Paul

Ibrahim

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August 10, 2009

Rejoice! Obama Only Lost 247,000 Jobs Last Month

In trying to convince an appropriately reluctant American populace to go along with a pork-laden $787 billion government spending extravaganza, the Obama Administration earlier this year announced its predictions for the “so-called stimulus” (henceforth referred to as “SCS”). It predicted that the SCS would cause the unemployment rate to peak at “merely” 8 percent, while failure to pass the SCS would catapult the rate all the way to 9 percent.

Well, it has been less than six months, and with the same SCS that was promised to make jobs rain down like audacious beads of hope-n-change, the unemployment rate has already eclipsed 9 percent. As even the White House concedes, it will likely reach the double digits.

Good thing they passed the SCS, or else unemployment would have peaked at 9 percent. Clearly, it was worth it.

The astounding ability to so falsely predict such important numbers in a mere six months must shed light on the same government’s ability to predict the effects of government-run health care in a few years, or for that matter, the effects of “cap and tax” on the environment decades from now.

Yet despite the widespread destruction of economic faith and productivity caused by the political spending of hundreds of billions that will necessarily be paid for from the pockets of taxpayers, President Obama reacted to Friday’s announcement that the U.S. has lost another 247,000 jobs by declaring in a predictably hopeful fashion: “Today we’re pointed in the right direction.”

Oh, the bigotry of low expectations. He continued: “(T)hese two thirds of the Recovery Act have helped people weather the worst phase of this recession, while saving jobs and stabilizing our economy,” and later added, “that’s how we’ve pulled the economy back from the brink. That’s why we’re turning this economy around.”

Let’s get this straight. A very few months ago, Obama predicted that the SCS would save the country by causing the unemployment rate to peak at 8 percent, while petrifying Americans (in a hopeful way, of course) by predicting that failure to pass the SCS would cause the ultimate doom: A 9 percent unemployment rate, lasting a longer time. Yet now, when the economy has become so poor that 9 percent is a goal we aspire to achieve, Obama is declaring victory? Talk about “Mission Accomplished” on steroids.

The stated rationale for the SCS came down to one objective – job creation. Never mind that it is economically impossible for government to “create” net jobs, seeing that every dollar taxed or borrowed by government for the creation of a position is necessarily taken away from another – and almost certainly a more efficient – position that would have been created by the private sector with that same money. Let us, for a moment, toss economic principles out of the Hope Bus and fulfill socialist fantasies by pretending that government does indeed have the ability to create net new jobs.

Well, then even this, the primary rationale and the one that would form the most reasonable justification for a gargantuan $787 billion spending spree, would still have proven utterly indefensible in light of today’s numbers. Even if we agree with the view that the government had the ability to create jobs, the SCS has still failed, and quite miserably. Now we are nearly $1 trillion further in debt, and we’ve somehow managed to simultaneously lose more taxpayers to unemployment. Nice move.

Indeed, during any other administration, the loss of 247,000 jobs that follows months of unprecedented government spending and activity would have been calamitous. But under the pitifully low standard ascribed to Obama by himself and his own supporters, 247,000 is a reason to rejoice.

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