Obama is fond of saying that national economic wellness is the result of a thriving middle class. He points to consumer consumption as the driver.
A healthy middle class is a symptom of a healthy economy, not its driver. Its driver is a healthy environment for private business: small or large, mature or start-up. Young entrepreneurs wish to introduce new products or services, and work long into the night to achieve their goals. They likely are ruthless as they pursue their dreams.
Corporate managers of established companies' desire is to create or maintain a company that satisfies customers and stockholders. It prices its products or services at what the market will bear, and makes a profit. In so doing, they create jobs, and in the last 150 years, those jobs have created a middle class.
But we are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The wellspring of our great good fortune, lately so anemic, is the success of private enterprise.
We regulate, we create obstacles, we tax, we vilify, we demonize business heroes. And, unwittingly, we seal our own fate, without understanding why.
I read in a recent unemployment report that 500,000 private sector jobs were lost recently, whereas public sector employment grew by the same amount - 500,000 new workers. Government hiring has mushroomed during the last few few years.
But Obama insists that the private sector is fine. It's not. It's troubled, and we won't find a way out of this miasma until we recognize that private enterprise is the driver of prosperity for all who choose to earn a living.
