The SOTU: More Of The Same For The Next Four Years

I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to waste my valuable time listening to the president blather on in the State of the Union address.  However, I did get a print-out of the text today in order to compile a list of some of the most uninformed and destructive things to come out of his mouth.  Starting from the beginning:

[Referring to the upcoming "sequester"]: "These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts . . . would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. . . .  Most Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, and Independents -- understand that we can't just cut our way to prosperity."

Well, I think that anyone who knows anything about this subject understands that cutting the government is precisely the way to get to prosperity.  Where does this ignorance come from?  If you follow economic statistics at all, the first thing you have to know is that there is a hugely tight relationship between smaller government and economic success, and that massive cuts in government spending lead promptly to improved economic performance, with the very biggest cuts setting off booms.  Examples:  United States after World War II (60%+ cut in government spending in less than two years set off the post-war boom); Canada (how could Obama not know about our next-door neighbor?) cut Federal spending from 25% of GDP in 1985 to 16% in 2012, leading to greatly improved economic performance, debt declining as a percent of GDP, and recurring budget surpluses; Sweden (!) turned around badly declining economic performance by cutting government spending from 68% of GDP in 1993 to 49% in 2011 -- still too high, but enough of a decline to get the economy growing at least some; Latvia cut its government spending by 16% of GDP after the financial crisis hit in 2009, and promptly saw strong economic growth resume.  I could go on, but you get the point.

"But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. . . .  Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America.  So let's generate even more.  Solar energy gets cheaper by the year -- so let's drive costs down even further."

Whatever you may think about whether fossil fuel usage is heating up the world, there's no getting around the fact that the U.S. can't fix this by putting up some windmills and solar panels while China builds a new coal plant every week.  All that can be accomplished by these initiatives are (1) waste huge amounts of taxpayer money, (2) drive up the cost of energy for U.S. citizens, and (3) make green energy crony capitalists rich.  I guess (3) must be the real point.  What I just can't understand is how Obama doesn't realize that making energy more expensive and wasting taxpayer money are forms of making the people poorer.  How can that be a good thing?

"Through tax credits, grants, and better loans, we have made college more affordable for millions of students and families over the last few years."

Obama still has not figured out that the wide availability of Federally-backed student loans has driven up the cost of college and saddled an entire generation of young people with hopeless amounts of debt that will seriously destroy their lives.  Embarrassing.

Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour."

Well, if that makes sense, why shouldn't "we" just declare that everyone should be rich and raise the minimum wage to $1000 per hour? 

The overall conclusion is that the chief executive of our government doesn't know the basic information that he needs to do his job.  Well, it's just four more years.