A Stitch in Haste

So not only is he a foreign policy illiterate, but he’s also an economic illiterate:

Olbermann: You were in the Illinois legislature when Soldier Field was funded. You voted for it although you seemed reluctant at the time. Was it the right call?

Obama: Absolutely it was the right call because it put a whole bunch of Illinois folks to work. Strong labor jobs were created in this stadium, and at the same time we created an enormous opportunity for economic growth throughout the city of Chicago, and that’s good for the state of Illinois.

Okay, back to high school economics:

Government spending does not create jobs; it merely redistributes them — net of bureaucracy, inefficiency, corruption, etc.

Government spending does not create wealth; it merely redistributes it — net of bureaucracy, inefficiency, corruption, etc.

Yes, you now have a shiny new stadium — which was a never a public good and therefore should never have been funded with taxes in the first place. But now what don’t you have? What private opportunities — to build, to improve, to invest, to spend — were eliminated because people — your “Illinois folks” — had to pay taxes to fund this neat-o stadium?

Yes, some people were made better off — some workers employed by the stadium construction companies, some sports teams and other crony capitalists who bought government subsidies through lobbying (or worse), some fans who are now the recipients of ticket welfare.

But who is worse off, as a result of taxes that were higher than they had to be (and also as a result of other economic side-effects of extra government spending, such as higher interest rates)?

Economics does not allow you to see only what can be seen. It demands that you also see what cannot be seen.

Politics allows, perhaps requires, such intellectual sloppiness. Economics does not.

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Read the Broken Window Fallacy here; more on stadium economics here; more thoughts from the Tax Foundation.

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I had briefly hoped that Obama would be the least nightmarish of the viable presidential candidates. I had known, for some time, that he was a moral defective. But I wondered whether his inexperience might have served as a substitute for the gridlock (which we will not have in 2009) that is the only guarantee of government inaction.

But with his nuke-himself-in-the-foot remarks about Cuba and Pakistan and now this, I am again forced to have no favorite Tweedle. Go figure.

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