10 Anti-Free Market Views of President Obama

{Editor's Note: Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal has written an excellent breakdown of President Obama's speech on the economy today, exposing 10 anti-free market views held by President Obama. He thoroughly debunks each of them. This is a must-read for budding libertarians who are faced with these very same fallacies in their daily conversations. You will have plenty of ammo to combat them with after reading this.- MC}1. "In the period after World War II, a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity. Whether you owned a company, swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargain – a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement, and above all, to hand down a better life for your kids.But over time, that engine began to stall. That bargain began to fray."It wasn't the middle class that was the "engine of our prosperity." The middle class was the beneficiary of the prosperity, which was the result of a generally friendly environment for business operations and capital investment. Without such an environment, productivity would not have skyrocketed, which benefited the middle class.Further, there was no "bargain" with the middle class The post-World War II period was a period of free market operators attempting things on their own, the government just stayed out of their way. The operators needed workers to fulfill their own visions and sought out  workers.In current day America, this free market spirit has been suffocated by regulation after regulation and Obamacare is going to make it even more complex, difficult and expensive for businesses to hire the middle class. 2. "It became harder for unions to fight for the middle class."Unions don't fight for the middle class. They fight for things like minimum wage laws, which make it difficult for youth to get entry level positions from which they can grow into the middle class.3.  "Washington doled out bigger tax cuts to the rich and smaller minimum wage increases for the working poor."Minimum wages increase the number of poor, since the only thing a regulated wage, above free market wages, can do is make it unprofitable for businesses to hire the least skilled.4. "The link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was severed – the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged."The link with productivity wasn't severed, government simply laid down laws that benefited crony capitalists and made productivity gains much more difficult. Where the free market was allowed to grow, productivity gains were spectacular. See flat screen television, smart phones, the Internet and lap top computers.5. "Together, we saved the auto industry."Government intervention to prop up failing businesses is not free market. A free market is a profit and loss system. Not a system where losers are bailed out by forcefully taking tax money from the general public.Read the full article here. Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!