Government Is The Answer!

Once again President Barack Hussein Obama demonstrated his lack of understanding of the democratic free market process that made this country the greatest country and economic power the world has ever seen.

Yesterday in Cannon Falls MN he gave this message to America’s auto makers, “You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks. There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market. People are going to try to save money.”

How much further out of touch with the way the market works could BHO be? He is telling the auto makers what they should be making. Much like he has tried to do with energy, health care, etc., etc. He is trying to lead the American people where he wants them to go. In this case, smaller cars. Fortunately for the auto makers, they learned their lessons from the seventies when they didn’t make what the customers wanted and tried to force them to accept their low quality cars. We all know how that turned out. It opened the door for foreign auto makers to come in and supply the American consumer what they were looking for. A quality built affordable car. The American auto industry never fully recovered from that failure to listen to the market.

Now BHO is trying to get the auto makers to NOT listen to their consumers and NOT make the trucks and SUVs they want. Hopefully they won’t cave and start making vehicles there is no market for, just to chase some government carrot or to meet some social engineering regulation put in place by the progressive/liberal elite.

So far they have been able to skirt these types of onerous regulations in one fashion or another. Things like the café standards where the government has set overall gas mileage that a manufacturer’s fleet must achieve. They make a few really efficient vehicles and make limited production runs, enough to meet the demand but no more, while producing large quantities of the trucks and SUVs the public is clamoring for. The overall fleet mpg meets the regulatory standard while still producing the vehicles the public wants.

If BHO and his minions force business to go in directions that are contrary to market demands we will get more scenarios like Evergreen Solar in MA. (One of BHO’s pet companies.) He referred to it often as he pushed “Green” jobs and “Green” companies.

Evergreen took millions in federal and state funds to develop this “Green” company that had no financially viable demand for its product. The company is now bankrupt and lists $485.6 million in debt.

More lost stimulus money.

When will liberals learn? Government doesn’t create jobs!!!

Private industry creates jobs. They do this when they fill a consumer need, not when they produce things there is no demand for. When government tries to alter the equation through regulation or tax code incentives we get boondoggles like Evergreen Solar.

The only way government can create jobs is to a) hire more government employees, or b) reduce impediments to business so they can develop their business to meet a consumer niche.

If the government tries A, they put an ever bigger burden on the private sector in order to be taxed enough to support the newly created government job. I would hazard a guess that it takes at least 6 new $50k workers to fund each new $50k government employee.

So “YES, Government is the answer!” so long as the question is “What’s the biggest drag on the economy?”