Flashback 2011 to historically inaccurate Barack Obama:
At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world’s industrial giant, we had to decide: Would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were being controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because there were people who thought massive inequality and exploitation of people was just the price you pay for progress.
Barack Obama is obviously really ignorant about railroad rates and real wages in the 1800's. As Professor Gabriel Kolko's published doctoral dissertation has shown , the railroad industry was highly
competitive with rates dropping after the Civil War until World War One. Between 1870 and 1874 the amount of railroad track laid down increased over 50%. But, there's more to Barack Obama's lies/ignorance on economic history:
The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.
Again here, Barack Obama just doesn't have even come close to the correct numbers. The
average CEO only makes 4 times what the average worker makes.Lastly, Barack Obama seems to think that the 1920's was a failed decade:
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression.
Barack Obama doesn't understand that the Federal Reserve, hardly a free market institution, created the
depression. The big overall question: is Barack Obama just ignorant about economic history or just plain lying to advance a political agenda where resources are allocated in Washington? Has Barack Obama ever taken a single course in economics in college?
