“This is a punch to the gut. This is not a good number. And I think now
you’re going to interestingly start seeing a lot of discussion about
maybe the sequester’s a bigger deal than people thought it was.” —
Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of
Economic Advisers, in an interview on CNBC.
First of all, this guy with the funny name is a tool. I have been listening him defend his former boss for many months and he makes my skin crawl with his blind devotion and kool-aid drunken mindset. It should come as no surprise that the economic numbers will eventually start to reflect reality and not just the cooked books and hidden problems hidden by gobs of free money puked out by the Fed.This is structural, not a short-term effect of the sequester, which itself was insignificant bull$&!^.
Forget the talk about hurting job creators. I can see the left's argument that tax breaks do not necessarily create jobs because rich people may not invest in business but in themselves. That is their right, by the way.
Tax breaks for the rich may not help the economy but because money will flow to its most profitable uses, it may indeed hurt it. Capital will be used in its most efficient way unless the government mandates it do something else - which by definition will be less efficient and less productive.
Rich people are mobile, and so is their money. Just ask former Californians who fled for lower tax, lower regulation states. Rich people also have the luxury of saying "F#*! it, I don't need this headache anymore and I am going to shut down my business."
So, Mr. Goolsbee, your punch in the gut was self-inflicted. Unintended consequences. What always happens when the government gets involved in the name of fairness.
Now before you start flinging your poo at me, I am not an anarchist. There
is a need for regulation and laws and I also want it live in a country where there
is a safety net to help those who truly need help. But the way to help the
majority is to let the free market crank up its engine and raise everyone up. If the rich get richer, so be it. As long as those in the lower levels of the economic strata get richer then we all win. Does it hurt me if my neighbor makes a gazillion dollars? As long as he does not control the government then we both win.
Guess who won under TARP and QE? Not you and me. It was the so-called fat-cat bankers that the President hates so much. Interest rates are not low due to the Fed. They are low because the economy blows and there is no demand for money.
Ask yourself, other than refinancing your mortgage at a lower rate, what has QE done for you? If you answered that it made your 401K go up, then you win. It has not helped the economy as the jobs report proves. But if you think that it your 401K will stay up when the Fed stops printing money then you lose.
There are needs for laws to protect my person, my property and my borders. There are needs to restrict business if it impacts people and yes, the environment, in a negative way. But telling me to wear a seat belt in my own car should be between me, my family and my insurance company. Yes, Nanny Mike, I understand your admirable desire to help people attain good health and the economic benefits of not having to care for people who bring it on themselves. But there has to be an element of personal responsibility here. If I choose to be fat, so be it. That is between me, my family and my insurance company.
And for those who do not have health insurance, I don't have that answer. Obamacare aint' it. Admirable yes but don't forget the unintended consequences of less doctors, more wait times and despite the kool-aid, higher prices. Did someone say economics 101? Less service, more demand, higher prices.
You want higher wages? So do I. But when Mr. Dumpka (yeah, I said it. He makes a quarter million in salary, by the way) demands higher wages he effectively reduces available jobs. You can force me to pay my workers more but you cannot stop me from cutting back on the number of workers I hire.
I am very happy to see the free market making its presence known again in the form of lousy data. It will eventually force we stupid humans to to what we should have done in the first place, let the market work. When enough pensions are busted due to bankruptcy and the ranks of the government assistance programs swell so much that there is not enough to go around then people will demand a return to what got us to be the richest nation on Earth in the first place. Hint, it was not the government.
