Holy Crap, a new blog post!

Okay,  I’m kind of tired of looking at the picture of the monkey in a Santa hat from my previous blog post showing up every day in the RSS feed on my home page, I think it’s time to blog about something. 

Now, I know none of you watched the Obama hosted pre-game show last night, and neither did I (you'd know this if you followed me on Twitter).  But I did listen to it via the Mark Levin Podcast today.  So as a service to you, so you won't have to listen to it, here is my analysis of Obama's speech: 

1.  Offering a tax cut to businesses who hire or give raises to employees: 

While I’ve never met a tax cut I didn't like, unless sales are up and the business is expanding there is no reason to hire more people.  Raises work as a means of retaining good employees.   This is proposal based on flawed logic.  Obama doesn't realize that a business is in business to make money. It does not exist to play games with the tax code, but to maximize profit.  Hiring only occurs when it helps the goal of profit.   

2.  Rebuilding infrastructure 

Isn’t that was TARP was for? What about the last stimulus?  Shouldn't we have repaved every road, rebuilt every bridge, and rebuilt every public building by now?  The money designated for these projects never ends up helping the economy because at every level the unions take a cut and the work never gets done because it's being performed by aforementioned unions. 

3. Repairing and rebuilding schools

This could have been lumped in with #2, but I decided to separate it because it was a specific point in Obama's speech. The President makes the claim that teachers can't teach, and children can't learn as well in dilapidated buildings?  This has nothing to do with jobs!   Jobs come when the economy starts expanding again and that rarely if ever happens in a classroom.  The classic complaint that teachers are underpaid is refuted by the fact that most people are paid according to what they directly produce.  Teachers, while providing a necessary service, are not the producers in the is economy.  In a classroom there is no combining of raw materials to create something of greater value than it's component parts.   Investing in rebuilding classrooms does not expand the economy. 

Obama spoke on more than this but this is roughly when I stopped paying attention, and being slightly hungover today this is all I’m willing to really write about at this time. 

So I’ve complained but didn’t offer a solution.  You’re probably saying, “If you’re so smart how would you fix things?”   Okay, give me a minute.

I think I would use the Jerry Seinfield approach.  The comedian once said about department store clerks who ask “may I help you?” that they are either trying to help him or trying to sell him something.

Government works much the same way.  Any time the government tries to “help” the situation only ever gets worse.  Don’t try to help the economy.  Go back to your designated tasks of building a few roads, delivering mail and keeping the king of England on his side of the Atlantic.  Those of us who actually live and work in the economy will take care of that ourselves!