We get what we deserve

Here are some more on Obama’s remarks today from the New York Times:

“They [Republicans] will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy,” Mr. Obama vowed in the East Room, a week before his second inauguration. “The financial well-being of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.”

And from the Washington Post:

In the final news conference of his first term, Obama said Republicans were threatening to hold “a gun at the head of the American people” and that he would not trade spending cuts, as Republicans demand, for an agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling.

“To even entertain this happening — of the United States of America not paying its bills — is irresponsible. It’s absurd.” He vowed that congressional Republicans “will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial well-being of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.”

Now, I could address how ludicrous this is.

How, it reminds me of the type of fervent propaganda I learned about in places like the glorious\ Soviet Union.

Or, how these seem like mighty uncompromising words from a President who has bellyached a great deal about the other side’s inability to compromise.

Or, how dumb it is that the government has locked in a trillion dollar deficit, where they have turned a temporary stimulus spending level into the new government spending norm, where — after demonstrating abhorrent financial irresponsibility and avoiding making anything that appears to be a tough choice — they want an unlimited ability to write checks from ours’ and our children’s bank accounts.

But, I think we are well beyond all that. President Obama is becoming the classic example of we get what we deserve. 

And we’ll keeping getting it until we vote for adults who understand incentives that lead to prosperity, who can say no to special interests and balance a checkbook.

 

How Social Security can continue to be paid out without raising the debt limit

Here’s the New York Times reporting on President Obama’s remarks today:

“Treasury would be left to fund the government solely with the cash we have on hand on any given day,” he said, forcing it to choose among creditors, federal contractors, veterans,Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries and the many other claimants to federal dollars.

An enterprising reporter or Republican politician might do well to understand and point out what David Henderson has written on this topic here, where Henderson points to the Huffington Post’s debunking of the Social Security claim:

The Social Security Administration owns bonds that the U.S. Treasury has issued. To make up for a shortfall each month, the SSA could sell some of these bonds to the Treasury. But where would the Treasury get the money to pay for these bonds? By issuing bonds to the public. How could the Treasury do that if the debt ceiling is not raised? The debt ceiling includes the SSA bonds. So for every $1 billion the Treasury pays when the SSA redeems bonds, the Treasury could issue $1 billion in new bonds without affecting the official debt at all.

One part of the fiscal cliff

One part of the fiscal cliff is the US Government is again running up against its debt ceiling. That is, it is getting near the limit Congress has set for how much debt the government can issue to fund its overspending.

The debt ceiling was raised just last year.

In case you didn’t know, Obama’s gigantic flip-flop on this issue is well-documented, but not well-reported.

Then Senator Barack Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006 and spoke against it. Here’s the text from his speech (source):

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Strong words. I agree with some of them. Especially the part about shifting the burden of bad choices (i.e. uncontrolled spending) onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.

President Barack Obama now calls his 2006 position a mistake (source). As his press secretary explained:

He realizes now that raising the debt ceiling is so important to the health of this economy and the global economy that it is not a vote that, even when you are protesting an administration’s policies, you can play around with, and you need to take very seriously the need to raise the debt limit so that the full faith and credit of the United States government is maintained around the globe.

Did you know about this? Imagine if a Republican had the same flip-flop. Do you think you would know about that?

Debt Junkie

I heard a sound-bite from President Obama on the radio this morning explaining how not getting rid of the debt limit is irresponsible because we shouldn’t put government in the position to default on its obligations.

A simple question that any news reporter should ask:

Mr. President, Wouldn’t it be correct to say that it’s government spending that has put the government in that “irresponsible” position?

Follow-up question: Wouldn’t it be irresponsible to continue borrowing to spend?

By the way, government debt is $15 trillion, which is 3 times the $5 trillion debt in place with W. took office and more than 50% higher than the $9 trillion when Obama took office.

El Debato

These are my limited observations from tonight’s debate, from the 10 or so minutes I saw before I nodded off for a nap.

Have you ever seen one of those letters composed from words cut from magazines? You know how the words are all different fonts and sizes and choppy? That’s how President Obama sounded to me tonight. I often couldn’t tell if the two words he just said were connected to previous sentence, the next sentence or stand alone.

I liked the first part of Romney’s response to the question about this country losing jobs overseas. He should continue to hammer this message home. The answer isn’t trickle down government, it’s to make the U.S. a more attractive place to invest.

Most economists agree, incentives matter. We — through government — chase those jobs away by making it less attractive to invest in America.

I didn’t care much for the second part of Romney’s response. If China devalues its currency to make its products cheaper, we benefit at the expense of the Chinese citizens. They should be up-in-arms about that. Not us. They will be some day.

The moderator seemed fair.

President Obama seemed surprised and a little disappointed that one of the questioners, Kerry, was not female, and judging from Kerry’s body language, not prone to be wooed Obama’s machismo.

Also, the President didn’t answer Kerry’s question, which was When did the Libyan embassy request extra security and who turned down that request? President Obama started his answer at the time of the attack.

I wasn’t clear on what Romney’s answer was on the assault weapon ban question. But, I don’t really care, either. President Obama said enough repeating the wisdom/ that guns kill people. He also demonstrated his lack of understanding of the second amendment when he said something about people having guns to hunt and (I think he said, I was nodding off) fish.

Yes. The 2nd Amendment protects our right to hunt and fish (who fishes with a gun?)./

No. It does not. It protects our right to protect ourselves from an oppressive government and other things that might encroach on our safety. It is one check-and-balance on power in a document that is full of check-and-balances.

I think the President also said something about eliminating mentally unstable people, or not eliminating them…not sure. It was one of those choppy moments. But, I think even he wished that he could ‘walk that one back.’

After I woke from my nap after the debate and was cleaning the kitchen, I heard some post-debate poll results.

One question was which candidate will help the middle class the most. If I heard right, the results were 54% to 30-something% in favor of President Obama.

Wow. I guess this may show the distrust some folks have for a rich guy and the love they have for a guy saying he’s going to pick that guy’s pocket.

However, I’d caution the 54% that you may want to favor the guy who is talking about making our country more attractive for investment. That will do more to help the middle class than any nutshell game. That makes as much sense as a football coach saying he’s going to win games by putting the best team on the field.

In case that 54% needs a little help with that, that makes a lot of sense.

Someone doing their job

 

I enjoyed McGurn’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today, …Lehrer Got it Right.

Despite all-around criticism that last week’s Presidential debate moderator ‘let things get out of control’, McGurn described Lehrer’s response to the criticism.

“I’ve always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it,” he told Politico. “The moderator should be seen little and heard even less.”

He followed up Monday on radio’s “Imus in the Morning,” saying he wasn’t in the least “apologetic” for how things went. In particular Mr. Lehrer insisted that it wasn’t his job to challenge Mr. Romney on issues favored by the cognoscenti…

“If somebody was going to challenge Romney about the 47%,” Mr. Lehrer said, “it was going to have to be . . . the president and vice versa. They were there to do the challenging.” What a novel idea: Instead of leaving it to the press to decide what issues take priority, let the candidates choose and go at it.

Bingo.

 

 

 

Links

The Wall Street Journal addresses President Obama’s comments, point by point. I’d like to see much more of this from the media with all sides of a debate.

Another week and another must-read from Thomas Sowell. As I read it, I imagined how the 24/7 news media would have treated a Republican doing, or not doing, these things.

Sowell goes further than merely pointing out some things that should cause a voter concern. He educates as to exactly why they should cause you concern.

Spend once shame on you, spend twice shame on us

 

I rarely disagree with Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek. But I disagree with what he wrote in one of his recent posts:

Many people have excoriated President Obama for suggesting that entrepreneurs can’t claim credit for their success.

It appears that many of these critics have taken the President’s remarks out of context. (Full text here.) Never mind. Even out of context, the critics are wrong and the President is right.

Of course no one creates a business on their own. And yes, government played an important role as the President suggested–creating the schools that educated your workers (often poorly, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt), the roads that your product traveled on, the bridges your trucks crossed, etc.

First, I disagree that the critics have taken his comments out of context. The two sentences of the President’s in question are:

If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.

Adding the full context of his remarks doesn’t change the meaning of these two sentences.

He repeats the same point twice in two sentences. To be in line with the rest of the speech, these two sentences would have looked more like:

If you’ve got a business, you didn’t make that happen all on your own. Others helped you make that happen.

Second, I disagree with Roberts that even with the straightforward meaning of these two sentences, that the President is right. He’s not.

I do believe that we tend oversimplify success and I agree there is usually more to the story than somebody who made it all happen on their own.

But to agree with these sentences, “even out of context”, I do not.

Russ Roberts has written books. Certainly, he couldn’t have done that without the help of a lot of people. The ideas presented in those books were not his own. Russ didn’t make the paper or ink or printing presses. He probably had a copy editor and colleagues who read the manuscript and offered suggestions. And, while writing the book he drove a car made by others, over government bridges and typed on computers built by others.

No disagreement there.

However, without Russ Roberts, those books would not have happened. He DID build that and nobody else made that happen for him. He took all the same inputs available to rest of us and shaped them into something that wasn’t there before and added some value in the process.

I do agree with the key point of Russ’s post, however. Government spending is out of control. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. I don’t like the idea of feeding this problem by taking more from the most productive members of society.

Thomas Sowell stated the obvious here:

Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice?

Let’s quit busting the balls of successful business people. They pay their share for government and they create products that create value for the rest of us.

It’s inconsistent to bust their balls and complain about lack of jobs at the same time.

It’s time we start holding our government officials accountable. Successful business people are held accountable by their customers. If they make valuable things, customers buy and generate profits. If business folks spend more than the take in consistently, they fail and go out of business.

When government officials spend more than they take in, they whine about the wealthy not paying their fair share so they can take even more from them and spend even more.

Why do we listen to them? Why can’t we look objectively at their spending records and realize they have been woefully irresponsible?

Related articles

• Obama: “I Didn’t Say What You Heard Me Say” (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
• “Tell me at what point other people helping me made me your property.” -David Schmitz (ourdinnertable.wordpress.com)
• Government by Fallacy (ourdinnertable.wordpress.com)

 

Thomas Sowell’s Random Thoughts

 

Long time readers know I’m a big fan of Thomas Sowell and even bigger fan of his Random Thoughts columns, one of which we were treated to this week.

Please go to the link and read the whole column. It was tough to winnow my favorites this time, but here they are:

Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad.

Two reports came out in the same week. One was from the Pentagon, saying that, in just a few years, Iran will be able to produce not only a nuclear bomb but a missile capable of carrying it to the United States. The other report said that the American Olympic team has uniforms made in China. This latter report received far more attention, both in Congress and in the media.

People who lament gridlock in Washington, and express the pious hope that Democrats and Republicans would put aside their partisan conflicts, and cooperate to help the economy recover, implicitly assume that what the economy needs is more meddling by politicians, which is what brought on economic disaster in the first place. (Skeptics can [and should] read “The Housing Boom and Bust.”)

One of the arguments for Medicare is that the elderly don’t want to be a burden to their children. Apparently it is all right to be a burden to other people’s children, who are paying taxes.

Those who talk as if more people going to college is automatically a Good Thing seldom show much interest in what actually goes on at college — including far less time spent by students studying than in the past, and a proliferation of courses promoting a sense of grievance, entitlement or advanced navel-gazing and breast-beating.

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Then he proceeded to generate fear among businesses for years on end, with both his anti-business rhetoric and his anti-business policies. Barack Obama is repeating the same approach and getting the same results — namely, an agonizingly slow economic recovery, as investors hang on to their money, instead of risking it in a hostile political environment.

 

The “Giving Back” Double Dip

Thomas Sowell makes an excellent and obvious point in his column this week:

Barack Obama’s great rhetorical gifts include the ability to make the absurd sound not only plausible, but inspiring and profound.

His latest verbal triumph was to say on July 13th, “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” As an example, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Let’s stop and think, even though the whole purpose of much political rhetoric is to keep us from thinking, and stir our emotions instead.

Even if we were to assume, just for the sake of argument, that 90 percent of what a successful person has achieved was due to the government, what follows from that? That politicians will make better decisions than individual citizens, that politicians will spend the wealth of the country better than those who created it? That doesn’t follow logically — and certainly not empirically.

All the high-flown talk about how people who are successful in business should “give back” to the community that created the things that facilitated their success is, again, something that sounds plausible to people who do not stop and think through what is being said. After years of dumbed-down education, that apparently includes a lot of people.

Take Obama’s example of the business that benefits from being able to ship their products on roads that the government built. How does that create a need to “give back”?

Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice?

Here’s more on giving back.