Back in 2009, I got very excited when President Obama stated, “No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top.”
Did that mean he wanted to reduce America’s punitive and anti-competitive corporate tax burden? Or maybe even fix the entire tax code and install a simple and fair flat tax?
Unfortunately, it turns out the President was speaking to the Parliament of Ghana and apparently his recommendation for good policy didn’t apply inside the United States.
With this in mind, I’m not sure whether I should get too excited about his remarks yesterday that it is better to “let the market work on its own.”
Here are a few reasons why I am less than enthusiastic about this remarkable statement.
The President was not talking about solving the problem of government-caused third-party payer in health care.
Nor was he urging the elimination of the culture of bailouts and cronyism in the financial services sector.
"Free market for thee, not for me"
And he obviously wasn’t saying it was time to end the government’s failed school monopoly.
Instead, when he said that we should “let the market work on its own,” he was referring to the very narrow issue of China’s production and distribution of certain minerals.
In other words, if presidential statements came with asterisks, the fine print at the bottom of the page would read “offer good in China only.”
However, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step. So if he thinks it’s a good idea to reduce government intervention in China, maybe someday he will apply the same wisdom to the American economy.
