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However the numbers end up getting corrected or revised, and with due allowance for snowstorms and such, the Feb employment report is a sign that Trump's policies have improved the economy but they have not *transformed* it. Transformation is possible and urgently needed.
I say "urgently" because radical improvement can help reverse numerous social pathologies - you can already see that happening with Trump's job market - and because the window of opportunity for America to profoundly influence the world economy is not limitless.
The Obama years were full of predictions the American century is ending, our global leadership in innovation and economic strength is doomed. That will become true unless we prevent it. This is the moment to stand up, not fluff the pillows on our socialist deathbed.
Trump's beneficial economic policies have mostly been adjustments, not transformations. They boil down to scaling back harmful statist practices, not bold actions that could fully unleash the power of market capitalism. They're steps in the right direction, not giant strides.
That's OK, because small steps can be a precursor to giant strides. It's wise to give the people a taste of what they could have before offering the full-course meal of economic liberty. Conservatives of the past often tried to serve that meal without setting the political table.
But the table *is* set now. The fusion of social and economic issues can be completed. The past decade should settle the argument forever: jobs ARE the ultimate social policy. High employment is vastly better for EVERYONE than unemployment plus socialist benefits.
No government program can begin to approach the constructive power, the positive social force, of a prosperous free economy. Statism vs. capitalism is the difference between crude sculpture and the force of the tides shaping mountains. The market helps far more than the State.
Statism can only crudely simulate the social benefits that flow from people proudly selling their labor to entrepreneurs eager to purchase it. That statist placebo is filled with toxic side effects, and it doesn't last long before collapsing in bewildered exhaustion.
With that incredible win under our belts, conservatives should be able to transform taxation and regulation, not merely adjust it slightly. And we should be able to present that transformation in passionate, emotional SOCIAL terms, not just dry economic lectures.
That was the big mistake made after the Reagan years. Conservatism lost the bold confidence to challenge the core premises of socialism, to call the Left out as not just mistaken but IMMORAL. It gave the Left a monopoly on moral lectures for decades.
That monopoly must end, and now - as Democrats swallow anti-Semitism in the blind pursuit of power - is a fine moment. There is nothing moral about any version of collectivism, and it never WORKS. Freedom works. The values we're supposed to be conserving work. We can PROVE it.
And let us beware the danger in taking these ideas only partway, settling for a pinch of tax cuts and a dash of regulatory reform while leaving the Leviathan State largely intact. That just sets the stage for the Left to blame every problem on its adversaries.
The first looming example of that is painfully obvious: tax relief with no cuts to government spending = tax cuts blamed for deficits and rising national debt.
If we do this timidly, if we are not transformative, if we don't appear fully confident in our own ideas, if we play defense, then conservatism will be blamed for every failure of leftism. The win has to be absolute and undeniable, the positive effect on society unmistakable.
The center of political gravity must move, and from here we can see how it's done. Do you like all the good things that flow from a flourishing job market, near-full unemployment, rising wages? You'll LOVE what comes next, if you vote to take those bold strides. /end
