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(for those with a strong aversion to reading, lack of time or those who have been closely been following current events, skip the details and back story and simply jump to the last two paragraphs.)
Clearly he wants to get reelected, like almost all politicians and he wants unemployment to be as low as it will require for him to be reelected in 2012, so for the weeks procedding the 2012 election he will want unemployment to be as low as possible, as matter of politics. As a matter of policy though, does he really want an America where everyone who wants a job can get one and almost every with a job has job that pays what they had been told to expect (for instance, if a they are new college graduate, 35 to 40k to start and if they had been making 20 dollars per hour in 2007, then at least 18 or 19 dollars per hour), in a field some what related to their education and/or previous work experience and if they desire full time employment, with full time hours?
In such an America of near or slightly beyond full employment, where workers are getting raises, have hope and can afford to buy their own food and clothing and housing and even some luxuries, it is harder to purchase votes or muster political support with either the promise of increased food stamp, welfare and other state provided benefits. If America becomes a country of latter yeoman, those who make enough money to have comfortable life (not lavish but financially secure and reasonably comfortable) it is much more difficult to begrudge and demagogue "the rich" (since the definition of rich is an arbitray income level, it confuses rich Americans with very productive Americans. It conflates a quasi Aristocrat, a 21 year old child of an extremely wealthy family and the owner of a trust fund that is worth nine figures or more and has his unearned fortune stashed in tax free municipal bonds, with a small business owner or a surgeon who has business and/or student loan debt hat is more than 300k and is making 300k per year after years of working extremely hard and having having an income that was fraction of that number, if he or she had an income at).
An employed an self confident America cannot be as easily sold on more Stimulus, which is clearly a gift to a few large and well connected firms to a few large and well connected Labor Unions and few well connected and broke State Governments, that do business extensively with the those two groups. If there is widespread employment, people will not have to place their hope on wind farms and solar energy as today saviors (rather they will see them for what they are, promising means of generating electrical emery, which still need more technological improvements in order to be viable and able to completely replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear power) nor will they be suckered into "infrastructure investment" (a political euphemism for vague promises of a few high speed rail projects and money to bail out overmanned, spend thrift state's work forces) that employed very few people and do not even claim to plan anything as useful as an expansion of congested freeways or the construction of anything as useful as the Hoover Dam.
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff during his first two years in office said that one should "never let a crisis go to waste. He knew that you could impose policies on a frightened and shelf shocked public, while a more confident public, living in times deemed to be normal, would not accept radical changes to our economy and how the government interacts with it. It is only because of the financial crunch of 2008 and the ensuing wave of unemployment that gripped the nation, that all but the most conservative Americans either believed or made themselves believe that this brilliant, Ivy League educated orator, would some how reverse everything wrong that happened near the end of the Bush Presidency. Tht is why the stimulus was passed and that is why it was able to be so bad (it did not even follows the Keynesian protocols upon which it was supposed to be based. Instead, it was a blatant give away to special interests that were generally well protected from the recession and the damage caused by it).
While high unemployment will allow him to help his friends, his political friends by using high unemployment as an excuse to print more dollars since
Wall Street loves all of the easy Fed dollars from QE I and QE II and export driven/highly unionized industries love the inflation that it is causing (it makes their goods cheaper overseas while making importers more expensive). Big business and big labor both love the money from "stimulus" plans. Notice that GE, runs a lot of ads but they are for things that no household will buy. They are also tone deaf to the plight of many Americans, look at the adds for GE Capital and how fancy free and fun it is for GE's venture capitalists to moving, happily across about the Globe, while they finance some vague promise of "tomorrow." (most of these ads are on MSNBC, in addition to being owned by GE, think that most of MSNBC's progressive "viewers" have been passover by this recession, with so many on the left working in government, in government backed unions or Wall Street, this Great Recession and Unemployment is felt in the abstract, if at all). It is either that or the ads are for health care equipment or electrical grids, useful things but things that households do not purchase.
It is not just cynical politics (all people in politics have to help those got themselves elected, this is not at all unique to President Obama) I also believe that Barack Obama, like so many brilliant people, truly wants to remake America and believes that these changes it will benefit the ordinary citizens in the long run. He wants to see things like making car ownership unaffordable. He wants to have us living in small apartments in the city. He wants to see the wages of college graduates drop by increasing college enrollment and simultaneously pushing the wages of blue collar workers up, via unionization and subsidies that favor union dominated firms. He once said that even if an increase in the capital gains tax rate decreased revenue that he would still favor it in the inetrest of justice.
He believes that our society will be more just when a teacher, wit han MA in Education Studies makes more take home pay, even if she works half as many hours per year as the entrepreuner, ith less formal education, that works to satisfy private, market based demands. He has the conviction that it is wrong to make money by finding a human want and satisfying at a lower cost then anyone else and making profits from it or at least it wron gfor those profits to excede the take home pay of someone with more education. That is why has so much emnity towards those who create wealth but has few harsh words for the person who inherited a fortune or the person who went to an elite school and makes millions on Wall Street or as Washington Law Firm Partner. Barack Obama is a certified intellectual because only an intellectual would believe these things and while I cannot read his mind, his actions make everything that I have asserted, very plausible.
With all of that said, I believe that if it were not for the fact that high unemployment is bad for reelection prospects, he would not worry about actual people who are unemployed, he sees them as potential wards of the state and docile voters whose ballot can be bought wit ha few hundred dollars more in checks or in food stamps. He sees private economic growth and Middle Class, whose wages are secured due to their skills and employer competition for those skills. His only worry about unemployment, fro ma policy stand point is that it is still far too high for him to be able to truly make society based on his learned whims.
What do you guys think, tell me why you think I am right or why I am wrong.
Clearly he wants to get reelected, like almost all politicians and he wants unemployment to be as low as it will require for him to be reelected in 2012, so for the weeks procedding the 2012 election he will want unemployment to be as low as possible, as matter of politics. As a matter of policy though, does he really want an America where everyone who wants a job can get one and almost every with a job has job that pays what they had been told to expect (for instance, if a they are new college graduate, 35 to 40k to start and if they had been making 20 dollars per hour in 2007, then at least 18 or 19 dollars per hour), in a field some what related to their education and/or previous work experience and if they desire full time employment, with full time hours?
In such an America of near or slightly beyond full employment, where workers are getting raises, have hope and can afford to buy their own food and clothing and housing and even some luxuries, it is harder to purchase votes or muster political support with either the promise of increased food stamp, welfare and other state provided benefits. If America becomes a country of latter yeoman, those who make enough money to have comfortable life (not lavish but financially secure and reasonably comfortable) it is much more difficult to begrudge and demagogue "the rich" (since the definition of rich is an arbitray income level, it confuses rich Americans with very productive Americans. It conflates a quasi Aristocrat, a 21 year old child of an extremely wealthy family and the owner of a trust fund that is worth nine figures or more and has his unearned fortune stashed in tax free municipal bonds, with a small business owner or a surgeon who has business and/or student loan debt hat is more than 300k and is making 300k per year after years of working extremely hard and having having an income that was fraction of that number, if he or she had an income at).
An employed an self confident America cannot be as easily sold on more Stimulus, which is clearly a gift to a few large and well connected firms to a few large and well connected Labor Unions and few well connected and broke State Governments, that do business extensively with the those two groups. If there is widespread employment, people will not have to place their hope on wind farms and solar energy as today saviors (rather they will see them for what they are, promising means of generating electrical emery, which still need more technological improvements in order to be viable and able to completely replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear power) nor will they be suckered into "infrastructure investment" (a political euphemism for vague promises of a few high speed rail projects and money to bail out overmanned, spend thrift state's work forces) that employed very few people and do not even claim to plan anything as useful as an expansion of congested freeways or the construction of anything as useful as the Hoover Dam.
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff during his first two years in office said that one should "never let a crisis go to waste. He knew that you could impose policies on a frightened and shelf shocked public, while a more confident public, living in times deemed to be normal, would not accept radical changes to our economy and how the government interacts with it. It is only because of the financial crunch of 2008 and the ensuing wave of unemployment that gripped the nation, that all but the most conservative Americans either believed or made themselves believe that this brilliant, Ivy League educated orator, would some how reverse everything wrong that happened near the end of the Bush Presidency. Tht is why the stimulus was passed and that is why it was able to be so bad (it did not even follows the Keynesian protocols upon which it was supposed to be based. Instead, it was a blatant give away to special interests that were generally well protected from the recession and the damage caused by it).
While high unemployment will allow him to help his friends, his political friends by using high unemployment as an excuse to print more dollars since
Wall Street loves all of the easy Fed dollars from QE I and QE II and export driven/highly unionized industries love the inflation that it is causing (it makes their goods cheaper overseas while making importers more expensive). Big business and big labor both love the money from "stimulus" plans. Notice that GE, runs a lot of ads but they are for things that no household will buy. They are also tone deaf to the plight of many Americans, look at the adds for GE Capital and how fancy free and fun it is for GE's venture capitalists to moving, happily across about the Globe, while they finance some vague promise of "tomorrow." (most of these ads are on MSNBC, in addition to being owned by GE, think that most of MSNBC's progressive "viewers" have been passover by this recession, with so many on the left working in government, in government backed unions or Wall Street, this Great Recession and Unemployment is felt in the abstract, if at all). It is either that or the ads are for health care equipment or electrical grids, useful things but things that households do not purchase.
It is not just cynical politics (all people in politics have to help those got themselves elected, this is not at all unique to President Obama) I also believe that Barack Obama, like so many brilliant people, truly wants to remake America and believes that these changes it will benefit the ordinary citizens in the long run. He wants to see things like making car ownership unaffordable. He wants to have us living in small apartments in the city. He wants to see the wages of college graduates drop by increasing college enrollment and simultaneously pushing the wages of blue collar workers up, via unionization and subsidies that favor union dominated firms. He once said that even if an increase in the capital gains tax rate decreased revenue that he would still favor it in the inetrest of justice.
He believes that our society will be more just when a teacher, wit han MA in Education Studies makes more take home pay, even if she works half as many hours per year as the entrepreuner, ith less formal education, that works to satisfy private, market based demands. He has the conviction that it is wrong to make money by finding a human want and satisfying at a lower cost then anyone else and making profits from it or at least it wron gfor those profits to excede the take home pay of someone with more education. That is why has so much emnity towards those who create wealth but has few harsh words for the person who inherited a fortune or the person who went to an elite school and makes millions on Wall Street or as Washington Law Firm Partner. Barack Obama is a certified intellectual because only an intellectual would believe these things and while I cannot read his mind, his actions make everything that I have asserted, very plausible.
With all of that said, I believe that if it were not for the fact that high unemployment is bad for reelection prospects, he would not worry about actual people who are unemployed, he sees them as potential wards of the state and docile voters whose ballot can be bought wit ha few hundred dollars more in checks or in food stamps. He sees private economic growth and Middle Class, whose wages are secured due to their skills and employer competition for those skills. His only worry about unemployment, fro ma policy stand point is that it is still far too high for him to be able to truly make society based on his learned whims.
What do you guys think, tell me why you think I am right or why I am wrong.
