It’s kind of interesting to hear team Obama back away from his campaign pledges to “soak the rich”.  It’s the right policy to encourage economic growth, but the decision certainly creates an interesting dichotomy between his tax and spending policies.

In his spending policies, the president-elect says his focus will be on creating or saving (good luck proving how many weren’t lost) 2.5 million jobs through a massive stimulus package.  Keynes would be proud.  However, on taxes, he tacitly sides with the supply-siders by delaying his proposed tax hikes on the “rich”.  However, if the government can create jobs through spending, why not ratchet up the top rate and boost government spending?

If raising taxes was the right policy in good economic times, it should be an even better policy in bad economic times when the government can invest the money to “create” jobs.  So how does one explain this policy reversal?  We know it’s not a fairness issue.  Liberals never believe anyone is taxed too little, and Mr. Obama has often derided Bush’s tax cuts as giveaways to the rich.

The real answer is that putting people on the government dole isn’t the same as creating a job for them.  From an efficiency and wealth creation standponit, there is absolutely no comparison.  It’d actually be interesting to compute how many private sector jobs are killed in the creation of one government job.

It’ll be really important to remember this over the next 4 years when liberals try to sell socialized health care and green efforts as “jobs” creators when in fact they’re drags on the economy.