Monday, May 18, 2015

Seven Obama Legacies That Are Gifts For Republicans

After 6-1/2 years of his presidency, conservatives generally despair that Barack Obama has severely and perhaps permanently damaged our free-market economy and succeeded in irreversibly growing the size and scope of government.
We think the reverse may be true, that there's a bright side to the Obama legacy.
That may seem hard to believe, given that President Obama has deluged the nation with $7 trillion in new debt; higher tax rates; a stupendously ineffective health care overhaul; a blizzard of new regulations on the Internet, energy and financial services; a newly resurrected European welfare state; and worst of all, a $2 trillion growth deficit that may never be erased.
But Obama has accomplished something that even heroes like Ronald Reagan could never do: His presidency has discredited liberalism in its every form and incarnation.
He has proved in a compelling way that government really is incapable of solving most societal problems — unemployment, income inequality, lack of health care, the burgeoning national debt, poor schools, racial unrest, corruption, and so on.
Obama is the embodiment of what F.A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit" — the idea that the intellectual class — i.e., academics, professionals, politicians, media, authors, etc. — possess the knowledge and expertise to know, far better than the citizens, how we should live our lives and make the world a better place.
As evidence, start with one of his greatest self-described "accomplishments": the $830 billion fiscal stimulus bill. It was supposed to create millions of jobs through a multiplier effect of spending for "shovel-ready" projects.
Instead, by Obama's own economic analysis, we had fewer jobs in the U.S. economy with this avalanche of spending than we would have had if government hadn't spent a dime.
There was no multiplier effect from this spending blowout. All we have to show for the "fiscal stimulus" is nearly $1 trillion more debt — which our children, and their children, and perhaps their children, will have to pay off.
Keynesian economics was shown (once again) to be a fraud, and the economics lesson is: never again.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Read the other six reasons to thank Obama HERE.

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.


No comments: