Blindfolded.

The AP is reporting that President Obama is “looking at any way to create jobs”. That’s interesting. He must not be looking very hard. Or maybe he really is looking, but managed to get something in his eye. Or maybe he’s faking it. Never waste a crisis, you know. It’d be hard to imagine that Americans would be too eager to shift complete control of their lives to the federal government if unemployment was not at 10% and the housing market hadn’t collapsed. That’s got to be it, then. He’s not really interested in finding any way to create jobs because as long as we’re all unemployed, we’ll continue to be led around like sheep. That’s why all of Obama’s “fixes” all smell funny. His fingers are too deep in all of them.

Here’s more from the AP:

SPRINGFIELD, Va. (AP) – Standing at the site of a highway project funded by his massive economic stimulus plan, President Barack Obama said Wednesday he is committed to exploring all avenues to create jobs.

“Middle-class Americans are the ones who built this country,” Obama said. “They deserve leaders in Washington who are willing to work as hard as they work.”

[ . . . ]

Despite the stimulus, the national unemployment rate stands at 9.8 percent. Economists have said unemployment could continue to rise.

First—Obama is certainly not committed to “exploring all avenues to create jobs”. That’s just a lie. Note that the AP isn’t quoting Obama directly for that little nugget. If Obama were willing to explore “all” avenues, he’d think about tax cuts for small businesses. Tax cuts, after all, will permit these businesses to keep more of the money they earn…which they would of course use to…hire people. With less money left after taxes, businesses are not too motivated to employ more people.

Second—However nice it sounds to your populist disciples, America wasn’t built by Middle Class people. Not if the word “built” means anything, that is. Sure, they’re the ones that may have wielded the hammers and populated the plants, but these people were uniformly employees—hired by rich people with ideas to move technology forward. The Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts and Fords which dot our history are the ones that “built” America. Not by themselves, of course, but without their entrepreneurial spirit and capital, America doesn’t become industrialized and that’s just a fact. It’s a hard fact for the left to acknowledge, however, and it’s the reason why they see “tax cuts for the rich” as “unfairly” lining the pockets of those in least need of the extra money. The fact is that one of the primary functions in our society of rich corporations is that they hire the rest of us. They enable us all to have health insurance. To save for our retirements and the education of our children. Without rich people who make things and hire people, we’d all be poor. So unless Mr. Obama is exploring ways to incentivize rich people to hire more of us so we can make more stuff, he’s spinning his wheels. Every second he talks about taxing corporations to death, he’s making it more and more likely that unemployment will continue to rise and the recession will continue to grow. Spending billions of TAXPAYER dollars to hire people doesn’t do the trick, either. Tax dollars must first come from someone who earned that money. It is not in itself the product of any growth. That’s why this Stimulus is just a gigantic shell game. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, if you will. Eventually the bills become due. Eventually, we’ll understand that shifting money around like this without creating any new growth is a dead end.

Which brings us to that last bit of the article. Incredulously, the AP admits that “despite the stimulus” unemployment is at 9.8%! As if the stimulus would lead to any other result except higher unemployment. This is shocking? When you take money away from rich people, they have nothing left to hire new people and make new things. They contract. It’s no surprise (to anyone except the AP, that is) that economists are saying that unemployment “could” continue to rise. High taxes work as disincentives for corporations and big business to hire people and make things. THe higher taxes go, the less things are made. The less people are hired. The longer unemployment lasts.