Obama Needs Capitalism

A headline reads: “Obama Adviser: Private Sector is Key to Economic Recovery.”

Excuse me? Is this news to the Obama Administration? I thought these people were supposed to be exceptionally brilliant. Reading this headline is like reading a headline that says, “Obama Advisor Discovers that America Has a Constitution” or, “Obama Administration determines that a military is needed.” I’ve heard of on-the-job training, but this is ridiculous.

An online news story states: “Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the government has moved from efforts to saving the economy to a phase in which policies are aimed at ‘trying to leverage the private sector and give incentives’ for growth.”

Let me make sure I understand. It’s the government who saves businesses, but it’s businesses who must grow and make a profit. If businesses are capable of growing and making a profit, why did government need to save them, in the first place? If a business cannot make it through a crisis by itself, could it possibly mean that the business shouldn’t survive? Many businesses are poorly run, and should perish. Other businesses simply don’t have the products or services that people want any longer, and they should also perish. The Obama Administration might not agree, but the question remains: If these businesses couldn’t save themselves without government help in 2009, then by what means are they to start making a profit in 2011 and 2012?

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Goolsbee said a review of agency regulations to ensure rules aren’t too costly, onerous or outmoded and a Social Security payroll tax break are encouraging businesses to continue adding to its record of 1 million new jobs in the last six months.

Millions of new jobs? Then why do the same government reports still indicate that unemployment is at or around 9 percent? This is higher than when Obama first took office. Of course, job creation must keep up with the ever-increasing demands of an ever-growing population in a society like the United States, where most people stay and many still fight and struggle to come. It’s not enough that the United States economy grow; it also must grow enough to keep up with the needs, demands and requirements of an always growing population. Obama has always contended that government can and must meet all those demands. How well is that working out, even for him?

“Our effort now as a government should be to get the private sector, to help them stand up and lead the recovery. The government is not the central driver of recovery,” Goolsbee added.

Excuse me? But Obama ran in 2008 talking about how bad the private sector is, how “selfish” it is, which he considers bad, and why government must enter the scene to “spread the wealth around.” If the private sector cannot be counted on to properly “spread” wealth where it’s “supposed” to go, then how on earth can that same private sector be counted on to drive the recovery? It sounds like Obama’s chief economic advisor thinks that all wealth is created in the private sector. It sounds like he believes that economic growth is key to everything. But if that’s true, isn’t capitalism the only social system that can be expected to deliver? And, if so, then how does this square with the fact that liberals and socialists like Obama never are satisfied with the results of capitalism, even hampered capitalism as we know it?

Goolsbee said deficit and debt reduction are at the top of the president’s agenda. He suggested a debt deal could be reached in the next month.

“The U.S. is a nation that pays its bills, and ultimately we’re not going to decide that we refuse to pay the bills that we already have,” he said, adding that the deadline for raising the debt ceiling is not to be toyed with.

Excuse me? The United States is not a nation that pays its bills. The United States is a debtor nation, the biggest debtor nation in history. The United States arbitrarily raises its arbitrary debt ceiling when it runs out of money. This would be like an individual raising his credit card limit into infinity. Nobody would want to do such a thing if he ever intended to pay off his debt. Refusing to raise the arbitrary debt limit will not solve our problems, but at least it’s a refusal to engage in any more falsehoods. It’s the only possible step towards a course reversal, one involving paying off debt rather than expanding it, assuming it’s not too late for that.

Obama, like all socialists, is at war with reality. He wants all the benefits of capitalism, but he just cannot stand capitalism. Like most Republicans, who are morally embarrassed by capitalism but concede that we need it, Obama must confront the fact that capitalism is the only way to produce wealth. Obama is not against wealth, but he is against capitalism. He wants wealth created by others to add to his sense of power and to give a big, nasty, patronizing and sprawling government even more control over society than it already has. But he has to be nice to capitalism, too, even as he seeks to control it, and desperately would love to destroy it.

In short, Obama must respect the contribution and desperate necessity of that which he seeks to destroy. Just like any parasite.