The economy added 200,000 jobs in December and President Obama is taking credit for it. The only problem is what he’s taking credit for happens to be tax cuts.
Here’s an excerpt of Obama’s speech from the White House website (emphasis added):
This morning we learned that American businesses added another 212,000 jobs last month … . And one of the reasons for this is the tax cut for working Americans that we put in place last year. And when Congress returns, they should extend the middle-class tax cut for all of this year, to make sure that we keep this recovery going.
The President carefully avoiding saying that the extension of the Bush tax cuts he signed into law in 2010 also benefited rich Americans.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for Professor James Maule to call President Obama a liar ² for suggesting that tax cuts create jobs.
Footnotes:
¹ With a straight face, Obama is taking credit for implementing a Republican policy that worked: The extension of the Bush tax cuts for both the working class and the rich. Watch now as progressives who opposed Obama’s extension of the Bush tax cuts shamelessly applaud the increase in jobs that this insidious and evil policy has created.
² Maule has frequently accused conservatives and Republicans of lying about the effects of tax cuts in order to put more money in the hands of their super-rich cronies.
2 responses so far ↓
1 James Edward Maule // Jan 20, 2012 at 3:24 pm
My claim is that tax cuts *for the wealthy few* do not create jobs. Tax cuts for the not-so-wealthy many do. Wealthy people don’t create jobs for the sake of creating jobs. They create jobs if they need to hire someone. Without demand for their products or services, wealthy businesses and wealthy individuals do not hire people. On the other hand, put money into the hands of consumers, they will buy, and that will cause businesses to hire and expand. Demand-side is different from supply-side. We’ve tried supply-side, and apart from temporary bubbles, it does not work. It’s time to try demand-side. Will it work? Probably. Are there risks? Yes, inflation (which is why demand-side cuts make sense in a deflationary or static economy and not in boom times).
2 Peter // Jan 21, 2012 at 9:21 am
James,
It sure sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it, too.
Wealthy people “create” jobs by buying more Yachts, expanding their businesses, and, in many instances, retaining employees they would have otherwise had to lay off. Those Yachts the 1% buy are made by the 99 percenters (not the spoiled brats rabble rousing in Union Park, but the ones who actually want to work). I have never met a poor person who created a job. Not even his own job.
You have it backwards: We should applaud and reward success and stigmatize and punish failure (defined here as listening to your iPod or playing with your xBox all day instead of studying, learning a trade, etc). This is precisely what the free market does and precisely why the radical left hates it. The free market picks winners and losers and that makes egalitarians, who absurdly think that we are all possessed of prescisely the same intelligence, energy, talents, interests, dreams and desires, very, very uncomfortable.
Peddling the idea that people are rich because they gamed the system, got lucky, or cheated is class-warfare, straight up. They are most likely rich because they made wiser choices.
We should be learning from them rather than denigrating them.