So, Who Is the Free Market Candidate?

Who among the various candidates, Democratic or Republican, truly believes that economic scarcity is best solved by free markets? Indeed!

It is not clear that any of the candidates now running for the Republican nomination, other than Ron Paul, have any real faith in free market solutions to the problems of economic scarcity. No one is really proposing returning to free market principles. The battle ground seems much narrower -- personal and business tax rates, minor amendations to Obamacare, support for the Keystone project -- but not much else really.

The most likely outcome is a Romney candidacy. As much as that will be presented as the free market alternative to President Obama, in truth there is not much daylight between Romney and Obama. Neither seem to understand the fundamental economic malaise of modern America, nor to understand the root cause. One way you can tell that neither "get it" is the constant China-bashing that comes from the White House and the campaign trail.

Anybody that thinks China is at the heart of our economic stagnation believes in a fantasy. China is not the culprit. China is doing the right thing for its people by creating the largest expansion in free markets in the history of the world. The result -- economic prosperity for hundreds of millions of people who lived in subjection and poverty a mere generation ago.

What has the West accomplished in the last couple of generations? Growth of government mainly and a declining status of the middle class whose savings rate has collapsed to zero in the US and whose work ethic has slipped into the mud. Absent a savings rate and a work ethic, no amount of government waste will pull the US out of its malaise.

So, who speaks up for free markets. Sadly, no one except Ron Paul and he's not on a path to the White House, given his isolationist outlook on foreign policy.

Obama Is Right on Tuition Levels

In his State of the Union address last week, the President put forth an idea that is a long time in coming. Federal government aid should be curtailed to schools whose tuition is going through the roof and redirected toward schools who are running a tight ship. Amen.

In the past, the answer to the surging costs of higher education was to throw more money at higher education through more federal dollars and increasing loan availability to students. All this did was feed the beast and have universities searching for ways to toss money down ratholes. Meanwhile, millions of our college graduates are now saddled with debts that they have no hope of ever coming out from under. All of this to fatten the ever bloated monstrosity that is known as higher education.

Higher education is one of the few areas of American life, where there has been no serious change in technology implementation. Most schools still run their classroom in the same old way -- blackboard, chalk and someone droning on in the front of a mostly empty classroom. While there is technology available in abundance, it lies mostly unused at the modern American university. Facebook gets more action from University students than any websites that provide serious educational offerings.

Obama is on the right track on this one. Higher education costs are completely out of control. The priorities in the modern American university are less about educating students and improving skills and more about advancing the narrow political agenda of university faculty and administrations. The losers are taxpayers and students.

Three cheers for the President.

The New Normal in the Obama Economy

Peter Whoriskey's article in today's Washington Post gives a brief summary of the "Obama Recovery" and it's not pretty. The slowest economic recovery in post World War II history has left the economy, even at this late date, with 6 million fewer jobs than it had before Obama took office. This after the most incredible expansion in federal spending and the national debt in American history. Quite a record!

The article shows who are the winners and who are the losers. The winners are businesses, who no longer intend to carry the albatross of the American worker. Loaded up with government mandates, rights, privileges, benefits, and lawyers, the American worker is a luxury that American businesses are determined to wean themselves away from.

"Businesses are swiftly investing in equipment and software. Those investments were up 5 percent in the last quarter of 2011 and 16 percent the quarter before that...."

As for the middle class that Obama claims to be defending: " disposable personal income is slightly lower, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a year earlier."

That's the report card for big government. The rich and powerful do fine in the Obama economy. But, everyone else is in big trouble.

The Obama Plan to Lower Tax Revenues

The so-called "Buffett-Rule," which would impose a minimum tax on incomes above $ 1 million, would guarantee lower tax revenues for the US Treasury. Folks with high income would simply choose to lower their taxable income. That is a fairly simple thing to do and always happens when you raise tax rates on wealthy citizens. Short of confiscating folk's wealth, something Obama may get around to eventually, raising tax rates just encourages tax lawyers and leverage (the wealthy borrow more to live and let their assets grow unrealized...that solves the problem of lowering your taxable income without affecting your lifestyle).

Meanwhile, as tax revenues collapse, the Obama folks will find a way to tack on a tax increase for the middle class to offset the revenue loss from rich folks. This is always the route that tax rate increase advocates end up taking. The result: the middle class gets soaked with more taxation, while the no-nothings revel in the irrelevant higher rate structure that wealthy folks face, but do not pay. This is the kind of absurdity that Obama's class warfare will lead to. No wonderrich people support higher tax rates. Buffett knows he will pay less under Obama's soak-the-rich tax than he does now, so why worry? (Once the new rates are passed, Buffett will lob a call into his high priced tax attorney and get the advice he needs to pay less taxes under the Obama plan than he pays now. Don't think he won't make that call. He will).

Meanwhile, higher marginal rates will mean that money that would have flowed into the capital markets to create new businesses and new jobs will lie dormant in frozen assets. High levels of unemployment, economic stagnation and increasing misery for the poor, minorities and old folks will be the Obama legacy. This is what happens when economic policy is an outgrowth of coffee-house conversations at Harvard by people who have never held a real job.

More Politics from Obama

The state of the union speech revealed a complete lack of interest in the absence of growth in the US economy on the part of the President. This means that lower income folks can expect their misery to continue as long as this President remains in office.

Instead the President launched a variety of attacks against his coffee-house enemies -- "the rich." As Buffett knows, apparently better than Obama, the tax rate is completely irrelevant to the truly wealthy. The truly wealthy can arrange things so that they have zero income for tax purposes, so who cares whether the tax rate is 30 percent or 100 percent. 30 percent of zero is zero. That's math that the President and his crew don't seem to understand.

But, it all sounds good I guess, to the uninformed. There is no question that this is class warfare and shows a President of the United States several shades to the left of the most socialist leaders in Europe. Whether Obama gets his way on all of this economic nonsense is yet to be seen.

The rich have nothing to fear from this President and they know it. That's why most of the truly wealthy support Obama now and will continue to support him throughout his political career. Those with modest incomes and those among the youth, the aged and the minorities, whose futures are blighted by the economic mess that the Administration has created, have little to look forward to.

America's economic stagnation will continue and it's dwindling world economic stature will continue with the kind of policies advocated by President Obama. Only free markets and capitalism can provide a rebirth to the American economy. Overbearing government will simply lead to more and more economic decline for what once was the most vibrant economy in the world.

Podesta Needs a Reality Check

The op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal co-authored by John Podesta, life long Democratic Party strategist, suggests that the "clean energy" industry is soon to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. That is so absurd as to be laughable.

One supposes that this article was trotted out to defend the indefensible -- the Obama decision not to give the go-ahead to the Keystone pipeline project that would have permitted the US to tap Canada as an oil source instead of Syria.

There is no "clean energy" industry out there, either in the US or China, that has any potential to reduce America's or anyone else' dependence on fossil fuels. To pretend that there is, is irresponsible.

Whatever there may or may not be to a "clean energy" industry is far into the distant future and will only come into existence when the free market wills it so. Governments will just continue to waste taxpayer money. Does anyone really think wasting money on the Solyndras of the world will be a substitute for entrepreneurship and the free market?

Podesta should be ashamed of this article.

Republicans In the Mud

It is hard to see either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich emerging with much of a claim to lead a major political party campaign after the absurd performance in Tampa tonight. Instead of discussing the economy and the important campaign issues, the main spotlight was on who was the biggest devil in the room. The President must have enjoyed this debate.