ObamaNomics Based On “Core” Fallacy

Another lackluster monthly jobs report was published Friday morning.  In October:

• The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6%.
• Private sector employment grew by 159,000 jobs, above average for this year, but far below average of previous recoveries.
  
• If the 2010 average rate of private sector job growth continues, it will take 66 more months to replace the remaining 7.3 million private sector jobs lost since the recession began.
  

As the chart shows, the Obama  approach, massive government borrowing, spending and intervention in the private market place has failed to restore the jobs lost in the recession, where the Reagan approach of deregulation, lower taxes and greater liberty succeeded spectacularly.

Answering a reporter’s question about his party’s major losses in Tuesday’s election President Obama said:

I think that there is no doubt that people’s number-one concern is the economy….And they understand that I’m the President of the United States, and that my core responsibility is making sure that we’ve got an economy that’s growing, a middle class that feels secure, that jobs are being created. [emphasis added]

Barack Obama is not the first President to think he could achieve greater prosperity through “policies” imposed on the economy by government decree than millions of business owners and executives can achieve managing their own businesses without government meddling.

But under the Constitution attempting to direct the economy is not a “core responsibility” of the President, for good reason.  It’s simply impossible for one man or a central bureaucracy to bring about greater prosperity through government intervention in the economy than the people can achieve on their own without Presidential supervision.

Apparently Obama has not learned from the spectacular failure of borrowing and spending over a Trillion dollars on the stimulus, cash for clunkers, home buyer tax credits, etc. that more liberty, not more government is the route to prosperity.  Apparently he believes he must act to exercise even more control, and to borrow and spend even more.

There is no historical precedent to support the Keynesian theory that by borrowing and taxing from the private economy to fund the priorities of the elite government can create prosperity and full employment.  But Obama and the Democrats have borrowed and spent, and on a larger scale than has ever been tried before.

Hopefully the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will be a firewall against any more ObamaNomics.