Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart...
William Wordsworth
Sunday Talk Soup
I haven't watched a backlog of Sunday talk podcasts, but to start with, they are unbalanced. For example, you have Krugman on ABC, but you don't have someone from the monetarist or Austrian Schools to combat "pick-and-choose" data sets. Similarly MTP has recurring guests like Mike Murphy, not the most principled conservative spokesman. Or, say, Gingrich, a former Romney rival for the GOP nod, whom complained bitterly about the campaign, being predictably asked by Gregory, basically trying to get him to admit what Romney is doing to Obama is no different from what Romney did to him.
Going back to 10/7 edition of MTP after the first debate,one topic was the (phony) September jobs report and essentially ridiculing GE iconic CEO Jack Welch for advancing a "conspiracy theory" because of the timing--the biggest drop in official unemployment since 1983 (behind his back of course).
Nobody is disputing the establishment survey (consistent with the past--rather, it's the anomalous jump of 600,000 part-time household survey jobs). In my peer-reviewed empirical articles I specifically addressed outliers in study data. Why would you have a huge jump in a slow economy? It's radically inconsistent with past surveys and other data. The conservative Breitbart website has a thesis: the winding down of morally hazardous, overly generous federal unemployment insurance.
The explanation has a certain appeal: unemployment pays more than (say) minimum wage; those on benefits milk the benefits for the entire period of eligibility, waiting in vain for the "Obama recovery" to generate full-time opportunities. Then with the money cut off, they settle for whatever income they could get--even low-paying part-time work. There is some anecdotal evidence of this; I have two male relatives by marriage in my extended family affected by the Great Recession and on unemployment at one point concurrently. The older relative took a part-time job at a local university; the younger one said something to the effect "I could do that, too, but I would clear less than I would make on unemployment." Penny-wise, pound-foolish: you may need to explain the gap to future employers,
Here's the problem I have with that thesis: the establishment survey includes part-time workers on payrolls So unless we are talking about a mysterious explosion of self-employment jobs (say, contractors not on W-2...) In my experience, contractors tend to first feel the ax when companies cut back. A couple of years back I did a contract for hire for a federal contractor. About a week before the end of the contract when they were supposed to hire me full-time, I got called into a meeting where they explained they couldn't make the offer because they incurred some project-related costs CMS refused to cover and they had a couple of developers rolling off an expiring contract in 2 months they wanted to keep on staff. They said they wanted the opportunity to come back later to make an offer if they got more funding (never happened).
The round-table started talking about the economy and the Obama campaign stooges went on their talking points: Gibbs wanting to compare George W. Bush, let's remember Bush faced the aftereffects of the Internet bubble bust, 9/11 (which devastated the airlines and hospitality industries), and corporate scandals. Bush also inherited the Clinton tax hikes. Recall the Bush tax cuts were implemented in 2 phases, the second in 2003; the fact is that federal revenues were strong during Bush's second term until 2008. Obama not only inherited Bush's lower taxes, but the combined fiscal and monetary stimulus is without precedent, Regulations, however, are a form of taxation.It would have been better to let the market find its bottom Barack "We Can't Afford To Do Nothing" Obama effectively picked at the economy's scabs before they had a chance to heal.
Another soundbite deals with Obama's alleged role in a more robust manufacturing sector recovery: let's point out only 1 in 10 jobs is in the manufacturing sector, but it is disingenuous for Obama to claim credit for the rebound: Obama has done little to open new markets and his tax-and-regulate regime is counterproductive. This expansion has been more value added, not based on failed business models with low-skill commodity labor.
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| Courtesy of US Chamber |
On multiple occasions I have cited the 1932 election where Hoover ran on a fairly liberal/government intervention program; FDR had talking points most Tea Party members would agree with. Recall that 1929 was Hoover's first year in office. Boaz of CATO summarizes Horwitz as follows:
- He almost doubled federal spending from 1929 to 1933.
- He expanded public works projects to “create jobs.”
- He pressured businesses not to cut wages, even in the face of deflation.
- He signed the Davis-Bacon Act and the Norris-LaGuardia acts to prop up unions.
- He signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff.
- He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
- He proposed and signed the largest peacetime tax increase in American history.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Four Tops, "Indestructible". Remember the smash Olympics soundtrack from the late 80's with Whitney Houston's brilliant "One Moment in Time". This is, hands down, my favorite Four Tops track; I loved it the first time I heard it and have probably played it hundreds of times. This concludes my Four Tops retrospective. Next group: the Carpenters.
