But before elaborating on Obama's computative poppycock, it would be a breach of erudite protocol and everything sacrosanct in American politics to put pen to paper regarding the unadulterated duplicity of liberal policies, math, ideology, and economics, without at least a perfunctory reference or nugget of wisdom from Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi has made what could quite possibly be the most imbecilic utterances by an organism with the ability to speak regarding job creation and stimulating the economy:
- Unemployment benefits “injects demand into the economy.”
- Unemployment benefits “is a job creator.”
- “Unemployment insurance, the economists tell us, return $2 for every $1 that is put out there for unemployment insurance.”
- It creates jobs to help reduce the deficit.
- “This is one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy. Economists will tell you this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and is job creating.”
- Unemployment insurance “creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name because, again, it is money that is needed for families to survive, and it is spent. So it has a double benefit. It helps those who have lost their jobs, but it also is a job creator.”
- “It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance. The biggest bang for the buck.”
Pelosi's stupefied economic theorems, and Obama's as well, can be summarized in their entirety with one simple anecdotal sentence: You are jobless, broke, I give you $5 for a Happy Meal, and by the power of bewitchment, I will receive $10, perhaps delivered by a brilliant white unicorn.
Barack Obama has done something completely out of character for one who regurgitates pseudo-intellectual ideas offered up from the screen of a teleprompter: he actually charged someone with deciphering his deficit reduction plan and transcribing it to paper. It is understandable why he has not presented another grand idea on paper since this past February, as his budget for 2012 was rejected by the Senate 97-0, with contempt.
Barack Obama's grand jobs plan purports to reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over a period of ten years, and add jobs aplenty. Adhering strictly to liberal math, liberal daydreaming, and liberalism's crippling fiscal incompetence of understanding debt, deficit, and egregious spending, Obama's plan is a dizzying and fantastical array of the continued infliction of his toxic fiscal ideology upon the American economy by crippling the only class of citizens who have the capacity to inject capital into the economy, create businesses, and ultimately create jobs. There is one absolute truth regarding the federal government that one should always remember when a politician is panhandling for money to create jobs: The federal government has never created one utilitarian job, but can destroy jobs faster than the private sector can create them. No U.S. President has created one utilitarian job; they merely implemented mechanisms that lessened the burdens on American businesses so they could create jobs.
Now, about that $3 trillion deficit reduction enchanting artifice. The liberal's magical math is decomposing around Obama's teleprompter. His jobs plan reduces the deficit in the proximity of nothing. Brewing in Obama's jobs plan cauldron is a concoction of mathematical conjuration that would rival the outermost boundaries of schizophrenia. The ingredients: An inconsequential measure of $1.2 trillion of discretionary spending that was already included in the debt ceiling circus, a dash of $1.1 trillion from the Iraq and Afghanistan draw-downs that has already been accounted for in his presumed budget, one very large shovel-ready shovel heaping of $1.5 trillion in tax increases, and an unmeasured amount of new spending. Boil until indistinguishable from fantasy. When done, the American people will be served an ample helping of about 92% in tax increases, with a small side of about 8% in actual spending cuts.
To better understand liberal magic math, and to give some relevance to Pelosi's economic hypothesis about unemployment benefits actually being one of the best ways to stimulate the economy, Obama's synced hypothesis should be contemplated.
A few weeks ago, Jay Carney was asked the following question by the Wall Street Journal:"I understand why extending unemployment insurance provides relief to people who need it, but how does that create jobs?" Keep in mind, the teleprompter is Obama's mind, and Carney his mouth; he responded, "Oh, well, uh, it is by, uh, I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam."
He then relied on the patented Pelosi approach with a meandering and intellectually impoverished declaration:
There are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance. It is one of the most direct ways to infuse money directly into the economy because people who are unemployed and obviously aren't running a paycheck are going to spend the money that they get. They're not going to save it, they're going to spend it. And with unemployment insurance, that way, the money goes directly back into the economy, dollar for dollar virtually.
Carney was able to cap it off with irrefutable evidence that reality has become inaccessible to Obama with three supernatural statements:
1) He stated that Obama wants the benefits extended "as we continue to emerge from this recession."
2) This is only one item of a "variety of things to grow the economy and create jobs."
3) And, "This is one thing that economists of all stripes agree will directly affect growth, a half-percentage point I believe, economists believe is the payroll tax cut."
The fundamental problem regarding the relationship between redistribution of wealth and its stimulating effect on the economy by Obama, Pelosi, liberals, et al., is one conspicuous question: Where does the funding of unemployment benefits come from, and what is the cost of the government's involvement? The antithetical logic of liberalism's magic math does not account for the money taken out of the economy to fund the unemployed, and the exorbitant cost for that money to pass through the plundering hands of bureaucrats.
Before the unemployment magic math can be made manifest, a cursory reconnaissance of the "cash for clunkers" program is in order. Unemployment insurance is a government program, and to have a government program, you need forms, lots of forms. The "cash for clunkers" program, being a government program, needed forms. Forms 1070, 1071, 1073, and 1075 to be exact. Now being a government program, it needed staff to manage these four forms, so staff was acquired, in this case about 78 employees equating to 160,353 hours of billable work to manage these forms. This equated to $150,000 per form to be managed. This beget more forms, which beget more workers, which beget...well you get the picture. The program was sold to the public at a cost of between $3,500 and $4,500 per rebate. The actual cost of the program, according to automotive consumer researcher Edmunds.com, was an additional $24,000 per car sold.
With much calculating, calculus, addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication, it is safe to assume that the federal government wastes about 40% of every dollar it absconds.
We now can proceed with unemployment magical math.
Logic would dictate that if the average employee makes $23.09 per hour (
average weekly salary), equating to $923.60 per week, and unemployment benefits average $295 per week, losing one third of one's salary may not be quite as stimulating as Obama would like you to believe.
In the fantastical world of Barack Obama, if $100 is taken from a taxpayer, then said $100 is given to an unemployed non-taxpayer, the economy has been stimulated by $100, and one or perhaps three jobs have been created. This is the crowning achievement of Barack Obama's magical economics. But when the kaleidoscope is removed, and the formula is viewed from the grim spectacles of reality, the numbers seem to careen in another direction.
In the genuineness of reality, mathematics, and economics, Obama's fantastical math is actually this: Mr. Taxpayer is planning to go to the mall and stimulate the economy while quenching some hedonistic shopping by spending $200. But Barack Obama annexes $100 from Mr. Taxpayer, the $100 is filtered through the United States federal government, and $60 is handed to Mr. Unemployed non-taxpayer. The economy has been stimulated by $120, not the intended $200. Mr. Taxpayer lost $100 he would have spent, $40 of it was sucked into the abyss of the federal government never to be seen again, and the remaining $60 was taken out of the economy to start with, so cannot be counted as additional stimulation. We are left with one person still unemployed, one person out $100, and the economy out $40. That is the difference between real math and magic math.
Temporary unemployment benefits are what they are: an expense paid for a reasonable amount of time to those who lost their jobs until they can become employed again. It is not a stimulus program, it does not create jobs, and it has a negative rather than a positive impact on the economy, but is the price we pay as a society. The hijacking of the unemployment program for political expediency by Barack Obama and the liberals, and then lying about how it benefits the economy, destroys what little honor and integrity is created by temporarily helping a fellow citizen in a time of need.
But then again, there is always hope that Obama's magical math may work. If Barack Obama comes charging down Pennsylvania Avenue, mounted upon the back of brilliant white unicorn, with teleprompter in tow upon the back of a magical llama, that quite possibly could be a game changer; and in this fairytale, increasing borrowing will reduce the debt, the more jobs lost, the more the economy is stimulated, and taking every possible penny from the job creators will encourage them to create more jobs.
