…and without understanding. From an article at American Thinker, "The Party of Know-Nothings":
"From Geithner to Jarrett, all of Obama’s advisors have one thing in common: they have devoted their lives to the expansion of government. They believe — quite ‘passionately,’ as Axelrod has put it — that government is the solution to America’s problems….
"Most ordinary human beings know a great deal more than Obama’s circle of advisors. They understand that it is the private sector, not government, that produces goods and services. Instinctively, they know there’s something wrong with the idea that government ‘creates’ jobs….
"They also know that government revenue comes out of somebody’s pocket. Only those who have spent their entire lives in government service or in academe don’t understand this. The trillion dollars in stimulus of which Obama is so proud — he still claims it created or saved millions of jobs even as the Labor Department reports that four million jobs disappeared since the stimulus was signed — was confiscated from the paychecks of working Americans. It was spent to expand welfare payments to those who do not work, to preserve the jobs of inefficient unionized workers, and to fund favored projects of Democratic political contributors….
"Americans who have to work for a living understand that Obama’s stimulus spending is political payola on an epic scale….They also understand that it is capitalism that produces wealth and that the profit motive is the key to wealth creation….
"In only twenty months, Obama has succeeded in shifting one hundred million Americans into greater dependency on government. One hundred million Americans now receive unemployment benefits, expanded welfare payments and child credits, food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, and (soon enough) ObamaCare. In essence, they are the recipients of rationed goods within a state-run economy. Over time, they will become less well-off as wealth continues to be sapped from the private sector and the production of goods is curtailed. They will be serving life sentences in the prison of socialism….
"For the political elite, of course, no such prison exists. Once it becomes apparent that the economy is not coming back, those who have engineered the miracle of Obamanomics — long-term unemployment rates of 17%, stagnant growth, and crushing deficits — will obtain new political appointments, move on to lucrative consulting jobs, or simply return to their tenured university positions. Comfortable and well-fed, they will continue to prosper even as they have learned nothing from the failure of their policies."
