Now I’ll Have To Rethink My Position

Are the elite starting to turn against Obama?

“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.

“The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”

But…but…Nancy said that paying people unemployment was the fastest and best way to create jobs!

Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.

“We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have…are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

Gee, Mort, I could have told you that two frickin’ years ago. Why did it take you so long to catch on that you were one of the rubes?

And I loved this:

Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”

This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”

Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”

To be fair, though, I suspect that you could blow Brolin’s mind with a butterfly wing.

This can’t be good for his renomination prospects. The long knives will be out on November 3rd, I suspect.

24 thoughts on “Now I’ll Have To Rethink My Position”

  1. The long knives will be out on November 3rd, I suspect.

    Do you hear She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named cackling offstage? She’s been quietly padding her c.v. for the last couple years while avoiding any serious attention, you know…

  2. Europe is slowly, very slowly, moving away from an expansive welfare system however. Eventually you’ll run out of other people’s money and that’s starting to happen.

  3. Well, just considering the arguments for Obama Care on this blog (not the blog owner, just some commenters); I think the “hope and change” was to exactly become like European countries.

  4. You’ll notice the blame is not on the executive, but on his advisers. It seem he has no credentials in economics to fall back on. The poor soul is a victim of the experts. The BP execs didn’t get off that easy.

  5. I keep speculating that it will be Obama-Clinton in 2012 in order to: a) avoid a primary fight that would likely doom the eventual nominee in the general election and b) position Hillary for 2016 when she will be a still-electable 68-year-old.

    So far nobody finds the idea plausible.

  6. I hope Leland is wrong. I am with Ferguson; having grown up in a declining empire it ain’t all it could be and frankly was a bit discouraging at times because everything changed quite quickly starting in the late 60’s.

    I voted against the UK joining the EU, was told by many I was completely wrong and muddle-headed. I exercised my freedom of choice and came to the US. Do I have to look elsewhere now? I have no wish to live in the EU. I don’t think most Americans do either, Europe is a great place to visit but that’s all. Come November we have to get this country back on a reasonable track to economic success before everyone decides it’s not worth trying any more. It really is time to put the good of the country ahead of the good of politicians.Time to send SWMNBNed and all her cronies back to the swamp where she spawned!

  7. “…position Hillary for 2016 when she will be a still-electable 68-year-old.”

    I don’t know how electable a 68 year old WOMAN would be in this country. At least as President. I don’t care how much plastic surgery she has done, it will be hard to make her attractive to the younger voters. And we’re obviously a very superficial lot of voters…

  8. Actually I think Clinton is getting more sympathetic with age. I found the Clinton presidency Hillary cringeworthy, but now that she’s getting into the grandmother thing she might get a lot more sympathy.

  9. Note the gulf between left and right. For the left, what’s important is who says it. For the right, it’s what is said… followed by watching to see if actions match the words.

  10. You’ll notice the blame is not on the executive, but on his advisers. It seem he has no credentials in economics to fall back on.

    FTFY.

  11. I was up at the Aspen Institute yesterday (really). All those distinguished brains – made me think of the Wizard of Oz.

  12. There are negative consequences when government provides massive disincentives to being productive!? Who knew?

  13. Came across this the other day:

    http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/06/frum.skills.mismatch/index.html?hpt=C2
    “In 1992, 17 percent of Americans scored at the very lowest literacy level. On present trends, 27 percent of Americans will score at the very lowest level in 2030.”

    In contrast to much of the rest of the world, the US seems to be heading for an un-knowledge economy based on low wage rates for an increasing proportion of its population. It seems to me this will have very severe consequences on economic growth, average wage rates seem very likely to decrease, compared to the rest of the world. Unskilled labor is to some extent a fungible global commodity, unskilled labor in the US has to be competitive with unskilled labor in the third world on wage rates.

    I doubt a somewhat socialist government could sustain such disparity of incomes.

    Perhaps a large part of the reason that many European countries can sustain higher levels of socialism is that they are far less diverse – more homogeneous. Germany is not all bad – a highly skilled majority workforce that can sustain very high standards of living and pay its way. Some good engineers and a lot of high end manufacturing. But I do not think that an option for the US.

    It seems to me that somehow the US is going to have to learn how to operate functional first and third world countries in the same place – and keep them economically separate, even at the local level. How? First world verse third world emergency services, law and order, local infrastructure, local government, etc., are very different. Large cross subsidies are not sustainable, yet otherwise invoked in highly diverse countries.

  14. When borrowing is spent on keeping government employees employed, and hiring 400,000 census workers, rather than investments in infrastructure that cause industry to invest in building more industry and creating jobs in THIS economy (not in China), then that spending is not a simulus and only puts this country deeper in the hole. The last thing they should have spent the money on was to keep teachers and cops employed.

  15. Streisand and Brolin probably think this is all new liberal thinking, rather than traditional conservativism.

    I read stuff like this and I feel like I just can’t watch anymore. For decades, I’ve thought of this nation as a raft full of people drifting toward Niagara Falls while everybody argues about who gets to man the tiller. It’s getting near the point where giving everybody a paddle and setting them to work won’t change the eventual outcome. Most of them would either refuse on the grounds of entitlement or try to paddle with the wrong end.

  16. If unemployment keeps rising, an extension of the progressive tax system is unavoidable. Otherwise the middle class will be eliminated. A way to prevent job outsourcing is to deeply tax capital gains, or people with very high incomes, while simultaneously fighting tax evasion. Then the tax money is injected back into the economy by providing tax breaks, or even subsidies, to companies or projects employing the long term unemployed.

    Oh and you can already see former manufacturing tycoons clamoring for protectionist measures:
    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm

    The US is still a bit far away from having rampant unemployment however.

  17. A way to prevent job outsourcing job creation is to deeply tax capital gains,

    FIFY

  18. If unemployment keeps rising, an extension of the progressive tax system is unavoidable. Otherwise the middle class will be eliminated. A way to prevent job outsourcing is to deeply tax capital gains, or people with very high incomes, while simultaneously fighting tax evasion. Then the tax money is injected back into the economy by providing tax breaks, or even subsidies, to companies or projects employing the long term unemployed.

    This is pretty much what Europe does already.

  19. They’re in the “If Stalin Only Knew” stage. Russians (and Western socialists) spent years in the 1930s-1950s blaming all the Soviet Union’s oppressive outrages on misguided or corrupt underlings. As soon as Stalin learned about their misdeeds, the lefties thought, he would put everything right. Because Stalin was wise and good.

  20. Dennis:
    Sweden seems to be doing fine with their high taxes. Especially compared with Ireland. It seems it actually matters if your nation actually generates wealth producing things, rather than by being a tax haven for Microsoft and their ilk.

  21. Sweden seems to be doing fine with their high taxes.

    Historic low = “doing fine?” If you say so…

  22. I read stuff like this and I feel like I just can’t watch anymore. For decades, I’ve thought of this nation as a raft full of people drifting toward Niagara Falls while everybody argues about who gets to man the tiller. It’s getting near the point where giving everybody a paddle and setting them to work won’t change the eventual outcome. Most of them would either refuse on the grounds of entitlement or try to paddle with the wrong end.

    Sad but true.

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