There is a disturbing trend developing in this minor recession, one that will threaten capitalism and likely shape our generation’s future.
With this new administration of change, there is an alarming sense of entitlement developing among the masses, a ‘we deserve this’ attitude.
It’s alarming an executive administration can disguise a policy when its core is simply an era of dependence and have it be so amazingly effective even as the next generation is saddled with massive debt for the next few decades.
This administration wants you to have your hand out, it wants you to depend on it as your savior and look to it to make your life easier.
What is it about President Obama that makes his altruism seem so genuine to the masses? He is, after all, a politician, and that in itself should make anyone wary of the all too often too-good-to-be-true promises regularly crawling out of politicians’ mouths.
The deficit is at a few trillion dollars with this ‘stimulus package,’ the largest deficit in history. Nice one.
To give you an idea of how large this is, you could not spend a trillion dollars in your lifetime, even if you tried. A trillion is a thousand billion, a billion is a thousand million, so a trillion is a million million.
Short of buying most a few countries, there would be quite a bit of money left over. However, this is not a piece to badger Obama over because the bailout of the financial sector had to be done.
The auto industry on the other hand should have been left to crash and fix itself by default. We all drive foreign cars anyway.
Think back to last September when, in one of his many campaign speeches, he promised no more pork barrel spending, ‘earmark reform’ as it’s known, yet as of now there are a little over 9,000 earmarks in the stimulus plan. Do you really care, and/or want to pay for a new convention center in Myrtle Beach South Carolina?
Undoubtedly, cronyism is at work. Now imagine 9,000 earmarks having nothing to do with you, as most are more absurd and cost much more than a mere convention center.
‘We the people’ will be paying for all of them.
Punishment for success in the form of mammoth tax increases are yet another faux pas by our sitting president.
Successful people did not become successful by being stupid. With these tax increases on the wealthy, money will be shoved into tax-free investments and will sit there until our increasingly socialist president leaves office. Exactly what the market does not need.
Like any good politician, President Obama is an opportunist. He has an unpopular war he can end and an economy in a cyclical downturn; he would have to try pretty hard to mess this one up.
In the meantime, let us all enjoy a good recession; they only come around every so often.
Daniel Wheeler is a finance sophomore and may be reached at [email protected].
