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Comment by gamble | Hacker News Reader

> Many of its 2,000 members, he adds, are unwilling to invest in new initiatives while there is so much uncertainty about future policy.

What is this 'uncertainty' Obama is supposed to be responsible for? I don't think Obama has been particularly unclear about his intentions, and when he's compromised it's almost always been toward more conservative positions. His opponents have fallen in love with this term lately, but to me they feel like weasel words used because complaining about a Democrat in the White House sounds too, well, partisan.

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What taxes are going to be raised to pay for the radical increase in spending? What's the next industry to be demonized and have punitive penalties, taxation, or nationalization applied to it? Is somebody else going to be shaken down the way BP Oil was even when there was no legal authority to do it [1]? What other radical changes to the economy are going to be proposed if the recovery continues to be anemic, and how many dollars are going to be vacuumed out of the private economy to accomplish these changes? How much more loan disasters have been hidden, and how will the administration react, and how many dollars will be vacuumed out of the private economy to implement the reactions? How will the government react to the oncoming pension crises, and how many dollars will be vacuumed out of the private economy to do it? By what order of magnitude will the Obama health care bill's costs be underestimated[2]?

It doesn't even matter whether these are true; I'm not really trying to argue these points or I'd back them up better, I'm just answering your question. (So, for instance, replying to me to argue about the legal authority for the BP Oil escrow account would be missing the point.) It only matters that enough people in business think they are true. It doesn't matter whether they are entirely correct, it only matters that the concerns are correct enough. Somewhat loaded terms were chosen deliberately to give a more accurate impression of how these people are thinking.

[1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/16/politics/main65881... , if you don't remember this

[2]: I don't even mean this as an attack specifically on that bill; observing that governments almost without exception underestimate costs is merely realism, not politics, and when you're talking about something the size of the health care bill, being 50% off is a big deal.

Disagreements over policy don't strike me as a good reason to blame Obama for uncertainty. The financial crisis and the oil spill would have existed if Obama wasn't president, and the gov't reaction would have been just as controversial. I definitely don't agree with everything Obama has done, but I think it's difficult to lay much of the blame at his feet. If anything, Obama has been more consistent in his approach than the situation demanded.

I tend to agree to some extent; I think there's things that could have been done better, but I can't imagine what realistic event could have occurred in 2008 that would have produced a Federal government that would have produced some sort of sure-footed, firm, correct policy. In fact I would very much argue that the putative sure-ness we experienced in both the 1990s and the middle of the previous decade was always illusory; I tend to agree with the Black Swan theory. (Which is more than just "they exist", but also why they exist and are fundamentally unpredictable.)

Nevertheless, confusion and uncertainty exist, regardless of how "fair" any of it is. The President is always the figurehead of the Federal economy, regardless of his actual powers; that's not new. I've rather often thought actually wanting to be President is indeed the sign of insanity that Douglas Adam's thought it was...

>What taxes are going to be raised to pay for the radical increase in spending?

That's an unanswerable question. In order to determine how much taxes will have to be increased to pay for current expenditures, you would need to be able to predict what the economy will be like in a year. If the administration's economic initiatives were successful, there's a possibility taxes will not have to be raised at all. So you're getting angry at Obama because he can't predict what your company's revenues will be in a year, which is totally unreasonable.

I think that applies more generally to most of the points you raised. The Obama administration didn't make the world unpredictable, it has always been that way. I don't even think another failure in the economy makes anything the administration has done categorically bad decisions. I don't think we're in a worse position now than a year ago, and I don't think the fall can be any harder now than it could have been. (Because it could have been atrocious.)

In general I think it's reflective more of business leaders' politics, and those on the left will say that times are hard, and those on the right will say that Obama and the Democrats are making times hard, which again, is totally unreasonable.

>>What taxes are going to be raised to pay for the radical increase in spending?

> That's an unanswerable question.

Which is pretty much the point, in a nutshell. Businesses seek confidence on what their costs are going to be, and the fact that such confidence has always been impossible doesn't really affect that. Which business in New Orleans correctly planned for Hurricane Katrina?

Businesses seek confidence on what their costs are going to be, and the fact that such confidence has always been impossible doesn't really affect that.

This raises the question of what changed when Obama took office that caused the complaints of uncertainty to start. Then again, at this point, I don't expect the people I generally see complaining about uncertainty to acknowledge that it has always been there (and that they were just giving Bush a free pass).

That's an easy question to answer. Obama came in promising radical change, and then followed through in some areas. This increased uncertainty in all areas, since it was made clear that radical change was in fact in the works.

After this week's election, uncertainty should drop, since we will then know that nothing much can get done for the next two years.

If the Republicans continue to stonewall, I'd expect the filibuster to be abolished. The inaction is getting poisonous.

With the current deficit, it is pretty clear that spending must fall or revenue must rise given any reasonable economic growth scenario. Given these options, the governing party seems focused on increasing revenue - permanently enlarging the public portion of the economy. That is usually bad for the private portion of the economy unless you have some reason for believing that public goods are underprovided.

The article that you listed under [1] to support the fact that Obama lacked legal authority to "shake BP down" says absolutely nothing about Obama's legal authority. I bet you hoped no-one would actually read it.

And by the way, how do you know that "enough" people in business think these things are true? Yours is a very dangerous type of reasoning. It allows one to spread lies and disinformation, and then say "well it does not matter whether all these stories are true, it matters that people may think that they are true" ...

By now it is an obvious fact that any democrat president will be relentlessly attacked from certain corners of the media regardless of what he does. So saying that a bunch of stories or statements are out there is not saying much at all. These stories will always be out there for any even slightly liberal president.

For example, it is clear by now that the Clinton administration was very good for most business and especially silicon valley. But if you listened to certain media outlets at the time you would think that Clinton was a Maoist dictator that rounded up all business people and sent them into gulags.

No, I just linked it as a reference to what I was talking about, since not everyone is likely to remember what I was talking about.

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