Obamanomics

A recent article in the New York Times fully and completely details, through a series of conversations on a plane, where Barack Obama stands on the economy. I was surprised to find out from the article that his 12 years spent as lecturer at the University of Chicago had quite an impact on him, economically speaking. As many of you may already know, the University of Chicago was the home of Milton Friedman, free market guru and one of the most influential economists of our time. Here is what he had to say about his time there.

During my formative years, there was still ideological competition between a social-democratic or even socialist agenda and a free-market, Milton Friedman agenda. I think it was natural for me to ask questions of both sides and maybe try to synthesize approaches.

Asking questions is something I always look for in a candidate. Someone who makes up his or her mind and sticks with it forever and ever...not so much. Are they being reflective enough to consider all the angles? Here's the first quote from him, though, that really jumped out at me.

Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing that pie — contained a good deal of truth.

I agree. And that's why it drives me nuts when people try to say he will create a nanny state. It's complete bullshit and the people that are saying it can't stand the fact, as they did with President Clinton, that a liberal quite possibly could adhere to some of their ideology. Or (gasp!) succeed with it. It simply isn't done! How dare he!

Some more interesting observations from David Leonhardt

Compared with many other Democrats, Obama simply is more comfortable with the apparent successes of laissez-faire economics.

He also says he believes that there are significant parts of Reaganism worth preserving. So his policies often involve setting up a government program to address a market failure but then trying to harness the power of the market within that program. This, at times, makes him look like a conservative Democrat.

By surrounding himself with economists, however, Obama was also making a decision with ideological consequences. Far more than many other policy advisers, economists believe in the power of markets.

What tends to distinguish Democratic economists is that they set out to uncover imperfections of the market and then come up with incremental, market-based solutions to these imperfections. This helps explain the Obama campaign’s interest in behavioral economics, a relatively new field that has pointed out many ways in which people make irrational, short-term decisions. To deal with one example of such myopia, Obama would require companies to automatically set aside a portion of their workers’ salary in a 401(k) plan. Any worker could override the decision — and save nothing at all or save even more — but the default would be to save.

Hmm..the socialist argument is really starting to look sub moronic now. But the best line comes from the man himself.

The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production. And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally. But there are certain things the market doesn’t automatically do.

There it is again. Balance. Level headiness. Connection between free markets and...freedom? Oh no...that sound you just heard is every single person on Kevin Baker's blog (and some here) recovering the pieces of their exploded head. Say it ain't so...Barack Obama is a...good capitalist.

So, when you here some folks on the right say Obama is a socialist, please kindly point this article out to them and tell them to peddle their idiocy elsewhere. Of course, they might not read it because they have brainwashed into believing that the New York Times is a traitorous newspaper but hey....you can at least try.