\u201cDespite Mr. Obama\u2019s stated commitment to helping all Americans, the recession and the lingering effects of the way it was handled have made matters much, much worse<\/b>.\u00a0 While bailout money poured into the banks in 2009, unemployment soared to 10 percent that October.\u00a0 The rate today (7.8 percent) appears better partly because so many people have dropped out of the labor force, or never entered it, or accepted part-time jobs because there was no full-time job for them.\u201d\u00a0 (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n
Shed a tear for progressive pundits.\u00a0 They resemble the nerdy 25-year-old who finally loses his virginity and laments, \u201cIs that it?\u00a0 Is that all there is to it?\u00a0 Is that what I get after all those years of cold showers?\u201d Ever since 2001 progressives have been blaming Wall Street and the notorious \u201cBush tax cuts\u201d for wage stagnation and rising inequality. \u00a0Now their hero has \u201cspread the wealth\u201d by vastly expanding domestic spending, enacting Obamacare, mummifying Wall Street in miles and miles of Dodd-Frank red tape, and raising taxes on the infamous 2%.<\/p>\n
And the result is . . . . . a far worse economy for the poor and middle class than under George W. Bush.\u00a0 Black unemployment is 14%.\u00a0 For the second year in a row the poverty rate was 15% in 2011, versus a peak under George W. of 13.2%.\u00a0 Median household income in 2011 was 6% below the average level under Bush.\u00a0 Meanwhile the rich are doing fine, with the S&P 500 up 88% since the spring of 2009.\u00a0 Inequality was higher in 2011 than any year under George W.\u00a0 There is little reason to expect these metrics to improve quickly, not with the payroll tax cut ending and Obamacare taking effect.<\/p>\n
So now progressives are turning on their hero.\u00a0 Our opening quotation reads like it sprang from the keyboard of a clear-eyed right winger like Paul Ryan, Rand Paul or Jim DeMint, but it was actually written by Joe Stiglitz, who never saw a tax hike he didn\u2019t like.\u00a0 With the election over, the liberal media can shift from campaigning for Obama to \u201canalysis,\u201d so The New York Times<\/b> has run several articles attempting to make sense of Obamanomics\u2019 failures.\u00a0 They miss a lot but stumble onto insights we have been discussing for the last\u00a0eight months:<\/p>\n Friedman snidely observed that \u201cif the Republican Party had a brain it would give up on its debt-ceiling gambit and announce instead that it wants to open negotiations immediately with President Obama on the basis of his own deficit commission, the Simpson Bowles Plan.\u201d \u00a0That is pretty much what Republicans have done by postponing the debt ceiling.\u00a0 It was a smart move. With Obama and the liberal media no longer able to position conservatives as \u201ccrazies\u201d who want America to \u201cdefault,\u201d attention is focused on the ongoing failure of Obamanomics and the dearth of fresh ideas from the White House to raise the incomes of the poor and middle class. \u00a0In last Sunday\u2019s morning shows Bob Woodward wondered whether Obama would finally come up with proposals to reform entitlements, which might improve business confidence and hiring.\u00a0 The next step for Republicans, after extracting spending cuts from Washington, is to highlight how Obamacare is discouraging job creation by penalizing companies that create too many full-time jobs.<\/p>\n Copyright 2013 Thomas Doerflinger.\u00a0 All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDespite Mr. Obama\u2019s stated commitment to helping all Americans, the recession and the lingering effects of the way it was handled have made matters much, much worse.\u00a0 While bailout money poured into the banks in 2009, unemployment soared to 10 … Continue reading \n