Plodding Onward

If giving speeches over a five year period improved a poor economy, the United States would now be in boom times—GDP growth would be in the 5 - 6 percent range, unemployment would be below 5 percent, the Middle Class (you know, the Group that Barack Obama professes to care so much about) would be thriving. This week, the president embarks on still another speech-giving tour—grand platitudes peppered with concern about "inequality" and the plight of the Middle Class. The editors of The Wall Street Journal comment:

The President summed up his economic priorities close to the top of his hour-long address. "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics," he told his Galesburg, Illinois audience. "When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer customers. When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy. When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther apart, it undermines the very essence of this country."

Then the heart of the matter: "That's why reversing these trends must be Washington's highest priority. It's certainly my highest priority."

Which is the problem. For four and a half years, Mr. Obama has focused his policies on reducing inequality rather than increasing growth. The predictable result has been more inequality and less growth. [emphasis mine] As even Mr. Obama conceded in his speech, the rich have done well in the last few years thanks to a rising stock market, but the middle class and poor have not. The President called his speech "A Better Bargain for the Middle Class," but no President has done worse by the middle class in modern times.

By now the lackluster growth figures are well known. The recovery that began four years ago has been one of the weakest on record, averaging a little more than 2%. And it has not gained speed. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 0.4%. It rose to a still anemic 1.8% in the first quarter but most economists are predicting even slower growth in the second quarter.

Barack Obama's economic model (if you can call it that)—growing the size of government, actively increasing the number of people who get government assistance, raising taxes not only on the wealthy, but also on everyone else—is the same model that in microcosm lead to Detroit's bankruptcy. But he plods onward, unquestioned by his own party, unopposed by a fawning media, and unconcerned about a national debt that will exceed $17 trillion by the end of this year.

Update:

As an amusing aside, in his kick-off 'economic' speech, Barack Obama stated: “Too often, Washington has made things worse.”

Um, I thought Barack Obama was POTUS, you know, the guy who has management responsibility for the entire federal government, the guy who is supposed to interact with Congress and through negotiation accomplish a few things, the guy is is supposed to propose a realistic federal budget, the guy who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, WASHINGTON, DC.

Obama's tedious attempts to suggest that he is somehow not an insider, is not the #1 player in WASHINGTON, DC, is not the leader of a political party is ... well ... dishonest to the extreme. His attempts to somehow characterize himself as a victim of political forces that are beyond his control, rather than the most powerful political operator in WASHINGTON, DC is ... well .. disingenous. And yet, his supporters parrot his claims of victimization as if they were real. Hah.