President Obama wants everybody in America to get a fair chance and have a fair shot, whatever that means. My guess is it means more government control and lots of populist vote getting pandering efforts designed to make the Democrats look good. It's another example of why 'superficial' politics sucks and individual freedoms suffer when government takes over, in other words.
Obama's Peter Pan Economics is subtitled 'Other than the president, perfect fairness is an obsession mainly among children.' It's another sample of the childishness in American politics today as President Obama works hard to replicate the failed policies and programs of government knows best programs in Europe, China and elsewhere:
"Barack Obama is touring the country . . . talking about something he calls “middle-class economics.”. . .
(Here's the President offering his description of middle class economics.) “That’s what middle-class economics is—the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”
Let’s try to unbundle this sentence.
It sounds familiar, until one notices that Mr. Obama has added something—the word “fair.”
In the traditional version, everyone at least gets a shot and does their share. But what, exactly, does the President of the United States mean by a “fair” shot and “fair” share?
Other than the president, the one other slice of the American population that obsesses over fairness everywhere is children. Every parent knows that about the age of four, kids in groups start saying, “That’s not fair.”
If you have a birthday party and cut pieces of the cake for all, one of them will say, “Her piece is bigger than mine. Why is she getting a bigger piece? That’s not fair.”
And parents, ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, have felt obliged to instruct their children on the reality. Life isn’t going to be “fair.” And the path into the future requires more than envy, tantrums and grabbing what belongs to others.
Cradle-to-grave fairness may be infantile, but the idea lives on, especially in politics and most of all in Mr. Obama’s mind.
He says middle-class economics means “two years of free community college, so we can keep earning higher wages down the road.”
How can community college be “free” for everyone? This isn’t middle-class economics. It’s Peter Pan economics. . . .
In Mr. O’s world, . . . Middle-class economics “means making it easier to afford childcare, college, paid leave, health care, a home, and retirement.”
Unraveling the Obama belief system is a challenge, so let’s take the lower, simpler road and agree with conventional wisdom that “middle-class economics” is mostly about where the votes are. . . .
The first indication that politicizing the American middle class carries peril for pols who claim to be its champion came this week when the White House deserted its plan to tax 529 college-savings accounts.
Across millions of kitchen tables since the plan to tax “upper-income” savers was announced, 30- and 40-something spouses said: “He wants to do what?” Even Nancy Pelosi , grandmother of six, went rogue and reportedly asked the White House to drop the idea.
The one datum driving the middle class into the spotlight of presidential politics is that median, inflation-adjusted household income has fallen, from about $54,000 in 2008 to below $52,000....
U.S. elections are run on the conceit that America’s problems, including stagnant incomes, are unique to us. But we should look beyond the U.S. to see where we don’t want our politics to go.
China? The Wall Street Journal reported that two-thirds of middle-class college grads there want to work for a state-owned company or the government. Why? They say senior bureaucrats make all the important decisions. We’ve had that model in the U.S. recently, and economic growth collapsed.
What of Europe and its social-market economies so admired by Democratic progressives in the U.S.? Much of Europe’s educated, middle-class youth are permanently unemployed because subsidies that absorb half the continent’s GDP prop up and pay for the lifestyles of their parents. Call it jobless fairness....
Forget fair. Start with work. The rest will come."
Summing Up
We don't want America to be like the entitlements based societies of Europe or the government dominated Chinese.
So let's commit to working hard at getting our fellow Americans to understand that 'the harder we work, the luckier we'll become.' And that self help is the best help of all.
And while we're at it, let's agree that the more government promises to do to 'help' the middle class, the worse off the middle class and America will become.
We each need to work hard and row our own boats, but all the while knowing that to the extent we need help with the rowing, we can rely on getting that help from our fellow Americans.
E pluribus unum (out of many, one) isn't just an empty platitude. It's what America represents.
Freedom and equal opportunities aren't empty platitudes. They accurately describe what we get just for being Americans.
And my take is that that's more than fair.
Thanks. Bob.
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