Aug 11 2011

Landlord-In-Chief

It’s official, the inexperienced and naive White House has completely run out of ideas. They have no experience in the private sector, so they have no clue how to rejuvenate our economy and create jobs. Instead they are coming out with an endless stream of sophomoric proposals more indicative of a middle school homework assignment than the product of a leading economic team.

First up is the idiotic plan to turn our federal government into the nation’s largest landlord enterprise. In the face of their failed economic policies the White House has devised a brilliant plan to become a rental property manager. Trust me, if that was a sound idea at the moment there would be entrepreneurs  lined up for miles ready to take on the job and make money. But the problem is not managing rentals but creating an economy that produces viable renters and home buyers. There is no better sign these people are looking for band-aids instead of dealing with the root cause of the carnage than this proposal. The government should not be gathering up potential business assets and pulling them out of the economy – that will just make the recovery take even longer!

But this is something White House adviser Valerie Jarret has real experience in, since she was a slumlord in Chicago before gracing the nation with her talents and ingenuity (photo below is one of her prime properties she ran for the government in Illinois).

The second moronic idea is that by paying people to be on unemployment we are creating jobs:

“I understand why extending unemployment insurance provides relief to people who need it, but how does that create jobs,” Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler asked Jay Carney at Wednesday’s WH briefing.

Carney responded: “Oh, uh, it is by, uh, I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam.”

“There are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance,” Carney said.

Bullsh*t! The best way to ‘put’ money into the economy is to NOT TAKE IT OUT!  Lower taxes, lower the cost of business, lower the cost of regulation and that money will go into consumer purchases and new business start ups. Get government out of the way.

When all the White House produces is twisted logic so warped it resembles drug addled thinking you know these people are spent intellectually. I have never seen massive unemployment rolls create jobs – since the math doesn’t pan out at all. This is simple stuff folks:

The average weekly payment is 36 percent of the individual’s average weekly wage.

So a person on unemployment is making 64% less than they would be working. Therefore it is NOT a net benefit to the economy to pay someone not to work.

This is baby stuff – and yet it is beyond the grasp of this White House. 2012 cannot come fast enough.

6 responses so far

6 Responses to “Landlord-In-Chief”

  1. ivehadit says:

    Here’s some of what Arthur Laffer has said this week about this administration:
    ““They have nationalized the health care industry pretty extensively. They’ve done that with home building as well. They’ve tried it with the auto industry as well. So they have moved very, very deliberatively and purposefully toward extending the government ownership of the means of production.

    “That to me, if you read the tealeaves, is what they are doing. It is not what they are saying they are doing, but that is what they actually are doing.”
    From Newsmax.com: Laffer: Obama Must Use Reaganomics to Save Economy

    Saying vs. doing!!

    Are we *all* onto him now?

  2. WWS says:

    this idea fails on so many levels! I’ve run a small rental business on the side for years now, both managing properties for other people and renting out units I own myself, so I know the rental business inside and out. Let me point out a danger that I guarantee no one in the government has thought of, and that won’t be obvious to those unfamiliar with the game.

    When you rent out a property you own yourself, you have to be very diligent about your expenses, and you also try to build the value of the property over time. Most 3rd party management contracts in the industry, however, are cost plus arrangements – the manager gets reimbursed for the cost of repairs + 10% to cover the managers time and effort. Sounds good in theory, but in practice it means the more bills the property manager runs up, the more the manager gets paid. You can see where this leads. The ONLY way to prevent this is to have an involved owner who checks up on his property frequently and verifies that the work stated was actually necessary and needed doing. Can’t see that happening with government owned housing.

    And what I said about an owner adding to the long term value – with a 3rd party management contract, over and over unscrupulous managers and contractors will certify work done that was never actually done, and split the money. This is epidemic in the industry, and again, vigilant oversight by the actual owner is the only antidote. Since the managers have no ownership stake, their only interest is to rake as much money out of the property as long as they can. Who cares if the tenants are bad and they tear it up? That’s just more money for the manager and the contractors on the cost plus system! And they can guarantee that the government will never send someone out to the property to see what’s actually going on.

    If I was able to take on and manage 100 government owned houses, IF I was unethical, it would be a virtual license to print my own money. That’s what will happen a thousand times over all across the country if this plan goes forward.

  3. KauaiBoy says:

    AJ–I think you missed all the government jobs created in managing the various unemployment bureaucracies. Great jobs with good pay and excellent benefits and absolutely no accountability. If you do get fired you just go to the other side of the counter.

    And I guess you also didn’t appreciate Jarrett’s green approach to air conditioning. These are rentals with skylights and a view of the heavens. And is Whoopi Goldberg trying to catch a fish in her mouth in that last picture?

    Government housing has been one of the biggest social disasters and has only served to keep people in poverty or a gang. When will these nitwits understand that we are a society of individuals not a socialist society. Maybe the best thing is for them to go on vacation.

  4. momdear1 says:

    Doling out payments to individuals who will spend most of their free money at places like WalMart, ends up stimulating China’s economy, not ours. The present status of the worlds economies proves that laizze faire “free trade” policies are just as disastrous as the “protectionism” blamed for the Great Depression of 1929-1941. This is especially true since those who promoted this disastrous “free trade” with countries like China did not have the interests of the US at heart and have allowed China to manipulate and take unfair advantage of their “most favored nation” status to dump cheap, shoddy and even poisonous products in the US while limiting imports from the US. The condition of the world’s economies today is proof that the US has been carrying the world on it’s shoulders since WWII. The Europeans, the Russians, and even China have been trying to bring the US to it’s knees for years. Now that they have finally succeeded, thanks to pro communist, anti American politicians like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama, the rest of the world is feeling the consequences of their foolishness. The moral is, “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

  5. dbostan says:

    One must understand that nationalizing housing is a must for establishing a communist state, to be able to CONTROL the people.
    Sooo, this would be a step “in the right direction”.

    I remember very well what they told me in the marxist indoctrination classes I was required to take:
    the (communist) party must control the industry, especially the energy and transportation sectors, the housing and the health care system, along with the schools, to be able to establish a socialist state.

    Living in a communist state can teach you what to look for in a wanna-be communist dictator as Obama surely sees himself…..

  6. dhunter says:

    Unemployment is measured by counting those without jobs!

    Paying people to be without jobs cannot create a gain in employment, unless you graduated from an Ivy League Socialist U where they count those 4 new government jobs “created” as a result of a new 400,000 unemployed as creating employment.

    We really need to fire these “Smart people” and hire some Honest, Common Sense ones.
    The “Smart Ones” are destroying our economy, our country, our futures and losing three wars, two of which were going in our favor when handed over to them.

    2912 Can’t come soon enough! Death Panels! Refudiate!