Fred Barnes:

“Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there’s growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week’s presidential press conference, he’s undeterred from holding forth, with seeming confidence, on economic issues.

Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That’s too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession–that’s not too much to ask.

But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be. Three weeks after taking office, he said only government “has the resources to jolt our economy back into life.” He hasn’t retreated, in words or policies, from that view.

At his press conference, Obama endorsed a surtax on families earning more than $1 million a year to pay for his health care initiative. This is no way to get the country out of a recession. Like them or not, millionaires are the folks whose investments create growth and jobs–which are, after all, exactly what the president is hoping for.

Another tax hike–especially on top of the increased taxes on individual income, capital gains, dividends, and inheritances that Obama intends to go into effect in 2011–is sure to impede investment. It’s an anti-growth measure, as those with even a sketchy grasp of economics know. But Obama doesn’t appear to.”

To show you how right Fred is, lefty Steve Benen resorts to a weak bow shot at Fred.

“In the world where the grown-ups live, the surtax, if passed, wouldn’t kick in until 2011. Just as important, there’s no evidence tax increases on the very wealthy have ever stunted economic growth. These are the kind of details those with even a sketchy grasp of current events know. But Barnes doesn’t appear to.”

Wrong again Mr. “Sketchy”. Tax cuts, whether for the rich – who already pay 80 percent of the tax burden – or for the the middle class strengthen the economy. Always have. In fact they’ve fueled the last three major recoveries. That being so, it’s illogical to say that taxing the wealthy – and in turn the middle class – will not stunt growth.

Liberals like Benen are constitutionally incapable of realizing this calculation.