Jim Powell, Contributor

I cover economic and political history.

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Op/Ed

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2/29/2012 @ 1:14PM |11,109 views

Barack Obama: The Anti Economic Growth President 

For several hundred years, a consensus developed in Western nations that economic growth – human progress – is a good thing. But now economic growth is under attack.
Economic growth has meant more jobs, higher incomes, more wealth and all the good things that become possible — a more comfortable life, better nutrition, better health care, more education, a cleaner environment, a secure retirement, a higher life expectancy and confidence that our children will be living even better.


In addition, when there is sustained progress, people gain greater peace of mind. They tend to become optimistic, more generous and tolerant. There’s more political stability, and democracies are more likely to flourish when, as John F. Kennedy famously remarked, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
Yet President Obama has backed one anti-growth policy after another. His relentless class warfare rhetoric suggests he thinks growth is bad because some people have a lot more money than others. He might deny that he’s anti‑growth, but his actions speak louder than words.
During 2008 election campaign, he acknowledged that he favored capital gains tax hikes, even though the results would be less investment, less job creation and less capital gains tax revenue.
He had to have known that by draining hundreds of billions of dollars away from the private sector, then channeling the bulk of the money to government bureaucracies and government employee unions, his stimulus bill would mainly “save or create” government jobs, not private sector jobs.
He had to have known that the following policies would increase cost of operating a business, making it harder to create private sector growth and jobs:
* Obamacare taxes and regulations
* The card check bill to promote compulsory unionism, if it had passed
* The cap & trade bill to increase energy costs, if it had passed
* Regulatory actions to implement provisions of card check and cap & trade, after those bills failed to make it through Congress
* The dramatically reduced number of oil & gas drilling permits issued

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