Why Obama's policies have not worked.

All of the left must be scratching their heads.  Most of them have been taught in the academic world that the Keynesian economic theory is the correct one.  What their liberal professors did not tell them was that Keynesian economics has never worked.  They were told that their hero, FDR pulled the US out of the Great Depression with is New Deal economic policies.  Shoot, I was taught that growing up in High School history.   However two UCLA professors (hardly a bastion of conservative thought) did a study and have concluded that his Keynesian policies did not work but lengthened the Great Depression by SEVEN YEARS. (click HERE to read more about this).  President Carter and his central planning policies led to something not thought possible in the Keynesian theory: Stagflation--a stagnant economy coupled with high inflation).

Flash forward to 2008.  The economy starts to tank, and the man in the White House and his party are blamed.  Should they be?  Well I say to some degree yes.  Because of loose monetary policy coupled with out of control spending that were at least to some degree contributing factors.  However these policies were not and should not be considered free market policies.  Obama sweeps into office under perfect economic and political conditions and starts a new round of Keynesian policies that would never and will never work.

:Lets look at the stimulus package that was passed when Obama first took office.  His $787 billion (an unheard of amount of money), we were told, would keep unemployment down.  In fact we were promised that the so called stimulus would keep the unemployment rate below 8%.  Unemployment went up past 10% for a time and has not dropped below 8.9% since (the rate is at 9.1% now).  As the rate continued to skyrocket the left wing Keynesian economists just shrugged their shoulders and blamed Bush, saying the economy Obama inherited was much worse than originally thought.

What should have been reported by the main stream press was that this stimulus had no way of working, and there is one simple reason, the stimulus money was spent on crap, and not on things that would stimulate the conomy. Take a look at recovery.gov.  They have a pie chart break down of what was spent.  There is so much in there that I don't have time to write it all here, but it is obvious that these yahoos in the Obama administration had no clue as to how to stimulate the economy.  Take a look at the breakdown of where the money was spent.  The only thing that translates to job growth was the money spent on infrastructure.  Considering all of this stuff was temporary, those jobs would eventually disappear.  A bunch of the money was spent on retraining of workers.  Great, retrain people, but if there is no one to hire them, then where are they going to work when they are retrained.

The only way to really stimulate the economy is by stimulating the private sector.  Somewhere around 70% of jobs in the US (still looking for confirmation of this statistic) are private sector jobs.  Consider the fact that if the private sector is stimulated, and the economy starts moving again, companies will pay more taxes (due to increased profits), people will pay more income tax (because more people will be working), and consumers will buy more products leading to more tax revenue.  It really is simple, but the left just can't see this.  They believe that profits are evil and that government bureaucrats can make these decisions better than the hard working Americans.

History has shown that these policies don't work, but it does not stop the central planners from continuing to try.  We must stop them.