The American Spectator : Obama's Anti-Business Prejudice

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The Obama Watch

Obama's Anti-Business Prejudice

He promises students the money for their college loans grows on trees.

Whatever happened to the Constitutional concept of equal protection under the law?

Whatever happened to the recognition that it's overwhelmingly the nation's private sector that delivers the jobs, goods and services, and our overall well-being? Or as Calvin Coolidge succinctly put it, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business."

With his proposed change in forgiveness rules on student loans, President Obama, revealing his pro-statist biases and anti-business prejudices, is calling for the establishment of clearly unequal treatment.

"Let's tell another 1 million students that when they graduate," said Obama in his recent State of the Union address, "they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years, and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service."

Why the bias against business majors, against entrepreneurial students who choose to go into the private sector and create jobs?

"Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010," said Obama in the same speech, and "the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America's businesses."

So why is he calling for students who go into the job-creating private sector to pay back their loans for 20 years while students who end up on government payrolls get to shift the cost of their unpaid college loans onto the backs of the nation's taxpayers after 10 years?

Given the exploding federal deficits, why encourage students to get a government job where they'll be consuming more taxes than they pay? Why the corresponding disincentive for students to join the sector that's "the true engine of job creation," the sector that cuts the federal deficits by taking people off the tax-eating dependency rolls and turning them into taxpayers?

This proposed special payback break for government workers is surely not based on the notion that public sector workers are less secure in their employment, or work harder, or are paid less than their counterparts in the private sector.

"Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time -- in pay and hiring -- during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector," reported Dennis Cauchon recently in USA Today. "The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA Today analysis of federal salary data. The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector."

The double standard in this proposed loan forgiveness policy reveals the same anti-business, pro-government prejudices that both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama openly displayed during the presidential campaign.

"We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do," Mrs. Obama told a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio. "Don't go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we're encouraging young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond."

By "respond," Mrs. Obama was complaining about lower pays in the public sector, contrary to the facts. Note, too, that she defined the heavily unionized government workforce as the opposite of "money-making," while describing the private sector as not "helping."

Who does she think is "helping" to get those good steaks to the White House? Government cowboys?

Barack Obama displayed the same anti-business prejudice in his commencement speech at Wesleyan University in May 2008, advocating public service and telling students that they should not "take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy."

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topics:
Student Loans, Private Sector

About the Author

Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (32) | Leave a comment

coal carrier| 2.16.10 @ 6:55AM

The Socialist Psalm

The Government is my Shepherd, I need not work.

It alloweth me to lie down on good jobs.

It leadeth me beside still Factories.

It destroyeth my initiative.

It leadeth me in the paths of the parasite for politics sake.

Yea’ tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of laziness and deficit spending, I will fear no evil, for the Government is with me.

It’s dole and vote getters, they comport me.

It prepareth an economic Utopia for me, by appropriating the earnings of my grandchildren.

It filleth my head with Baloney, my inefficiency runneth over.

Surely the Government shall care for me, all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in a fools paradise forever.

Pete| 2.16.10 @ 10:24AM

solid work, coal carrier.

sangredulce| 2.16.10 @ 11:23AM

Awesome

Yosemeti Sam| 2.16.10 @ 8:34AM

" ... Barack Obama displayed the same anti-business prejudice in his commencement speech at Wesleyan University in May 2008, advocating public service and telling students that they should not "take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy."...."

BHO message - don't do like me, ya all - dont' put your signature to books by ghost writers and reap millions.

Nice suits?

Why, my threads - came naturally.

LOL.

Oldefarte| 2.16.10 @ 11:43AM

He's a SOCIALIST-LAWYER by trade, so why shouldn't he be 'anti-business' ???????

jody| 2.16.10 @ 1:51PM

http://bagsthatspeak.com/2010/.....lost-jobs/

Clifton L. West| 2.16.10 @ 3:01PM

Where was Obama in 1965, when I applied for a position in the Social Security Administration, took the examination, made the highest score on the West Coast and was finally told I was over qualified, since I was a college graduate, had completed five years of graduate work and had been working since I was twelve, gaining a union journeyman carpenter's card at the age of eighteen? The Seattle head of Social Security told me he had been forced by Congress to hire seven minorities, none of whom had even finished high school. The government would have to educate them before they could even go to work!
They didn't have to spend one thin dime on my education, I already had it!

Bill,from WV| 2.16.10 @ 5:32PM

If Obama uses his executive powers to sign Cap and Trade into law, you can kiss most small businesses good-bye!
Those who don't go out right away, will stay long enough to see their customer base evaporate under increased costs passed onto them!
You have to love a President, hell bent on destroying the American economy!

Kelly| 2.23.10 @ 6:52PM

This is so true and I am so glad to see someone finally had the ba**s to say it.

Floyd Krautner| 3.22.10 @ 10:48AM

Considering that every GOP administration since Hoover has caused a business downturn, it is hard to understand why a business would favor the Republicans.

The people who benefit from GOP policies are speculators who can grab the money and run, not businesses who must show profits year in and year out to stay in business.

Under Bush my business went from OK to not OK while the bankers etc were ripping off the public for billions. Things have picked up a notch since Obama was elected so I'll stick with the Demos.

obama cheating scandal| 5.1.10 @ 3:11AM

We're trying to stay on top of this breaking news. So many websites and blogs are also reporting this. This is going to blow up big time. Only time will tell where this all goes.

Bill| 9.2.10 @ 11:05PM

Can't wait for 2012

Long Island Pest Control| 10.26.10 @ 1:22AM

I am still waiting for this "hope" and "change." Here on Long Island, businesses is tougher than ever. I am still waiting to see what Obama is going to do for us. 2 years and waiting...

Wency| 10.30.10 @ 10:10PM

Obama may or may not be able to do something for the business but certainly encouraging people work for government tells me that there is a need for a better workforce in government. Hey may imply that the present government needs new monds to be more productive and more efficient.
Business can do their own management in their own company. Government should do their part in taking the best move for the government.

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