I have to plead "Not Guilty" (I've never considered this bozo to be intelligent, nor even particularly crafty.)
If *this* is the best that "the Ivy League" has to offer this country, then they should close their oak-paneled doors in shame, and let the ivy reduce the walls of their institutions to nothing, for they have failed the nation miserably...
the infowarrior
There is no provision in the US Constitution for The People to recall a President, or a Congressman or Senator for that matter. Presidents and judges can be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate. (But with 'Rats in control of both Congress and the Executive, that's not going to happen. Even finding a live boy or a dead girl in his bed wouldn't trigger such a proceeding, as long as he signs all the bills they send him.)
Do you suppose that Biden has already told the One, ‘Obviously I have a much higher IQ than you do’?
Wouldn’t that be fun to see!
No one who allows himself to be used like this, believing everything that is said about his wonderfulness, can be very smart.
It’s that ‘nose in the air’ thing that really grates. When I want a chuckle, I picture he and Kerry speaking to each other, both with noses in the air, unable to make eye contact with each other.
Good post. Right after I read the article I decided to teach my daughters the difference between socialist and capitalist economic systems. Just explaining the concept of inflation took about 30 minutes tonight (age of daughters 10 and 13). In the end they understood (I understood inflation in my twenties).
I will give them a new 15 to 30 minute lesson every day to cover not only economics but libertarian/right sided views on judges, RBKA, energy policy, MSM propaganda, crime, foreign policy, UN and the league of nations, military history, etc. I take for granted my life experiences. My childrens public school teachers are indoctrinating their students to be socialists.
Biden touts that line a lot, but curiously I've never seen a number attatched to it. I wonder why?
the infowarrior
Pride goes before the fall.
Is it possible we can recall a president? If so, then the procedures need to be started now.
I have wondered the same thing.
Obama Wins, Economy’s Doomed! (This ‘ain’t Grampa Dave making this quote!)
Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of ‘The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets,’ says a big-government Obama administration will lead to an economic collapse on par with the Great Depression.
Sun 11/09/08 04:59 AM EST — Gregg Greenberg
Check the video linked below to really make your day, week, month, year, decade:
It will take about a minute with an ad and a viewing of our new dictator Zer0 celebrating his victory.
Shown below is his theatrical/real life role model.
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