Here’s a would-be president on how she would "fix" the economy (which is sort of like fixing an ecosystem):
Wake Technical Community College, Clinton proposed a $2.5 billion annual workforce training program, which would expand help for dislocated workers and new "pre-emptive on-the-job training."
"You shouldn’t have to produce a pink slip to get help training for a higher-paying job," Clinton said.
So a $2.5 billion "training program" is going to revolutionize a many-trillion dollar economy? What, pray, will you train these workers to do? Who will train them? This, of course, is something that can readily be answered by people with the proper incentives to see that labor shortages are met. But community colleges don’t do that good a job at it–it’s enlightened guesswork at most (and, sadly, in slo-mo).
Clinton reiterated several of her core economic proposals in language – harsh on drug and oil companies and heavy on praise for the middle class – that often sounded a lot like native son John Edwards, the populist former senator who quit the Democratic primary race before Super Tuesday and remains uncommitted to either Clinton or Obama.
In this same speech she chides John McCain for his admitted ignorance on economics (which he has demonstrated on more than one occasion). She then proceeds to reveal her own ignorance of economics, but with all the humility of Clinton:
“Presidents have to do more than announce principles," Clinton policy director Neera Tanden said in a statement. "They have to solve problems. At a time of crisis in our financial markets, Senator Obama announced a series of broad, vague principles, while offering no new concrete solutions to provide Americans with greater confidence in the market or keep them in their homes. "
So the sum of Team Clinton’s wisdom on economic matters is to "solve problems" in a $13 trillion ecosystem interconnected with an enormous global economy. The sheer arrogance of someone who thinks they alone can solve an economic problem – much less bring about economic growth by picking on oil, drug and other major players in the economy and giving handouts to people who made poor economic choices… well that’s as meaningful to someone with knowledge of econ as Mrs. Clinton commentary on the NCAA tournament.
Don Boudreaux puts it best in a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
But how scared would you be if such [economic] fears were expressed instead by, say, your veterinarian or your proctologist? Because these specialists in their respective fields have no expertise at diagnosing the economy, you’d have good reason to take their economic concerns with a grain of salt. And so it should be, but doubly so, with Sen. Clinton’s economic pronouncements. Not only has she no expertise in economics, but as her recent sniper-fire whopper reveals, Sen. Clinton’s own specialty – the dark art of politics – requires of its practitioners an unusual propensity to lie and dissemble. Almost all that she and her ilk say should be treated with even less respect than would be accorded a professional circus-clown’s speculations about string theory.
-Max Borders
Here, here.
I would pay good money to see just one reporter ask Sen. Clinton how it is that she alone knows exactly what training will be provided, and why she thinks she knows better than the millions of entrepreneurs and business-owners what skills their employees will need to make their company profitable.
But then again, she thinks profits are bad, even though oil and pharma profits are propped up via government tinkering with the economy that she supports(i.e. restrictions on oil supply, insulating the consumer from the price of prescriptions).
Further, why not ask Clinton how many jobs will be lost when government sucks $2.5 billion from the economy? If she is so omniscient about our entire enormous, dynamic and unpredictable economy, she should be able to provide a specific number – and possibly the names of those losing said jobs. It doesn’t make much sense for government to “train” people for jobs that won’t be there.