Obama's Same Old, Same Old

Perhaps the reason for President Obama's flat and energy-less speech Thursday night -- TV cameras panning the convention floor actually showed delegates falling asleep -- was that he already knew Friday's jobs numbers were going to be a disaster. The August unemployment report completely punctured his argument that if you just give him four more years, his policies will solve the economy.

Of course, reading through the speech, I didn't see the word "jobs" mentioned once. In fact, though I could be wrong, I didn't see the word "growth" mentioned once.

What I did see were constant references to government. Obama has taken to calling it "citizenship." But it's the same old, same old. Whether it's more money for the teachers unions, or more Solyndra-like green energy, or more for infrastructure, it translates to more government spending and dependency in a second Obama term, all to somehow be financed with tax hikes on the rich.

Unfortunately, as former President Clinton mentioned in his convention speech, the arithmetic doesn't add up.

Taxing successful, upper-end earners, investors and small-business owners will generate less than half the revenue Team Obama expects. Maybe far less than half, since taxing capital gets you less capital, lower investment, fewer jobs and slower growth. This will lead to a huge revenue shortfall, all while spending as a share of gross domestic product continues to rise, perhaps to 25 or 26 percent. Despite the president's argument, ever larger government is the problem. It interferes with private-sector growth. Obama has never understood this. During his speech, he mocked tax cuts and deregulation, not understanding that permanent tax incentives and easier regulatory burdens free the economy to produce more growth.

Taxing rich people in order to spend more on food stamps, welfare, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and other forms of government dependency does not add up to anything other than larger budget deficits at slower economic-growth rates. Obama is paying people not to work. But it's a losing economic strategy.

And that's the problem with the jobs numbers. At less than 2 percent growth, we should expect anemic employment. It's exactly what we're getting. There were only 96,000 new nonfarm payrolls in August, way below Wall Street expectations. The prior two months were revised lower by a net 41,000.

And while the unemployment rate slipped to 8.1 percent, it declined for all the wrong reasons: 368,000 people left the civilian labor force. The small-business household survey dropped 119,000, the second consecutive large decline. Wages and the private workweek were flat. And the labor participation rate slipped to 63.5 percent from 63.7 percent.

If you count the unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers, as well as those who've left the labor force altogether, more than 20 million job seekers have evaporated. They've given up hope. And why are we surprised? Less than 2 percent economic growth in this so-called recovery -- the worst since 1947 -- cannot produce significant job-creation. You need at least 250,000 new jobs per month. But you're not going to get that by overtaxing, overspending, over-borrowing and over-regulating.

Look at this quote from Ronald Reagan at the 1984 Republican convention in Dallas: "Our tax policies are and will remain pro-work, pro-growth and pro-family. We intend to simplify the entire tax system ... to bring the tax rates of every American further down, not up. ... If we bring them down far enough, growth will continue strong, the underground economy will shrink, the world will beat a path to our door and no one will be able to hold America back -- the future will be ours."

This Reagan model of free-enterprise tax reform is completely at odds with Obama's tax-the-rich, government-driven, central-planning model. Polls show that the public knows this, even if the White House does not.

And that leaves a huge opportunity for Mitt Romney to explain and expand on his Reagan-like vision of low-tax reform, spending restraint and deregulation to free up the animal spirits of growth. But Romney only devoted a couple hundred words to this in his convention speech. He must be more aggressive. He must connect his policies to the economic solutions America wants.

Keeping more after-tax income will spur incentives for growth. Reward success, don't punish it. And remember, you can't have capitalism and job creation without capital. I want to hear Romney say these things.

He must loudly talk about his 20 percent personal tax reform and his 25 percent corporate tax rate. He must discuss the importance of limiting government to only 20 percent of GDP in order to leave more resources in private hands.

Obama's convention speech was more of what hasn't worked. Romney has a great opportunity to show what will work

Yeah and as Rush pointed out yesterday (I don't care if a few Freepers can't stand him, he finds and reports on "stuff" many others don't) that of all the people Dear Reader could "Channel" he goes and picks the (heretore) worst President ever, Jimmah Carter.

Obama: "The choice you face won't just be between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America, a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.

CARTER 1980: "This election is a stark choice between two men, two parties, two sharply different pictures of what America is and what the world is, but it's more than that. It's a choice between two futures."

There were other similarities, but I guess the Demo-Rat "talking points" go back decades and this dimbulb (or his speech writers) didn't stop to think someone would find this out?

Now THAT would make a GREAT TV ad, simply playing both statements side-by-side.

Of course, reading through the speech, I didn't see the word "jobs" mentioned once. In fact, though I could be wrong, I didn't see the word "growth" mentioned once.

I'm surprised at Kudlow. From Obama's speech:

"Over the next few years, big decisions will be made in Washington, on jobs and the economy; taxes and deficits; energy and education; war and peace -- decisions that will have a huge impact on our lives and our children's lives for decades to come."

"I began my career helping people in the shadow of a shuttered steel mill, at a time when too many good jobs were starting to move overseas."

"And when the house of cards collapsed in the Great Recession, millions of innocent Americans lost their jobs , their homes, and their life savings -- a tragedy from which we are still fighting to recover. "

"Now, I've cut taxes for those who need it -- middle-class families and small businesses. But I don't believe that another round of tax breaks for millionaires will bring good jobs to our shores, or pay down our deficit."

"I'm asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country -- goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security, and the deficit; a real, achievable plan that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity, and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation. That's what we can do in the next four years, and that's why I'm running for a second term as President of the United States. We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs."

"I've worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America -- not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products . . . After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years."

"And now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America."

There is more, but my point is clear. Kudlow missed a major theme of Obama's speech. While I find Obama's view of jobs frightening - the idea that in his dream world the government creates and controls jobs - Obama droned on extensively about his view of the government's role in producing jobs.

Obama also mentioned growth twice, most chillingly this:

"We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system -- the greatest engine of growth and prosperity the world has ever known. But we also believe in something called citizenship -- a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations. We believe that when a CEO pays his autoworkers enough to buy the cars that they build, the whole company does better . . ."

I can see why Kudlow missed the reference to what Obama sees as the creation of jobs and to what Obama sees as the source and role of growth, but he missed something important if we are to understand the people we face. Obama is talking about growth as something government takes from 'the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers' and distributes among the little people. His role is to take care of us like 300 million inept copies of his fictional composite "Julia", dependent on our betters from cradle to grave. Obama and his supporters do not see jobs and growth as something coming from those who produce goods and services of actual value to others.

Julia symbolizes "jobs" and "growth" to Obama and to his audience.

OBAMA 2012:

obama-finger[1]

"The choice you face won't just be between two candidates or two parties.

It will be a choice between two different paths for America,

a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.

CARTER 1980:

jimmy_carters_tea_party-460x307[1]

"This election is a stark choice between two men, two parties,

two sharply different pictures of what America is and what the world is,

but it's more than that. It's a choice between two futures."

“People are either extremely Stupid or they are just voting for the check”

I think the people who have never known anything but the check/food stamps/rent vouchers (for multiple generations) will continue to do so (forever); they are accustomed to living as worthless “cash-for-kids” products beholden to the Democrat hand that feeds. I think for a lot of the people that have recently dropped into the lower income brackets, there is a lot of resentment that they no longer have the discretionary dollars that actually going to work can bring. The latter is the problem for the Dems; they have tried to make us “get right” with the “new normal”, but there are still far too many people who remember buying groceries and gasoline with cash (instead of borrowing to do it).

I’m seeing a gradual shift in coverage that implies Obama, not Romney, is the underdog in this race.

I think for a lot of the people that have recently dropped into the lower income brackets, there is a lot of resentment that they no longer have the discretionary dollars that actually going to work can bring. The latter is the problem for the Dems; they have tried to make us “get right” with the “new normal”, but there are still far too many people who remember buying groceries and gasoline with cash (instead of borrowing to do it).

You said this very eloquently and it's exactly the point I've been making to all of my politically interested friends.....

Obozo's biggest mistake right now is that he probably thinks this country is at the tipping point to become "Perminent Takers instead of Makers" because of all the government aid.....what he doesn't take into account is your statement which I repeat to others as well....

Thanks; my concern is that if a new generation of Americans (not the current wards of the state as we have in the urban welfare reservations) becomes accustomed to the idea that the roof over their head and food in their stomach comes from government benevolence, then it will be too late to reverse it.

The way older retirees today remember a country before the concept of “gay marriage”, “abortion”, and “affirmative action” makes me wonder if Americans some day forget the times when we could buy homes (and afford to pay them off), buy new cars, have children (more than one, even), etc.; we need to have as our target an economy where we can buy more than basic sustenance with hard work.

One of the reasons the Khmer Rouge had to kill any “westernized” Cambodians, and why Stalin did the same with returning Soviet POWs, was that they couldn’t have the ideas they’d been exposed to contaminate their “utopia” with memories (especially if shared with others) of better things under different systems.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.