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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It?
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From: TimF9/5/2011 5:56:24 PM
5 Recommendations   of 224729
 
Doubling Down on Stupid
Filed under: Economics, Politics — The Professor @ 11:16 am
Whoops! He said it again.

Several weeks ago Obama blamed high unemployment on ATMs and the like. He was widely ridiculed for those remarks, and rightly so. But apparently he believes it, because he said virtually the same thing yesterday:

One of the challenges in terms of rebuilding our economy is – businesses have gotten so efficient, that, uh, when was the last time somebody went to a bank teller? Instead of using an ATM. Or, used a travel agent instead of going online. A lot of jobs out that that used to require people now have become automated.

 And the world is supposed to wait with bated breath for his jobs proposal? What will it be? To ban the internet?

This reminds me of the famous Milton Friedman story:

There’s a story about Milton Friedman in China that may be apocryphal but illustrates this point. In observing hundreds of Chinese workers clearing land for a new building using shovels, Friedman asked his hosts “Why are they using shovels? Why not use heavy equipment like an earth-mover?” The Chinese official said “If we did that, we’d lose all of those jobs!” Supposedly Friedman said “Oh, you’re trying to create jobs! I thought you were trying to build a building. If you want to create jobs, why not take away their shovels and give them spoons?”

 So maybe the jobs program won’t be based on shoveling money to shovel ready projects, but to spoon ready ones.

I have little patience with those who label Obama as a Marxist. However, his economic conceptions do seem to be little more than warmed over crypto-Marxist drivel; he looks at the nation’s poor employment picture and sees a modern day version of Marx’s description of the plight of the handweavers. This is not evidence of hardcore Marxism, just the kind of thing one picks up in the intellectually miasmatic swamps of progressivism that Obama has inhabited the last 30 odd years. Abject ignorance of real economics is the default condition in those swamps, as we find out whenever Obama chooses to bless us with an exegesis on the subject.

streetwiseprofessor.com
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