by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey Did It!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The president just concluded a frenzied \u201cjobs\u201d bus tour to explain why unemployment is at 9.1% \u2014 after borrowing nearly $5 trillion in stimulus the last three years. You knowthe usual suspects<\/a>\u00a0[1] responsible for our, not his, malaise: George Bush did it; the Republican obstructionists in the Congress who were wary of approving another $2 trillion in debt did it; the Tea Party did it; Standard and Poor\u2019s did it; the Japanese earthquake did it; the Japanese tsunami and nuclear accidents did it; the Middle East unrest did it; the European debt crisis did it; new technology like ATM machines did it. Obama has cited these culprits and many more \u2014 though never either himself or his advisors who took a weak recovery and turned it into a near recession.<\/p>\n Where Are They Now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Unofficial and sometimes presidential economic advisor Paul Krugman is increasingly petulant, blaming too little borrowing for the dismal 9.1% unemployment rate, some two years after the recession that began in December 2007 \u201cofficially\u201d ended in June 2009. (Note the Zeno-like paradox of too much never being quite enough.) Remember the presidential advisors \u2014 Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers \u2014 who, in the euphoria of the hope and change election sweep of November 2008, advocated a World War II-like new level of federal indebtedness. They are now quietly back on Wall Street, back to their tenured academic perches, or considering departure. They remain either mum or in op-eds visibly confused about why a strong recovery did not follow a strong recession in the manner of all other post-war ups and downs.<\/p>\n So there seems to be genuine confusion \u2014 and fear \u2014 on the part of leftist economic advisors that the capitalist engine that fuels their redistributive government\u00a0for some unknown reason<\/a>\u00a0[2] is not running on all cylinders and thus cannot quite continue to make the money that even capitalism\u2019s critics count on for support. It reminds me of the please-please letters alumni receive when annual giving to their\u00a0almae matres<\/em>\u00a0is down, and the left-wing president\u2019s mega-salary and the center for gender studies are possibly imperiled.<\/p>\n Start Hiring, Stupid!<\/strong><\/p>\n Both the president and his supporters fault supposedly self-interested corporations and \u201cthe rich\u201d who sit on \u201ctrillions of dollars\u201d in capital and won\u2019t hire new workers or make massive purchases of equipment. They are the real cause of record budget deficits, unsustainable aggregate debt, credit downgrading, high unemployment, a nose-diving stock market, sluggish growth, near-zero interest rates, explosive trade deficits, sky-high energy and food prices, a still ruined housing market, and a general fear of new hyperinflation.<\/p>\n There is some truth to Obama\u2019s screed, though not quite in the way he thinks. So let me be perfectly clear and make no mistake about it and let\u2019s be honest: The employers of America have taken a time out, despite the fact that now might be a good time to gear up for the inevitable recovery. They haven\u2019t let the resting world fall entirely from their broad shoulders, but they have bent over for a bit and the globe is tottering on their upper arms.<\/p>\n Consider why after nearly three years our tired Atlas is starting to slouch.<\/p>\n The Slurring and Smearing<\/strong><\/p>\n Every president lets slip a smear now and then. The key is that there should be little consistency or frequency in his targeting. But with Obama there is both monotony and predictability. He clearly does not like private businesses \u2014 except the super wealthy who are liberal and share his refined tastes and politics and have enough millions in \u201cunneeded income\u201d that they figure they will either die before or weather through our transition to European democratic socialism.<\/p>\n Of course, one Huey Long\u2013like \u201cfat cat,\u201d an occasional adolescent \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d a once-in-a-while juvenile \u201ccorporate jet owners,\u201d a few 1960s-like \u201cspread the wealth\u201d or \u201credistributive change\u201d slips, a single petulant \u201cunneeded income,\u201d or a sole pop-philosophizing \u201cat some point you\u2019ve made enough money,\u201d or even on occasion the old socialist boilerplate \u201cthose who make over $250,000 should pay their fair share\u201d in isolation are tolerable. But string them together and even the tire store owner and pharmaceutical rep are aroused from their 70-hour weeks, and start to conclude, \u201cHmmm, this guy doesn\u2019t like me or what I do, and I better make the necessary adjustments.\u201d And, believe me, they are making\u00a0the necessary adjustments<\/a>\u00a0[3].<\/p>\n Play Money<\/strong><\/p>\n Business people were confused by the Bush bailout. Some gave Obama a pass for Stimulus II (especially those on the receiving end). When we hit $3 trillion in proposed new borrowing, concern rose. Now with nearly $5 trillion recently borrowed and another $10 trillion scheduled over the next eight years, the private sector has concluded that this guy loves trillion-dollar debt because either (1) it fuels big government and more regulations and more dependent constituents; or (2) it will inevitably cause more redistributive taxes on the productive sector; or (3) it will spur inflation and erode the value of accumulated wealth; or (4) all that and more still.<\/p>\n Regulations Are Not Just Right-Wing Talking Points<\/strong><\/p>\n But talk is talk and even the specter of crushing national debt is still not enough to sucker-punch our Atlas into bending a bit. But absorbing one-sixth of the US economy, and putting new multi-thousand-dollar per worker regulations and obligations on employers to ensure government-run healthcare for their employees? Add that worry to the new Dodd-Frank regulations that add millions of collective hours of unproductive busy-work. Recall support for card check, and the reversal of the Chrysler creditors \u2014 and employers start to connect the dots. They see emerging\u00a0a Regulator-in-Chief<\/a>\u00a0[4] who thinks business is mostly collecting easy profits off the backs of exploited workers and from a clueless, exploited public. Still think that is hyperbole? Ask Boeing why at a time of unsustainable trade deficits, high unemployment, and fierce competition with Airbus, Obama has unleashed the NLRB to shut down a billion-dollar plant. Ideology trumps reality every time.<\/p>\n Energy Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n Trying to stop shale oil exploration in the West might be an abstract issue on page nine of the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>. Perhaps we can get by without ANWR. Americans can forget now that Obama wanted cap and trade to pass the Senate and to become law with his signature. Maybe there are oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico that we can afford to forget about. California just possibly can import gas and oil without tapping all of its off-shore wealth. The new proposed Canadian pipeline in isolation might seem problematic. OK, now and then we should worry about the environmental downsides of fracking.<\/p>\n But all this together? The country simply has been given too many chances, and now the energy bill is mounting. Businesses really have concluded that Obama was once serious when he warned that energy prices would \u201cskyrocket\u201d and coal companies would be \u201cbankrupt\u201d trying to generate electricity under his new proposals. The tens of billions in \u201cstimulus\u201d that went, in sweetheart fashion, to solar and wind \u201cindustries\u201d did not produce \u201cmillions of green jobs\u201d but a few zillion-dollar megawatts of electrical production.<\/p>\n Taxes Are Not Investments\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n A couple of suggestions that tax brackets might need to be adjusted would slide off the backs of most business people. Perhaps we can even smile at Barack Obama\u2019s new arbitrary $250,000 divide \u2014 above which those who make good money now pay 60% of the aggregate income taxes and are slurred with not paying \u201ctheir fair share,\u201d while 50% of American tax filers below pay no income taxes and are promised that they \u201cwon\u2019t see one penny in new taxes.\u201d That nearly every discussion on the debt ceiling was introduced by Obama with the euphemism \u201cnew sources of revenue\u201d and \u201cinvestments\u201d was only a little alarming.<\/p>\n Yet once again, add up all the 31 months of tax-hike demagoguery. Those who hire finally got it into their collective heads that they were not merely not liked and to be overregulated, but to be further taxed as well \u2014 not in a conciliatory manner as contributing to the nation\u2019s welfare, but in punitive fashion as if they were culpable for making profits in the first place.<\/p>\n Academics Don\u2019t Know a Hammer From A Wrench, a W-2 from a 1040<\/strong><\/p>\n Van Jones<\/a>\u00a0[5] and Anita Dunn were pathetic distractions. Eric Holder was simply a deer-in-the-headlights member of the liberal apparat. Timothy Geithner seems clueless. Few will watch another silly video from Hilda Solis or pay much attention to the latest strange pronouncement from Janet Napolitano. Steven Chu\u2019s dreams of gas prices reaching European levels and California farms blowing away due to global warming or Sierra snowpacks disappearing by now are merely boring.<\/p>\n But still again, total all of those ravings up \u2014 and without a CEO, farmer, or small businessperson in the bunch? The best that could be said from these appointments is that they raise ambiguity: are they (a) just starry-eyed, clueless academics and technocrats on sabbatical from tenured perches in universities, foundations, and bureaucracies, or (b) are these hard-core soldiers in the Obama army that is intent on making us more like the Belgians and Greeks? Both and more still?<\/p>\n A Thankless Job<\/strong><\/p>\n The private sector has now begun collating Obama\u2019s public statements, the political significance of hyper-debt, the force of his new regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, and the array of strange appointees.<\/p>\n On the one hand, our Atlases are productive, entrepreneurial people who appreciate the singularity of the American experiment and the opportunity to profit and thrive, even when coming out of a severe recession. Real opportunity, they know well, is often best found in crises, not just in continued prosperity.<\/p>\n But, on the other hand, they are deeply worried that the rules of the game are changing for only the second time in American history and that they are unliked, targeted and to be punished for being successful. The result is not that the private sector is fleeing the US (where would one go?). Nor are entrepreneurs and go-getters shutting down their businesses that they have built from the ground up.<\/p>\n Instead, what we are witnessing is a sort of shrug, a pause, best summarized millions of times over as something like \u201cI\u2019m hoarding cash, hunkering down, and am going to wait this bad bunch out.\u201d<\/p>\n So the globe is tottering as the tired-of-it-all American Atlas has finally sorta shrugged.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cThey Did It!\u201d The president just concluded a frenzied \u201cjobs\u201d bus tour to explain why unemployment is at 9.1% \u2014 after borrowing nearly $5 trillion in stimulus the last three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[536],"tags":[681,12,1014,48,1057,321,105,580,73,147,680,175,65,219,205,1052,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Da","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2530,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/st-obama-and-the-debt-dragon\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":0},"title":"St. Obama and the Debt Dragon","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cReckless Fiscal Policies\u201d Why did Obama only enumerate George W. Bush\u2019s big spending as responsible for the out-of-control $14 trillion-plus debt, while not mentioning his own contribution of $5 trillion? Why is there a debt limit standoff now, rather than, say, in 2009 or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economic Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Economic Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/economic-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2442,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-if-the-president-liked-businesspeople\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":1},"title":"What If the President Liked Businesspeople?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The US stock market has nose-dived. Congress just approved the highest debt ceiling in American history, allowing the government to carry over $16 trillion in national debt, and prompting the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor\u2019s to downgrade America\u2019s multitrillion-dollar debt for the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2488,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-the-president-in-recovery\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":2},"title":"Is the President in Recovery?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama does not care much about deficits \u2014 other than worrying that big debt might matter in his re-election campaign. In his first three budgets, Obama borrowed nearly $5 trillion. Currently, the government is borrowing about 45 percent of everything that it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2403,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-old-not-enough-excuse\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":3},"title":"The Old ‘Not Enough’ Excuse","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services To newly inaugurated Barack Obama and his prime-the-pump technocrats, the logic seemed so simple. America's problem was a struggling economy. The solution was to spread around even more borrowed government money. The result would be a return to prosperity. But after nearly three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Unemployment"","block_context":{"text":"Unemployment","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/unemployment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1645,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/give-em-hell-barry\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":4},"title":"Give ‘Em Hell, Barry","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Recently both First Lady Michelle Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis went to the key swing state of Florida to blast the president\u2019s adversaries. For the first lady, Obama\u2019s opponents were concerned only with \u201cthe few at the top\u201d and care little for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5710,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/after-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":5},"title":"After Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We can imagine what lies ahead in 2017 \u2014 no matter the result of either the 2014 midterm elections or the 2016 presidential outcome. There will be no more $1 trillion deficits. About $10 trillion will have been added to the national debt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2430,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n[1] the usual suspects:\u00a0http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2011\/aug\/16\/the-bad-luck-president<\/a>
\n[2] for some unknown reason:http:\/\/www.investors.com\/NewsAndAnalysis\/Article\/581555\/201108151901\/Regulatory-Agencies-Staffing-Up.htm<\/a>
\n[3] the necessary adjustments:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2011\/05\/27\/theres-a-reason-why-its-called-the-forgotten-man<\/a>
\n[4] a Regulator-in-Chief:http:\/\/www.politico.com\/politico44\/perm\/0811\/call_uncle_sam_5c130fdd-0e34-4b04-99e1-3d923ea3919e.html<\/a>
\n[5] Van Jones:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/ronradosh\/van-jones-left-wing-tea-party<\/a><\/p>\n