A Couple of Economic Issues

[Sharpe]

From Brad De Long:

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/mov...es/000134.html

Bush has been expressing satisfaction with the positive job numbers in recent months, saying that we are "turning the corner". However, back in February, the Bush team was projecting job growth of 300K to 325K per month - since February we've actually had aggregate job growth of 1.7 million jobs less than projected.


February is not that long ago, and the justifications of 9/11 and the Iraq War were well known at that point. So why is the economy underperforming Bush's projections by so much?


And from Matt Yglesias at Tapped (The American Prospect's weblog):

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archi...ex.html#003951

The basic point is that the current "pro-business" policies of the national Republicans have been in force in many states (like Alabama, and in the midwest Kansas) and that the results have been quite poor. One fairly obvious point is that you get what you pay for. States like Alabama wanted to be "pro-business" by keeping regulations and costs of business (including wages) down, and guess what? If you have economic policies that promote low wage conditions, you get low wage jobs. It ain't rocket science.

I think there's a pretty good argument that if you have moderate taxes which are spent in a reasonably efficient manner on things like education and civic improvements, those policies are actually much more "pro-business" than policies which provide low quality education and minimal social and civic services. Of course its very possible to go overboard with taxes, excessive regulation and inefficient spending but that doesn't mean that Alabama style policies are the answer.

The devil is as always in the details and not in the idealogy.

Dan

[Efficacy]

The great game to play with the monthly job reports is to figure out how many jobs the economy needs to be creating to cover population growth, then add up all the jobs lost in the last 4 years then subtract by all the "jobs created" and find the magical number you are left with. This game is especially great b/c you dont have to play with things like median income, benefits, union membership, pensions or career potential.

Everyone is cheerleading this economy on. We are now globalized and all the neo-liberal wet dreams are coming up not that wet or dreamy. How else can you spin a broke dick economy but to say look at all we have created, rather then to say look at all you have lost.

[Rotor]

I guess I just can't let it go...

Here's an intersting read for ya.

Now that the economy is growing and creating new jobs, John Kerry has been saying that the quality of those jobs is "much lower" than the quality of jobs that have been lost. A recent ad by some Kerry allies even shows a middle-aged man reporting for his new job wearing a paper hat at a seedy-looking burger joint.

Well, hold on -- there's strong new evidence to the contrary.

Full Story

The Democratic National Committee released an ad Aug. 6 saying 2.7 million manufacturing jobs had been lost under Bush. That's true, but ignores the fact that manufacturing jobs started their decline three years before Bush took office.

The ad also says "Bush protects tax breaks favoring corporations that move their headquarters overseas" and that Kerry would "end job-killing tax loopholes." But as we've said before , "offshoring" accounts for just a small fraction of jobs that are lost, and even Democratic economists say changing the tax code won't end the overseas job drain anyway.

More Here

[antlers]

I guess I just can't let it go...

Here's an intersting read for ya.

Now that the economy is growing and creating new jobs, John Kerry has been saying that the quality of those jobs is "much lower" than the quality of jobs that have been lost. A recent ad by some Kerry allies even shows a middle-aged man reporting for his new job wearing a paper hat at a seedy-looking burger joint.

Well, hold on -- there's strong new evidence to the contrary.

Full Story

These statistics are crap. Average earnings are up, slightly, but median earnings are down, adjusted for inflation. The only way to explain this is that income inequality is growing. There might be a greater percentage-wise increase in higher-earning jobs, but in absolute numbers low-wage jobs are growing faster.

[soondifferent]

Here's a (new) factcheck article on the subject:

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249

In our Aug. 3 article , "Kerry's Dubious Economics," we said Kerry based his claim that "our great middle class is shrinking" on some pretty stale numbers. We said his statement "may well be untrue" because it was based on 2002 figures and didn't account for recent economic growth. Now fresh numbers are available -- and Kerry's statement is looking a lot better.