Obamanomics II

Have you taken a road trip lately?  If so, you’ve seen Obamanomics up close and if you have a basic understanding of economics, you should be horrified.  I just completed my third transcontinental drive in a year (Don’t ask.  Suffice it to say a woman and a dog were involved.) and I can attest that in many cases we are digging up thousands of miles of perfectly serviceable road and repaving them with almost no perceivable improvement.  This is not just wasteful.  It is madness.

   

Economists have forever posited that if full-employment is the goal, why not just dig holes and fill them in again?  Everyone in the country can be kept busy and no one would be unemployed, hallelujah!  But of course this policy is never proposed as a real solution to anything, only as a proof that “creating jobs” is not the goal and “creating value” is.  Unfortunately, Obama and his economic team were either golfing or protesting the bourgeoisie when that lesson was taught.

The supposed architect of Obamanomics, John Maynard Keynes, mentions the fallacy of digging holes and filling them in again in his writings but no one would mistake it for a serious remedy.  Then again Keynes never suggested borrowing trillions for stimulus while running huge structural deficits.  Never mind, that hasn’t stopped them from citing him as their guru for these policies.

 

All in all, Obamanomics has proven to be a tragic farce.  Whether we are being ruled by a confederacy of dunces or an evil cabal is open to debate.  But on the matter of measurable economic results, “the science is settled” as they say.