The latest report is out on the rate of economic growth during the first quarter of 2014. According to the government's own statistics, the American economy grew at this rate during the first three months of the year:
0.1%
I have to confess that I put the number in bold and in larger type so that I could make it look bigger.
There will undoubtedly be those who tell us that the low growth figure is due to the bad weather during the last winter, and there is some truth to that. In fairness, however, had we just been through a normal winter, that growth rate would still have come in at something like 0.5%, an unacceptable anemic failure of a number (but still five times higher than the actual result.)
The terrible thing about this lack of growth in the American economy is that it is totally preventable. Indeed, most of the slow growth is the result of government policies from team Obama that have worked to slow rather than grow the economy. And there are all sorts of simple steps that president Obama could have taken or asked Congress to take that would have resulted in a major increase in economic growth. For example, Obama could have asked for changes in the tax code that would remove those provisions which encourage companies to invest outside the USA rather than here. Just declaring a one-year reduction in the tax on bringing foreign profits back to America would result in an increase in investment here at home of something like half a trillion dollars while at the same time bringing in increased tax revenues to the government of at least 30 billion dollars. That investment alone would have meant an additional growth in the economy of at least 2%.
But Obama seems not to care about economic growth. He wants to talk about inequality, but his remedy is to make everyone equally poor. There are millions who need jobs, but Obama's remedy is not to have growth create jobs but rather to have the government extend unemployment benefits. The federal budget still has huge deficits, but Obama's solution is to spend more without taking in more. Obama really seems more interested in pushing his ideology rather than helping the American people. It's disgusting and sad.
0.1%
I have to confess that I put the number in bold and in larger type so that I could make it look bigger.
There will undoubtedly be those who tell us that the low growth figure is due to the bad weather during the last winter, and there is some truth to that. In fairness, however, had we just been through a normal winter, that growth rate would still have come in at something like 0.5%, an unacceptable anemic failure of a number (but still five times higher than the actual result.)
The terrible thing about this lack of growth in the American economy is that it is totally preventable. Indeed, most of the slow growth is the result of government policies from team Obama that have worked to slow rather than grow the economy. And there are all sorts of simple steps that president Obama could have taken or asked Congress to take that would have resulted in a major increase in economic growth. For example, Obama could have asked for changes in the tax code that would remove those provisions which encourage companies to invest outside the USA rather than here. Just declaring a one-year reduction in the tax on bringing foreign profits back to America would result in an increase in investment here at home of something like half a trillion dollars while at the same time bringing in increased tax revenues to the government of at least 30 billion dollars. That investment alone would have meant an additional growth in the economy of at least 2%.
But Obama seems not to care about economic growth. He wants to talk about inequality, but his remedy is to make everyone equally poor. There are millions who need jobs, but Obama's remedy is not to have growth create jobs but rather to have the government extend unemployment benefits. The federal budget still has huge deficits, but Obama's solution is to spend more without taking in more. Obama really seems more interested in pushing his ideology rather than helping the American people. It's disgusting and sad.
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