When discussing Mr. Obama with a friend I found myself summarizing his Progressive agenda in what I now realize is the essential reality, “He diminishes us all.”
Private individuals and businesses are now making investment decisions based on the reality of government control of education, banking, health care, power generation, energy, and transportation. You can argue about the relative extent of control by industry but the reality is that investors require a risk premium based on the regulatory and tax regime that burdens each industry, and these risk premiums continue to rise given political and policy reality. The important conclusion is that we should all now expect lower growth, lower economic returns for risk taking, and bigger government for the long term. All of this means less value in both an economic and social sense.
Today’s “agreement” on the “fiscal farce” simply confirms that we are now permanently burdened with a political class, regardless of party, that is lost in centralized power and self-aggrandizement at the expense of individual liberty, economic freedom, opportunity, and prosperity.
Mr. Obama has achieved his life’s ambition of diminishing us all and we will shortly get an answer to the question, as I believe Peggy Lee sang, “Is that all there is?” I’m betting the answer is, “yes.”
Regards, Pete Weldon
americanstance.org