How to Fight Black Unemployment

By Arthur Laffer in todays WSJ.com: 
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The tragedy of the failed stimulus is felt hard in minority communities. There's a better way.

Some people actually believe government can create jobs by taxing and borrowing from people with jobs and then giving that money to people without jobs. They call this demand stimulus. To make matters worse, other people think these demand-stimulus ideas warrant a serious response.

Government taxes cigarettes to stop people from smoking, not to get them to smoke. Government fines speeders so they won't speed, not to encourage them to drive faster. And yet contrary to common sense, it seems perfectly natural to some people that government would tax people who work or companies that are successful only to give that money to people who don't work and to bail out losing companies. The thought never crosses their minds that these policies are the very reason why our economy is in such bad shape.

I'm beginning to think that Irving Kristol was correct when he wrote, "It takes a Ph.D. in economics not to be able to understand the obvious." It shouldn't surprise anyone why the economy isn't getting better.

If the U.S. wants prosperity, government doesn't need to do something, it needs to undo much of what it already has done....

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Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904836104576558590149858436.html