Whip Unemployment Now!

Those of us who lived through the dreary 1970s will remember what was probably Gerald Ford’s most bone-headed idea: the infamous WIN buttons (“Whip Inflation Now”). It was as if he thought inflation was the cross-town “team” and all we had to do to beat it was to get out there and hold that line! or something.

We’re apparently in for something of a reprise from Obama. The President has discovered - much to his own surprise, no doubt – that the government can’t spend unemployment down, so he’s decided to talk it down, announcing a “job summit” to be held in December.

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups "to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again."

"We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times. But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can take to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," he said.

No extra helpings of government, no employment talk-a-thon among federal bureaucrats, unions and CEOs is going to revive the job market. The problem is that Obama doesn’t really believe “that there are limits to what government can and should do”; on the contrary, the President, dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian that he is, believes that there is no qualitative difference between a dollar spent by the government and a dollar spent by a private business. In fact, because the government, through its enormous borrowing and taxing power, can raise and spend money much faster than the private sector, the state must inevitably be better at job creation.

Funny, though, how that approach doesn’t seem to be working very well. It could be that the government’s spending spree isn’t directed toward any genuinely productive activity that adds value and satisfies real demand for goods and services. It might also be that this administration has created a lot of uncertainty about future costs (health care reform, cap-and-trade, a proposed increase in capital-gains taxes) that is acting as a drag on investment - which necessarily means fewer job opportunities.

Obama is drifting so far from reality that pretty soon he’s going to need a high-powered telescope to see it. And even then he’ll probably forget to remove the lens cap.