{"id":1992,"date":"2009-12-02T08:57:41","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T12:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=1992"},"modified":"2009-12-02T08:57:41","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T12:57:41","slug":"defining-obamanomics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/12\/02\/defining-obamanomics\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Obamanomics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timothy P. Carney<\/a> gathers up the tea leaves and provides a useful definition of Obama’s economic philosophy, Obamanomics:<\/p>\n

\n

Although robust corporate-government collusion was hardly invented by the current administration, the U.S. has not seen such a consistent practitioner of corporatism in more than half a century. It’s fitting then to name this Big Business-Big Government practice Obamanomics.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake — President Bush’s Wall Street bailout was probably America’s biggest dose of corporate socialism since World War II. But President Obama has seen Bush’s $700 billion and raised him another couple trillion — and counting.<\/p>\n

The Laws of Obamanomics<\/p>\n

Underlying Obamanomics are some basic economic facts and political realities. These are the Four Laws of Obamanomics, paired below with some of the lobbying strategies that exploit these laws.<\/p>\n

1) During a legislative debate, whichever business has the best lobbyists is most likely to win the most favorable small print. Similarly, once a bill has passed, the business with the best lawyers and lobbyists will best be able to craft the regulations and learn how to game them. A big business, counting on this fact while lobbying for more government spending or control, is employing The Inside Game<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2) Regulation adds to overhead, and higher overhead crowds out smaller competitors and prevents startups from entering the industry. When corporations, knowing this, lobby for more regulation of their industry, I call this the Overhead Smash<\/em>.<\/p>\n

3) Bigger companies are often saddled by inertia, meaning robust competition is a threat. Adopting regulations that stultify the economy is the equivalent of raising the basketball hoop to twenty feet at half-time: it protects the lead of whichever team is ahead. When Big Business seeks to stultify the economy to hold back smaller competitors, I call it Gumming the Works<\/em>.<\/p>\n

4) Government regulation grants an air of legitimacy to businesses, boosting consumer confidence, often beyond what is warranted. This is The Confidence Game<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Bush administration was one of the least libertarian in US history, but Barack Obama’s track record so far almost makes me nostalgic for Bush. Almost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Timothy P. Carney gathers up the tea leaves and provides a useful definition of Obama’s economic philosophy, Obamanomics: Although robust corporate-government collusion was hardly invented by the current administration, the U.S. has not seen such a consistent practitioner of corporatism in more than half a century. It’s fitting then to name this Big Business-Big Government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,10,53,13],"tags":[158,409,410],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-corporations","tag-mercantilism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-w8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}