Econ 76...

I would call it Econ 101...but its remedial stuff.

Boneheaded Economics
Magical thinking about jobs from liberal ­Democrats.  by Fred Barnes

"It’s not just the Occupy Wall Street rabble who are promoting unorthodox ideas (to put it kindly) about our economic plight and how to create jobs. They have friends in Washington. A few examples:

Barbara Lee, a House member from California, is upset about computerized checkout lines at grocery stores..., “I know that’s a job or two or three that’s gone.”

Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois is up in arms about the iPad, which he declared on the House floor recently is “now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of jobs.”

...House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has her own remedy for the jobs dearth: Extend unemployment benefits. “It injects demand into the economy,” she insists. “It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
 
...Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota is the champion of job creation by adding to the regulatory burden of businesses. Sounds counter-productive, right? Not so, Ellison told MSNBC. Companies will have to hire more people to comply with new regs. “If the government says, look, we have got to reduce our carbon footprint, you will kick into gear a whole number of people that know how to do that or have ideas about that, and that will be a job engine,” Ellison said...

...Democratic senator Barbara Boxer of California issued a report recently to the effect that rules promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency generate jobs. “Industries that provide environmental protection” have begot more than one million jobs, the report said. What about industries that lost jobs because of EPA regulations?..."

Quiz time:

Members of Congress, where do companies get the money to pay salaries?

a)  Laws
b)  Tax Payers
c)  Bank Loans
d)  Sales from Customers


'Just the Way Business Works'
by Matthew Continetti

“There are no guarantees in the business world about success and failure,” lectured White House press secretary Jay Carney in September. Carney, whose knowledge of the business world comes from 20 years as a journalist and a few as a press flack, added, “That is just the way business works, and everyone recognizes that.”

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, who has spent a whole two and half years in the private sector, told a Chicago radio station last week, “Like venture capital, sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong, and that’s unfortunate. Nobody takes losing money easily.”

And President Obama, who disliked his post-college year at a consulting firm so much he wrote in his autobiography that it made him feel “like a spy behind enemy lines,” said in his October 6 press conference, “There were going to be some companies that did not work out. Solyndra was one of them.”

...The fact that the president and his senior staff poorly grasp the distinction between private capital and taxpayer guarantees is nothing less than depressing. For the umpteenth time: When an investor risks his own money on a company, he is the only one that loses if the company goes belly-up."

Quiz Time:

Mr. President, which of the following are "businesses"?

a)  Banks
b)  Mortgage Brokers
c)  Automobile Manufacturers
d)  Community Activism