As I watch the second presidential debate I continue to be reassured about what I will do with my own vote; which will be for Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson. However, my piece will focus on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. After the first 10 minutes the debate tone was already set, with a healthy mixture of pandering and condescending remarks. These two champions of big government duke it out as Americans begrudgingly decide whom they will choose as their next leader.
Barack Obama
“Jeremy, first of all, your future is bright.”
That sentence was a response to a question by a college student and first-time voter; he asked, “What can you say to reassure me that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?” Reports on the plight of new graduates are consistently filtering out, and those reports almost unanimously disagree with the president. Student debt is continuing to rise and there does not seem to be enough dramatic job growth to give recent grads any semblance of optimism. Obama tried to explain his plan for American job growth.
President Obama then said he wants to create manufacturing jobs in the United States. I don’t believe a lot of students go to universities to pursue a career in low-skilled manufacturing, but I’ll play ball.
The obvious retort is to say that the role of government is not to create jobs; it is to create an environment for others to create jobs. With that being said, a major reason why there are less manufacturing jobs in America is due to high corporate taxes, something president Obama has no intentions of truly decreasing. Despite his rhetoric, corporate taxes in America are 35 percent for a majority of successful companies. Companies who want to continue to grow and produce more products thus seek out countries with lower corporate tax rates such as Switzerland (which is at 15 percent), and India, among other places.
Companies do this so they can hire more workers. If you hire more workers your production will likely grow, which is followed by lowering prices for consumers and thus higher profits for the company. So if President Obama was really interested in having companies invest in America he would lower corporate tax rates. Even with wages being higher in America than in other countries, some corporations would gladly come back to America if the corporate tax rate were somewhere around 10 percent. Bringing jobs back to America would provide more educated and skilled workers, as well as amazing PR for the company. I’m not saying that all major corporations will stop exploitive overseas practices, but lowering corporate taxes would be the greatest incentive for corporate insourcing jobs back to America.
Obama said that Mitt Romney’s five point plan is really a one point plan, and that is to help the people at the top, disregard those at the bottom, which may be true. However, the hypocrisy is stunning considering how Obama talked about his vision of government, one that helps out struggling American companies and saving jobs, which sounded good until he championed his bailout of American auto manufacturing businesses such as GM and Chrysler. Government picking winners and losers like this creates a dangerous environment for big businesses. That environment is that they do not have to play by the rules; they are too big to fail. Even if the bailouts saved a lot of jobs in Detroit in the short term, it is still philosophically repugnant to a free market capitalist system or to a capitalist system in general. If your business makes a less than superior product, takes out bad loans, manages itself poorly and or takes too many risks, you should fold just like any other business, regardless of your size or your influence. If consumers wanted to buy your products they would, and if they don’t then you must change in order for them to do so. The bailouts propped up an insufficient and poorly managed business because of its size and influence, just like what happened to the banks which caused tea party rallies and Occupy Wall Street rallies alike.
Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney, too, was, and has been, in favor of the bailouts in the past and now, though his rhetoric may change from time to time, he is overall okay with the concept of bailing out major corporations and big banks alike. Besides that, however, Obama pointed out the fallacy which is his fiscal plan.
He talks about lowering taxes or keeping them stagnant for middle class Americans and wealthy Americans alike. However, Mitt Romney would like to increase the military budget by several trillion dollars, all the while reducing taxes on everybody.
The reason this is a fallacy is simply because the government really has no money of its own. This may be the biggest misconception throughout the entirety of politics. The government has no money. The only money government has is what it takes from you as taxpayers or what it prints. And if the government prints too much money, the result could cause the loss of value of the money that is in your pocket, which in return is a tax. Romney suffers from the Santa Claus syndrome, which I mentioned in my last piece.
Romney talks about lowering taxes but he does not really discuss in detail the idea that we should have a smaller government; he really just wants his version of big government. In Massachusetts, he implemented a form of Obamacare, which some call Romneycare, and did not have a particularly sterling record of job growth. He wants more overseas activity; he wants to invest in gasoline, coal, green energy, and so on. Romney never really offers succinct steps in how he will balance the federal budget, or how he will reduce the government footprint in our lives. He is too vague to take seriously. He tinkers with the tax code while not truly simplifying or shrinking it.
Libya
President Obama is different than Candidate Obama, and people eventually have to realize that. The response of his cabinet about the attacks on the American Embassy in Libya was essentially that the attacks where brought on by a Youtube video that was deemed offensive to a certain religious prophet, and not that it was an organized terrorist attack against the U.S., possibly as a response to blowback towards our military intervention in their country. About two weeks later, the administration changed its tune. With drone strikes to numerous countries and U.N. approved military entanglements, President Obama is closer to George W. Bush in terms of foreign policy than Candidate Obama, and Romney is really no different, and probably worse. If you are a voter who is looking for a president that wants less war and less Middle Eastern entanglements, then you do not have a voice in this election.
So, in short, despite Romney’s ‘binder of women’ comment that riled up the internet, there is not much substance in this debate that will invoke real change in any form of American policy; just half-truths, distortions and distractions.
