Wilkum
Wonderful. Today President Obama descends on my hometown for part of his “listening tour” on the economy and employment. I suppose I should be happy: a day spent jabbering about trying to rearrange the United States economy, as if it were a fort made of Legos, is a day that can’t actually be spent doing it. And it’ll be fun to see these people trying, say, to eat funnel cake for their photo op without getting powdered sugar on their ties. All the same, it’s annoying. Here’s John Stossel:
Today, the White House holds its “Jobs Summit” stunt. It’s typical Washington-think: Assemble interest groups and concoct special tax credits and handouts to the politically connected. What conceit. The political class think that economies revolve around them, that Washington makes things happen, that politicians are the most important players
…
Their micromanagement kills jobs. When Washington threatens to drastically change the rules of the game with health care mandates, cap and trade, financial regulation, a second stimulus, and (of course) a “jobs bill”, the private sector can’t make investments with any confidence.
And the most obnoxious part is the way the president has been asking the private sector to “help,” as if its function in job creation were ancillary. How many of these people would know a lean, profitable operation if it fell on top of them in the street, after all? Career academics and public-sector employees are not exactly in the position to be chiding entrepreneurs about not getting out there and risking themselves in the hurly-burly of the marketplace.
Added later: I put together a sentence about this week’s jobs-forum proceedings with one about Obama’s visit to the Lehigh Valley and then forgot to revise it before posting; it’s fixed now, for anyone who saw the error in the original.