Today’s WSJ has an excellent letter from a writer in Durham on this point. Here it is:
The Recovery Faces a Strong Antibusiness Headwind
As your editorial “The Jobless Stimulus” (Sept. 5) indicates, the American economy has bounced back from every prior recession, and another such recovery may already be underway. However, the current economy faces anticapitalist headwinds that haven’t been as strong in more than 70 years. The real question is whether the Democratic legislative agenda is going to dampen future growth in real gross domestic product to something less than its 3% per year trendline, which will mean less job creation, fewer new businesses, and permanently higher average unemployment.
Franklin Roosevelt’s populist, anti-Wall Street, anti-big business rhetoric in the 1930s made for great politics but awful economics. During that decade, real GDP growth was less than 1% per year, despite a substantial recovery in the mid-1930s. If the Obama administration is successful with its progressive agenda, America’s post-recession economy could be in for another very bumpy ride. President Obama is blessed with the oratorical skills of FDR. Policy concessions that give the appearance of compromise still could achieve his long-term objectives of cap and trade, union card check, universal public health care, etc., with all their negative implications for private-sector job growth. As long as the Obama administration can claim, without media challenge or ridicule, that “stimulus spending saved one million jobs,” one should not assume that Washington’s antibusiness impulses are being held in check or that a return to prerecession levels of job growth is a safe bet.
Anders Smith
Durham, N.C.
Smith is right. Virtually everything the Obama regime has been doing is inimical to business. Investors see the most virulently anti-business attitude in Washington since FDR and his demonization of “economic royalists,” so it’s hardly surprising that they hesitate to invest. Furthermore, the government is consuming ever-more resources. When the public sector grows, the private secto shrinks.
If you beat and starve your dog, you shouldn’t wonder if he just lolls around rather than jumping up at your call.