“The private sector is doing fine,” says President Obama.
Well hallelujah, that’s the news we have all been waiting to hear!
No doubt many Americans had thought this day might never come, not with unemployment rising to 8.2% in May and 23 million Americans still out of work or underemployed. But hey, numbers don’t tell the whole story, and if the President says things are going fine, then who are we to doubt him?
True, GDP growth was a sluggish 1.9% in the first quarter. And granted, new business startups are at 30-year lows with 100,000 fewer new enterprises created under President Obama each year than under President Bush. Yes, we could look at Hispanic unemployment that’s risen to 11% under the President’s watch.
Clearly, the President knows his Twain well. All these dire numbers spouted by economists must be nothing more than “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Of course, there might be another interpretation. The President could honestly believe that if the government were just much bigger, if spending were just much higher, and if the private sector—the one that’s doing just fine but not creating an economic recovery—would just give way to the public sector with its unions and its taxpayer dollars, then America, too, would be “doing fine.”
Now isn’t that a scary thought?
