I get it. Barack Obama told America that if Congress passed his tax and spend economic plans that unemployment would stay low and the economy would turn itself around. That did not happen. Now Republicans have a winning issue in 2010 and that is the economy. They win this issue by default, President told us one thing, something else happened. Good for us.
Here is my problem. There are many Republicans running around yelling “Where are the jobs Mr. President?” The perception given, even if they don’t say it in these words, is “elect us, we will bring the jobs back.”
I have a major problem with this. Not because I don’t think jobs will return if conservative economic policies are enacted. They will, because truly conservative economic policies would remove government restriction, return the incentive to innovate and result in companies hiring because they have no choice. Companies will produce and make money and will need labor not only to produce for them but to use their wages to consume the products they create. This has worked every time it has been tried and it will work again. Socialist and tax-and-spend economic policies always have the opposite result. They are proving that now and will again. A is A and it is no more complex than that.
My problem is, I don’t believe most of the Republicans will actually enact conservative legislation and their rhetoric is not doing a wonderful job of explaining either what they will do or why conservative legislation works. They often deviated from principled governance before, especially during the early 2000′s. Meanwhile their rhetoric does not educate or inform the population, so if they chose to pass conservative legislation and admit the truth about how jobs are created once elected, they will not have a public behind them to do so. They will instead have a people who still believe government is responsible for creating jobs and politicians must be measured by that number.
Let me be clear, government cannot create the jobs we want. It can create public sector, unsustainable big government jobs, sure. It cannot create sustainable private sector jobs though. The private sector must do that. The failure of our economy stems from government trying to create jobs and trying to run industry. The root of our mortgage crisis was government telling banks whom they must lend to (See also this and this). The financials could not make money lending to that group, so they devised a system to get around that fact, a way to make money. More of the people government wanted money lent to received it, government demanded more, financials grew the system. Eventually it exploded.
The root, we must remember, was government involvement. Government cannot run sustainable industry any more than it can create sustainable jobs. This is an economic precept we must all understand. The characteristic of laissez-faire economics is long-term growth. The characteristic of socialism or government-involved economics is long-term stagnation.
It is not that complicated but it isn’t as easy or as cathartic as saying “I will create jobs.” For a politician that kind of easy yet powerful slogan is too tempting to avoid. So we have politicians on both sides saying or at least suggesting it by absence of saying it. Once they say they can create jobs, that becomes the measure by which they are judged. So they begin passing actual legislation to achieve their objective, but that legislation always has the counter result leaving both politicians and the people impotent. Hence, our problems.
In 2010 I can hope for the following but in 2012 I will demand it, candidates willing to be honest about this point and having the resolve to stand on the righteous principal that what seems to be true, is true. To win my vote and to make me believe they have any shot of actually fixing our broken economy, they must declare with honesty something like, “I cannot create jobs. I can only move the insurmountable obstacle of big government so industry can do so” or “Government destroys jobs, elect me and I will remove government so industry can create them.”
Until a viable politician articulates this point, we will continue to watch our economy collapse. Yes there will be fleeting moments, periods in time when some indicators suggest otherwise, but they will only hint of our true potential and will dissipate just as quickly as they materialized. Remove government, lower taxation, strike laws from the books, remove barriers while returning to strict punishment of those who do not follow the remaining laws that keep the marketplace free of undue influence and manipulation and our economy will flourish. Do the opposite and it will continue to decline. It is truly that easy but Republicans have to understand it, preach it and put it into action. They have seemed unwilling to do so until this point, let’s hope they begin. In short, drop the pandering and start the preaching of principal.
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