•Government is to the economy what a tick is to a dog. Money paid in taxes is lost forever to the national economy.

•Government jobs are not real jobs. Wages paid to government employees are not real wages. When government employees use their wages to buy stuff, it doesn't count as a stimulus for business to make more stuff. Only stuff bought with wages from a private sector job can do that.

•Free markets are forces of nature that self-regulate and grow the economy as long as they aren't regulated.

•Private enterprise does everything more efficiently than government bureaucracies.

•Tax cuts to the rich are sacred.

•Budget deficits caused by tax cuts don't count. Budget deficits caused by wars don't count most of the time. However, domestic spending by government causes a different kind of deficit that does count.

Barbara O'Brien (aka Maha) (12-Jul-10) at her blog, The Mahablog


UPDATE, Thursday, August 12, 2010: Do you doubt O'Brien's characterization of right-wing economic biases? Doubt no more. Today's Coloradoan published a letter to the editor that so thoroughly embodies the shibboleths of right-wing economics – which O'Brien summarized – that you might think O'Brien herself wrote the letter, but she did not (Ralph Asher [12-Aug-10], Coloradoan, page A6 [Opinion page]; reproduced below with the highlighting mine).

The letter bears the stylistic economy that I've noted before in right-wing missives to the Coloradoan, but that's beside the point. The letter only makes sense when filtered through the SPF 90 screen of Republican partisanship, and not in terms of recent policy or history.

Wouldn't it help the country more – and dare I say be more patriotic? – if our passionate right-wingers spent less time writing overheated letters to the editor and, instead, directed their beady eyes towards the private sector and asked why it didn't do more to create good-paying jobs for the 18% of Americans who are unemployed or under-employed?

Unemployment Truth Would Cause Riots
I would like for the media to report the unemployment in two categories: private sector versus public sector. And then maybe even break the latter down into state/local employees versus federal employees. If this were done, I would suspect there would be blood in the streets as people begin to see what is really going on here.

This is a blatant destruction of the private sector as socialism is forced upon us all. And in January, President Barack Obama will raise taxes on every successful small business left standing, as well as on anyone with the temerity to invest in business who might make a capital-gains profit, by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.

No terrorist could have hurt this country more than we have seen these past two years - which was actually begun in January 2007 when the Pelosi/Reid Congress took over the running of the government. Eighteen months later, the meltdown hit, and it has been downhill ever since.

November is our only hope, and that might be too late.

Ralph Asher
Fort Collins