Our View: Man with no (real) plan

We suppose we should feel thankful that President Obama’s economic prescriptions for an envisioned second term — as laid out in a 20-page brochure released Tuesday — are more musty than ground-breaking, more warmed-over than breathlessly new and radical. All this means, should the president be re-elected, is that our march to the abyss will be slower.

So what does Mr. Obama have in mind? In the vernacular, “same-’ol, same-’ol” — old chestnuts like higher taxes on “the rich” and heightened infusions of federal cash for 100,000 new teachers, enhanced job training, and (via temporary tax credits to employers) a million new manufacturing jobs, coupled with a Barack-Come-Lately support for the sort of oil and gas production strongly endorsed by GOP challenger Mitt Romney.

If all this, to you, smacks of a second go at “stimulus” — or, as The Wall Journal calls it, a “Junior Achievement version” of same — then you’re on the same page as we are. This is nothing more than wishing (anew) on the star of “trickle-down government” using money from . . . where exactly? Good question. Federal spending now sits at 24 to 25 percent of GDP. Mr. Obama’s plan does nothing to change that, or the prospect of continued trillion-dollar deficits that will not — and arithmetically cannot — be remedied by making “the rich” pay their “fair share.”

Furthermore, as The Journal implies, this “new-old” plan strongly suggests Mr. Obama has, over four years, learned not a whit about the ways of business — or businessmen.

When will he ever learn that businesses “hire based on total employee costs, not one-off tax benefits”? That they desire meat-and-potatoes tax certainty, not the temporary sugar-high of penny candy?

And, while we’re at it, relief from onerous regulation?