HILL: Democrats don’t know what they don’t know about economics

FILE - President Joe Biden signs the Democrats' landmark climate change and health care bill in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Aug. 16, 2022, as from left, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., watch. After decades of failed attempts, Democrats passed legislation that aims to reign in the soaring costs of drugs for some Americans. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Ronald Reagan would charitably say of Democrats: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”  

It is actually much worse. Modern Democrats bring to mind what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to say after the surprise Al Qaeda attacks on 9/11:  

“We don’t know what we don’t know” when it comes to economics, business and taxes. 

With Labor Day approaching, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh submitted an opinion piece extolling the “amazing success” of Biden Administration policies when it comes to employment. 

It is a good time to remember Democrats always say they want to help the little people; the poor; the oppressed and the blue-collar worker. However, their well-intentioned policies more often than not wind up hurting the little people instead of helping them. 

The problem originates with the Democrats’ belief that all wealth is controlled by The Government and then distributed by The Government to people ― which is categorically wrong.  To them, government money is not your taxpayer money but rather Monopoly money to be doled out ― by them, of course ― to whatever cause they deem important, consequences such as inflation be damned. 

Democrats say they don’t believe in “trickle-down economics” ― and yet, they send government checks from Mount Olympus On High in Washington or any state capital down to every person as if they are serfs on a feudal manor.  

Can there be any more of a clear example of Democrats’ conception of “trickle-down economics” than their support of extended payments to people to stay at home and not work after the brunt of the COVID pandemic had passed? How does not working help them in the long-run? 

Democrats now want to cancel student debt for up to 43 million adults, 56% of whom took on debt to go to prestigious graduate schools such as Harvard Law or Yale Medical School. Only 37% of Americans have a four-year college degree, almost all of whom have paid off their own loans up to now by themselves by scrimping and saving over the years. 

Democrats are in the unenviable position of owning the political optics of sending tax money collected from blue-collar workers to relatively well-off lawyers and doctors to pay off debt they voluntarily took on themselves.  

Anyone can do the “Fairness Benefit/Cost Analysis” with those figures. 

Free market advocates believe wealth creation starts with the individual ― and should stay there. A blue-collar worker’s hard-earned dollar should not get carved up and sent to Washington or any state capital in taxes of any form to be redistributed anywhere else.  

Day laborers and contract workers are hit today with the most insidious “tax” of all to pay: exorbitant inflation caused by the policies of Joe Biden and left-wing socialist Democrats. Picture a recent immigrant who came to America to escape war and oppression who drives one hour each way every day to Sanford to process chicken necks in a processing plant for $7.25/hour and make $290/week. Gas prices at $4/gallon takes $60 more per week out of their $290 weekly paycheck than $2 per gallon as it was in 2020 before Biden was elected. 

Again, how fair is that to the new immigrant to achieve the grandiose climate agenda of Biden and the Democrats? 

We have had the last two successive quarters of negative economic growth under Biden with more bad news sure to come. President Obama was the only president since 1949 who never presided over a single year in which GDP exceeded 3% annual real growth. Average real GDP growth from 2009-2017 was a measly 2.1%. 

President Biden sure learned how to put a wet blanket on economic growth and activity from his boss. Most reputable economic forecasts estimate GDP growth under Biden will not exceed 1.7% for 2022 and be a miniscule 0.5% in 2023 ― and will not exceed 1.6% in any year if he somehow remains president until 2029. 

Jimmy Carter has now lived long enough to see a president capable of meeting or perhaps exceeding his dismal economic record of the late 1970s.  

Some political parties never learn what they don’t know.