Ignoring the Best Solution

Carol Platt Liebau | December 06, 2008 3:16 PM

Barack Obama is pleging a massive public works program, as part of what's being called America's "economic recovery." No doubt liberals are feeling warm and tingly, remembering the CCC, the NRA and the rest of the New Deal "alphabet soup."

The problem, of course, is that the course being offered isn't actually going to solve the problem it purports to address. As I traveled over the last few days, I had the opportunity to read Michael Medved's "The 10 Big Lies About America" (I commend to everyone for its readability, clarity and utter persuasiveness). On page 143 of the book, Medved points out:

In 1931, in some of the darkest days of the Great Depression and the middle of the Hoover administration, the national unemployment rate stood at 17.4 percent. Seven years later, after more than five years of FDR and literally hundreds of wildly ambitious new government programs, after more than a doubling of federal spending, the national unemployment rate stood at -- 17.4%!

If America wants to spend money on public works at this point, well, that's a choice. But it shouldn't fool itself into thinking that it's going to bring about an "economic recovery." Cut capital gains rates instead.