Go to PDF Version | Go to Recent Issues
To save time in the future, you may select one of the preferences below. You may update your eIBD preferences at any time by going into My IBD and selecting Update Your eIBD Preferences.
Set Web-Based Version as Default Set PDF Version as Default Set Recent Issues as Default
Get QuoteSearch Site
Daily Graphs Online
View Enlarged Image
Economic Policy: In a joint op-ed with the British prime minister, President Obama admits that jobs are created by an innovative private sector. So why is he strangling ours with regulations, rules and taxes?
We would hope it was a candid admission of the truth rather than just boilerplate rhetoric in an op-ed in the Times of London by President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. But there it was: "Governments do not create jobs; bold people and innovative businesses do."
For once, the president is spot on. Businesses create jobs to fill a need, and their incentive is profit. Businesses invest; governments can only spend. Businesses create wealth, as do their employees.
Government consumes wealth and sucks the economic oxygen out of the room. Its employees create paperwork and regulations that restrict economic growth.
There's no better example of this than the Obama administration's failed stimulus.
According to a report by Ohio State University economists Tim Conley and Bill Dupor titled "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled," the 2009 stimulus created or saved 450,000 state and local government jobs while destroying or forestalling a million private sector jobs. That's a net loss of half a million jobs.
Jobs aren't created by high taxes, bailouts and subsidies. Nor are they created by the government picking winners and losers or buying car companies and the like.
No. Jobs are created by cutting taxes and regulations and letting the entrepreneurial dogs run.
This is the slowest recovery since the 1930s, if it can be called that (see chart above), as businesses beset by the highest corporate tax burden in the world, the looming job-killing presence of ObamaCare and cap-and-trade by regulation sit on the sidelines, fearing the future.
Obama and Cameron say in the op-ed that they "know that our nations are self-reliant and infused with the entrepreneurial spirit" and have "proud traditions of out-investing and out-building the rest of the world." But it's no longer true — at least on this side of the pond.
As Julie Borowski of FreedomWorks points out, a record number of Americans — 1-in-6 — are dependent on government anti-poverty programs. Nearly half of Americans, 47%, pay no income tax at all. More people than ever are riding the wagon rather than pulling it.
The innovative entrepreneurial spirit of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and the Wright brothers gave us the incandescent light bulb, the automotive assembly line and the airplane. Government is banning Edison's invention and forcing us to buy mercury-filled imposters in the name of saving energy.
Change: The president has ordered the federal vehicle fleet to be made up entirely of alternative-fuel autos by 2015. The high cost of this policy will be far out of proportion to any positive environmental impact. In a memo dated Tuesday, President Obama ordered "all new light-duty vehicles ...
Trade: A big order for Made-In-America aircraft briefly lifted stocks last week and, better yet, will create jobs. One source? Tiny Chile, a nation with a free trade treaty. What's that again about such pacts exporting U.S. jobs? Thursday, 10 orders for Boeing's most advanced aircraft were ...
Politics: By scaring voters about Paul Ryan's Medicare reform, Democrats won a solidly Republican New York congressional seat. But the Ryan plan can and should be a political winner — because it saves Medicare. Medicare wasn't the only issue in the come-from-behind, 47% plurality ...
When Richard Nixon won his 49-state landslide over George McGovern in 1972, Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic, was moved to observe: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon." All of us can have our vision distorted by the special worlds we live ...
This week the debt ceiling "crisis" officially arrived, as the U.S. government reached the $14.3 trillion legal limit on how much it is allowed to borrow. In coming weeks, Congress will vote on whether to raise this limit, but the debate is unfolding as credit rating agencies are starting to ...
Posted By: Tom in Michigan(8200) on 5/26/2011 | 2:16 PM ET
IBD is wrong, once again. Of course government creates jobs. Just ask Barney Frank who has admitted getting his lover a job at Fannie Mae while he was on the House Financial Services Committee overseeing the GSE at the heart of the housing and financial crisis. Of course, there was no conflict of interest, according to Frank. Just what DOES a Democrat have to do to lose his job? Frankly, Frank should be in jail not in Congress.
Posted By: Givemeabreak(1440) on 5/26/2011 | 12:38 PM ET
Hard to believe the Obama rheortic because he always said one thing and does the complete oposite. His rheortic is only for show and nothing else.
Posted By: Not doomed(375) on 5/26/2011 | 11:08 AM ET
Finest hypocrisy money can buy! Say one thing and do another. The Liberals and RHINOs need to step down or they will be brought down. Most Americans know what is going on. The crony capitalists, the back room deals, unions buying votes and being rewarded with billions in kickbacks,the unelected killing jobs Enough is enough! the Liberals have decided the end justifies the means. The taking of our God given rights and giving themselves more power.We are the Tea Party and they are the Tea Baggers
Posted By: Capitalist_Dad(185) on 5/26/2011 | 10:14 AM ET
The pretty rhetoric in the co-authored article is nothing Emperor BO Maximus I believes. He doesn't know that profit is the reward for working hard to deliver quality products and services that others are willing to obtain in a voluntary exchange. In his heart BO thinks profit means one party has somehow cheated the other. Another un-America attitude from our over-educated, closed minded "leader."
Posted By: dwdrury(4015) on 5/26/2011 | 3:14 AM ET
One nit to pick: Boeing is building SOME of it Dreamliners in a nonunion state.
To participate in Community areas, please Sign In or Register
Register
An IPO's initial base will sometimes be shorter than normal.
Get QuoteSearch Site
Read Full Article »
