Those who pushed through this year's $787 billion fiscal "stimulus" seem to be counting on the American people's short memory. Wasn't it just last year that we were told, repeatedly and with stark emphasis, that this economy was the "worst" since the Great Depression?
That was the pretense for not only the stimulus, but for the federal takeover of the U.S. auto industry and the quasi-takeover of the U.S. financial industry. It's also the underlying premise for both nationalized health care and massive new taxes to cut CO2 emissions.
If the stimulus passed, the White House vowed, unemployment would peak at 8%. Today, it's 9.5% — and rising.
"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," said Biden. He used that phrase — "the truth is," or something similar — at least three times in a talk with ABC's George Stephanopolous. But the "truth is" something quite different.
Many voices — including ours — were raised in opposition to the stimulus when it was debated. We didn't "misread" the economy. We knew from history that, left alone, it would get better without government meddling.
Instead, Americans were promised "shovel ready" projects would put stimulus money to work right away creating jobs. For the record, since February, the month the stimulus was passed, the U.S. has lost 2 million jobs. The stimulus is clearly a failure.
Yet, says Biden: "The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money."
But that's not the "truth of the matter" at all. Many economists and conservative politicians warned explicitly about this very problem. So did IBD. And so did numerous other media outlets. The notion that no one brought it up is simply false.
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Based on this, there are only two possible conclusions: One, the stimulus has been the most inept public waste of money in history. Or two, it was a cynical attempt by the Democrats to vastly expand the scope of government during a time of crisis. Or maybe it's both.
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Yet, faced with this, economist Paul Krugman and others on the left argue that a second stimulus is needed. Asked about it, Biden — who oversees the stimulus, by the way — refused to reject it.
This is a little like a medieval barber bleeding his patients to improve their health, then bleeding them again when they fail to improve. At some point we'll all wake up and use modern medicine. Until then, why double-down on failure?
Investors Business Daily is one of the most accurate, reliable investment publications around. It has been right on the money, again and again, both in reading the stock market and in evaluating the political climate. It has earned its credibility the hard way -- by being right most of the time. It is a track record for accuracy the likes of Slippery Joe Biden will never begin to approach.
But thanks to the lapdog media, Biden and Obama have the megaphone and accurate dissenting voices have to struggle for oxygen. The losers, in the end, are the American people.
We need economics education starting in high school, or preferably earlier. People need to understand basic economic principles that govern a healthy free market economy, like the laws of supply and demand and how those laws work to maximize the good of all concerned -- unless the market becomes too heavily bogged down with one well-meaning but intrusive regulatory scheme after another.
To offer one example, in my home state, a reasonable complete summary of the the laws governing employment literally take up an entire shelf at the law library. The larger an employer grows, the more governmental mandates that apply. That is just one of the obstacles small businesses face when they think about expanding. Needless to say, this sort of regulatory environment discourages entrepreneurship and drives businesses to other states and other countries around the world. The losers, once again, are all of us. Fewer businesses mean fewer jobs, to put it into simple terms.
The same types of negative effects of over-regulation are found in every industry. Place too many regulations on home builders, home owners, and apartment owners, and you drive up the costs of home ownership as well as rental rates. The end results? More homeless. They're homeless because they can't afford all that heavily-regulated, environmentally-correct housing mandated by state laws and local governments.
I could give you a thousand more examples, but what's the point? If you don't grasp the basic concept that every well-meaning law that interferes with free trade has unintended side effects -- and that sometimes the "cure" is far worse than the original problem -- then you'll find yourself listening to -- and voting for -- the likes of Slippery Joe and his boss, President Obama. Then you'll have to learn your lesson the long, slow, hard way. And if you never learn your lesson in your lifetime, future generations eventually will.
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