Some Things To Think About (#2)

Hatred of business is killing us.

As Friedrich Hayek put it, socialism’s “fatal conceit” is believing that always-flawed markets can be fixed by bright people with good intentions. Not so. People who understand business create jobs, while those who act on the “fatal conceit” treat business at the enemy, and destroy jobs as a result.

George Will, in the Washington Post, uses the Carl’s Jr. story to point out how business helps the people progressives profess to favor, and how progressives respond by killing jobs. Of Carl’s Jr. managers, 84% are minority and 67% are women. And in business-friendly Texas, Carl’s Jr. will open 300 outlets over the next decade, versus nearly 0 in California, dominated by progressive, anti-business laws.

Will ends with a quote from Barack Obama’s autobiography. In it, the president tells us that during his very brief sojourn in the private sector, he felt like “a spy behind enemy lines.”

After listening to a recent Obama “screed” against entrepreneurial success, former congressional budget office chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin asks, “Why attack that which you need most?” Why indeed, if not because business is the enemy.

So which party is the enemy of job creation?