The Success of Failure

The controversy about Rush Limbaugh wanting Obama to fail continues to show life.  It is a meaningless controversy.  In the larger scheme of things, the wants of Rush Limbaugh, however interesting and entertaining, will have little impact on Obama’s success. Likewise public opinion polls on how Obama is doing, are meaningless.   Polls are merely a reflection of current public opinion, which given the fawning coverage of the press core says very little about reality.

In the end the success or failure of the Obama Presidency will be determined by whether or not he gets his policies put in place and then if they make things better.  Given the Democratic majorities in Congress,  getting his policies passed in not an issue.  So if his liberal ideology is correct, and the policies produce noticeable improvements in people’s quality of life, then his presidency will be deemed a success and he will go on to win reelection.

Yet for those who look at reality rather than ideology,  unfortunately for the country, and for Obama, there is actually very little doubt about what Obama’s policies will do. Whether one is looking at theory or history, the affects of Obama’s policies are really pretty clear, and they are not good.

On the domestic front we are looking at a huge expansion of government, massive increase of government influence in the private economy, a doubling of the national debt, and all funded by a massive increase in the money supply.  Obama and the Democrats justify this by  pointing to the problems we have, and the good that they are trying to do.  Yet, we do not need to question their intentions to be trouble by their policies.

But therein lies the first problem.  Obama and the Democrats are so focused on their attempts to do good, that they fail to consider the effects of these policies, and each of these policies will not only have effects, but negative effects.   Increasing government by definition limits liberty, and if paid for burdens the economy suppressing economic growth. Obama and the Democrats pretty much ignore the first problem as they are more interested in equality than liberty. As for burdening the economy, in the short term they hope to reduce that by deficit spending and increasing the money supply,  and in the long term by taxing the rich.  

Their willingness to increase government  influence in the private economy comes from a basic distrust of markets and the belief that their planning can do things better than the chaos of the markets driven by profit. Unfortunately Obama and the Democrats only focus on one part of Capitalism. 

An effective capitalist system is not driven by profit alone, but must be combined with choice and competition.  The choice of consumers and the competition among supplier all driven by the profit motive is what results in the constant push to improve the delivery of goods and services at a lower cost that has so improved the quality of life. In fact in the places today where there are the most problems, such as health care, a large part of the problem is the lack of choice and competition.

Government planning has no such mechanism pushing to reduce costs.  In fact over the last century, capitalism’s ability to deliver goods and services at lower costs meant that people’s disposable income grew, though much of this was crowded out by the massive increase in the cost of government.  While the amount of time people had to work for essentials dropped, the amount of time they had to work to pay for government increased 459 percent over the last century.  This is also demonstrated in the how the more capitalist U.S. economy consistently  out performs the more planning and control based European economies. In short bringing the inefficiencies of government to the private sector can hardly be expected to improve things, nor can substituting political decisions for business decisions.

There is a lot of hypocrisy in the third policy, the doubling of the national debt.  Throughout the last eight year Democrats were highly critical of Bush for increasing the national debt. And yet in his first budget, Obama will not only exceed Bush’s debt, but the debt of all previous presidents combined.  Such a massive increase will crowd out other forms of lending and will obligate future generations to paying for these policies.

Finally there is the increase in the money supply.  This one is really pretty simple.  Flood the economy with money and things will improve in the short term.  The long term effect of all this extra money is also clear: Inflation.

All of these policies will have serious and long term problems. Nor should any of this be surprising.  All of these policies, with the exception of increasing the money supply, have been tried in the states with predicable results.  There is a reason Blue states  like California, New York and Michigan are having such problems.  There is also a reason people are voting with their feet and moving from Blue States to Red States.  Liberals like to try and blame this on the weather, but that does not explain why people are leaving California.

So Obama can safely ignore the wants and wishes of Rush Limbaugh as they will have little lasting effect on his Presidency.  What he should be worried about is the effects of his own policies, policies that have a known and proven track record, a record that shows we are headed for some very bad economic time in our future.   He can play the  “it is all Bush’s fault” card even though he supported the key policies that got us here.  But at some point that excuse will wear thin. Particularly if, as can be reasonably expected the inflated money supply bring some uptick in the economy before the real problems begin.   

On the other hand, could it just be possible that perhaps Limbaugh’s wish for Obama to fail was grounded, not in partisan politics, but rather in a desire to avoid the major problems that are now looming in the near future?