There is a huge difference between job creation and income redistribution.

Too many Americans don’t get that or don’t care as long as I am getting mine. Stick it to that guy, who has more money than me, make them “pay their fair share” and while you are at it give it to me. Try to tell them that they don’t ultimately get any real benefit and they cover their ears, because it is all about getting something for nothing to satisfy a twisted sense of justice and equity. That basic truth is exposed in the Presidential campaigns.

Compare the economic plans of the candidates…

McCain is calling for building 45 new nuclear power plants that will generate hundred or thousands of jobs both in construction and in long term employment plus providing efficient energy that creates no greenhouse gas emissions. McCain is also calling for increased oil exploration offshore and in Alaska, and the building of new offshore drilling rigs. That also creates jobs, and not service industry jobs but real, long term jobs that make a product. Wal-mart is great, but those jobs are not creating wealth. We need more jobs that will fuel the middle and working class, jobs that don’t require a college education but still pay a decent wage. The solution is NOT to make what should be low paid, menial wage jobs artificially pay more but rather to replace those living wage jobs that have been lost in the last thirty years or so.

On the other (the left) hand, Obama is calling for the punishment of companies that are successful through a “windfall” tax (whatever that means). He wants to build wind farms even though that technology is horribly inefficient and causes all manner of carnage with birds. Inflate your tires! That is a good idea, but most people including me don’t really know how to use a tire gauge. Release oil from the strategic reserve! That is a short time fix, it is a reserve for a reason and tapping into it doesn’t solve any of our problems. The only solution is to either procure more oil or use less gas. The right solution is to pursue both of these goals simultaneously, but both of them are long-term and need to get started right away. Every day we dither away waiting is a day that we are not getting any closer to realizing a sense of real energy independence, or since true independence is probably not feasible, a real energy interdependence where we provide much of our own fuel and in return we still feed the world. Obama thinks, or at least his advisors tell him to think, that people are really longing for some watered down socialism when what we need is some economic common sense.

Lots of companies are seeing huge profits. Monsanto’s stock has tripled over the last few years driven in large part by demand for RoundUp resistant corn, demand driven by ethanol and the looming food shortage. Perhaps we should go after farmers who are getting big returns on corn and soybeans. They are making too much money! But farmers benefit from a sense of nostalgia. Not many people are nostalgic for large multinational oil companies. They make convenient targets and Obama and company cynically are seeking to exploit class envy and general discontent to get votes by essentially buying them. Vote for me and get $1000! And it won't cost you a dime, because it is coming from those evil oil corporations!

McCain’s energy plan calls for a combination of seeking new technology while at the same time maximizing available technology. Obama’s energy plan is wait for wind power to save us, frequent use of a tire gauge and punish successful companies. Doesn’t anybody else see a problem with this?

It is not enough to keep shuffling the same resources around and thinking we are getting ahead. We need to produce. That has been made awfully difficult by decades of unions pushing for ever higher wages for unskilled labor, and complacent executive management going along with it. Now our labor market has priced itself out of competitiveness leaving more and more blue collar workers unemployed and unemployable, while the union chiefs and negotiators sit in their cushy offices and collect their paychecks from confiscatory union dues. More and more manufacturing is leaving the upper Midwest and it is not all going to Mexico and Asia. A lot of it is going to Alabama and Tennessee as employers seek states where the environment is friendly to business instead of states hostile to business and beholden to labor unions. Obama is calling for a complete transformation of our economy. What we need is not to blow the whole thing up and hope for something better, but instead to take away obstacles to this economy, which has long been the envy of the world, and let it do it's thing. Comrade Obama, communism is dead. It is high time the Left moves on.