Posted on 09/26/2011 7:55:10 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
I've been saying for some time that Barack Obama is the most economically ignorant president since Zachary Taylor, but I increasingly fear I've been doing the general a disservice. It's not just erroneous economics, but sheer ignorance of markets and economics.
You see it in periodic comments of the President. Perhaps the most famous came when he said that ATMs and airport ticket kiosks lead to unemployment: “When you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” (An interesting tidbit - do a Google search for this - you'll see the comment was more or less uncommented upon in the "mainstream media.") He's used this a couple times, here also blaming internet travel sites.
But there have been numerous others, as when he explained that auto companies had to make more electric cars in order to satisfy the market. This showed a titanic ignorance of how markets work, the President apparently of the belief that "the market" was what a central planner decided was needed, not what consumers actually wanted. He shows know concept of consumer preference, the subjective value of goods and services, or even the role of prices in providing information to firms.
Now comes this quote from Ron Suskind's book, Confidence Men:
"Both [Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Christina Roemer and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers] were concerned by something the President had said in a morning briefing: that he thought the high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. Summers and Romer were startled.
“What was driving unemployment was clearly deficient aggregate demand,” Romer said. “We wondered where this could be coming from. We both tried to convince him otherwise. He wouldn’t budge.”
So our President really does think productivity is bad for the economy. As economist Scott Sumner says, "So for 200 years rapid productivity growth didn’t cause any serious unemployment problems in America, but now, right after NGDP collapses, we are to believe it is producing mass unemployment, even though recent productivity gains have been rather low. I’m at a loss for words. We elected a Luddite as President of the United States."
Ignorant or malicious.
so this is the quaint “information technology creates more jobs than it eliminates” argument?
uh, no
Goodbye cities...
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic
Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired
is the most economically ignorant president?
This isn’t the question, it’s the answer. What did they expect from a failed community organizer. He is the worst president in history.
He is going to spend his last year in office finishing the damage he started.
uh, it sure sounds like it.
uh, cuz "productivity" is a euphemism for elimination of labor requirements by technology.
I’ll take malicious for $500 Alex.
Not all technology is information technology, but thanks for playing.
Few people noted that just a week after his first “ATMs cause unemployment” comment he stated at a robotics factory that “robotics is the future of the American economy”.
Uhm... so which is it? Automation good or automation bad?
I just don’t believe he ever even thinks about what appears on his teleprompter.
Ignorant, yes. Anti business, absolutely.
Ignorant, yes. Anti business, absolutely.
Ignorant, yes. Anti business, absolutely.
But as to the man himself as president, I'm certain that -- apart from that miracle or series of miracles -- he will be a political, economic, and administrative disaster. ~~ 11/06/08
...or what he hears in his earpiece.
Well, what would you expect from a college student who got failing grades in both Economics and American History?
Boy genius? Hardly!
See for yourself: Check his transcripts!
Well, I think an ATM and an Airline Ticket Website are.
, but thanks for playing.
not sure what this means. But please don't explain.
Also, don't mistake replies to Post #1 as being directed to you -- they are directed to the subject itself.
He lives in the world of the old USSR ,where he can control everything
This idea is not new. A Roman emperor refused to allow the use of canal-digging machinery because he wanted to create jobs. As someone once put it, when you use 20 men to do a job that could be done by 1, you haven't created 20 jobs, you've split a paycheck 20 ways. Workers can be paid only out of the wealth created by their productive activity. If you use more workers to create the same amount of wealth, there's less for each one.
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