To live at this time is
an inestimable privilege,
and a sacred obligation devolves upon you
to make right use of your opportunities.
Grenville Kleiser
The Final Pre-Election Jobs Numbers
The establishment (business payroll) survey roughly kept pace with new workers, not strong enough to improve ever-increasing long-termed unemployed. The official unemployment rate bounced up to 7.9%, which means more people fell out of the labor force, offsetting the new hires. No new explosion of part-time jobs in the household survey. This means in only one month has Barack Obama met {not beat) the unemployment rate of 7.8%, the month he took office in Jan. 2009.
Grandpa, Tell Me About the Good Old Days:
The Election of 1800
While the Obama campaign or leftist press has vilified Romney for everything from the investments made by his blind trust, to how he once transported the family dog on vacation to a former plant worker's wife's death from cancer (she lost her own health insurance after losing her own job separately later; he lost his job when a post-Romney Bain Capital client failed under tough industry-wide conditions), 60 Minutes Sunday reminds us how two of our most brilliant Founding Fathers went at each other:
Historian and author David McCullough tells Morley Safer that the current name-calling pales in comparison to the days of old. Recounting how Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in 1800, McCullough says Jefferson paid a journalist to write that his opponent was a mentally unbalanced hermaphrodite. Adams spread the word that a Jefferson victory would mean murder, rape, and robbery in the streets. But the two candidates never got along apparently.
Years before, when Adams was George Washington's vice president says McCullough, "They went after at each other on the floor with fire tongs...Imagine how that would look on the nightly news?"
Follow-Up Odds and Ends
- Miscellany: 10/30/12: Beware the Hurricane Sandy Stimulus/Recovery.
This is just a variation of Bastiat's broken window fallacy where an act of God breaks a window. The window replacement transaction ripples through the economy with a high multiple. Of course the shopkeeper isn't better off than when he had the original window and the window cost in his pocket to buy things.
Remember that Adam Smith talked about the "wealth of nations". Here is probably one of the most widely quoted Facebook posts ever from economist Steve Horwitz:
It's a good thing I shaved my head this morning or else I'd be tearing out my peach fuzz with my fingernails thanks to the plethora of broken windows fallacies being bandied about in the media today. If you think Sandy is "good for the economy," you are hereby remanded to my Econ 100 class (and ordered to read endless Bastiat) and I expect to see you cheering the next disaster that kills people because it boosts the demand for funeral homes and cemeteries.
Disasters, whether natural or social, DESTROY WEALTH AND MAKE US WORSE OFF. Period. End of sentence. There is NO "silver lining." The economy would be BETTER OFF HAD SANDY NEVER HAPPENED. Got it?
Nick Gillespie coincidentally makes a similar point the day after my post:
At Yahoo Finance, University of Maryland economist Peter Morici wrote that "rebuilding after Sandy, especially in an economy with high unemployment and underused resources in the construction industry, will unleash at least $15-$20 billion in new direct private spending - likely more as many folks rebuild larger than before, and the capital stock that emerges will prove more economically useful and productive." This is a variation of what's known as the "broken window fallacy," which was formulated by the Frenchman Frederic Bastiat in the early 19th century. The mistake here is that it confuses short-term spending with long-term economic growth. The ultimate example of broken-window lunacy comes from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. On September 14, 2001, Krugman used his New York Times column to lecture Big Apple residents about the upside of the utter destruction of the World Trade Center and a good chunk of lower Manhattan just a few days earlier: "Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings...the destruction isn't big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending."Murphy made a similar point in "Hurricanes Are Nature’s Keynesianism: Why catastrophic weather doesn't put idle resources to work and make us richer." When Don Boudreaux wrote a similar followup post on Destruction and Prosperity, it also reminded me of busybody billionaire NYC Mayor Bloomberg's recent endorsement of Obama for, of all things, climate change, apparently buying into a similarly recurring alternate talking point for each and every act of God, a hurricane, tornado or tsunami, is somehow related to climate change or a sign of the coming Apocalypse.
Carolyn Baum has a good summary:
Before the nonsense gets too far out of hand, let's review very briefly why natural disasters aren't a net plus for an economy.
Don't laugh. Every time some region of the world suffers the ravages of nature, economists pump out silly reports outlining the benefits. They all read pretty much the same:
"While said hurricane/tornado/tsunami/flood affected millions of people, disrupted the normal flow of activity and caused tens of billions of dollars of damage, the result will be a massive rebuilding effort that boosts economic growth. Decrepit infrastructure will finally get the upgrade it needs. Idled construction workers will be re-employed. Unused resources from the recession will get redeployed more quickly than they would have without the disaster."
Our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained it best -- the parable of the broken window -- in his 1850 essay, "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen."
I have a standard response to such nonsense: If wealth destruction is such a good thing, why wait for natural disasters to occur when we could nuke and rebuild our cities on a regular basis?Or cause wildfires near communities (and all those jobs generated replacing your wedding/family photo albums and granny's antique cedar chest and rocking chair?)
Then there are the inevitable complaints about price gauging as if counterproductive price controls can wish away the law of supply and demand. Mark Perry of Carpe Diem has proposed a tongue-in-cheek excess temperature law. But we have real-world examples of the incompetent Argentinian President Kirchner whom has outlawed publication of real-world inflation rates resulting from lax monetary policy or Russian President Putin whom thinks laws restricting government criticism will stop citizens from complaining about politicians behind their backs. How about Procrustean solutions to make the garment industry more efficient? We'll simply stretch short people or chop off inches from tall people to fit available clothing sizes!
Capping prices under market creates winners (the first in line) and losers and removes a natural incentive to replenish supplies. It's like grasping a balloon: the hoarders can arbitrage the difference in prices.
Election 2012 Countdown
Dick Morris is worried about a Rasmussen national tie (the 2-point Obama gain is within error and in any event temporary) and blip up in approval reflects a Hurricane Sandy bounce. I think that he's fear-mongering to raise funds for a last-minute ad blitz: Rasmussen's tie leaves 4 points undecided (most will go for Romney, but UnskewedPolls daily tracking shows Romney going from a 3 to 4 point lead).
More worrisome is the projection of a net pickup of just one seat by UnSkewed for the GOP, leaving the Dems in charge. The fact is when two-thirds of the seats up are Dem, and the GOP failed to field competitive candidates for nearly half of those. It now looks like the "abortion/rape" candidates (Akin (MO) and Murdock (IN)), the latter currently a GOP defense, may lose seats that were give-me's until they made unforced errors (Why male politicians would ever comment on rape beyond empathize with the victim and throw the book at the aggressors, I don't know: this is common sense, apparently not so common among politicians) playing into the Dem-contrived GOP war on women . I still think they have a shot given Romney's expected wins in the states. But right now it looks like uphill battles to retain Mass., Maine, and Indiana.
Daily Caller's sex scandal expose of Bob Menendez (D-NJ), up for reelection, doesn't seem to be going anywhere. This is different than the Secret Service scandal, which potentially compromised POTUS security. The allegation is not only that divorced Menendez pay for sex (legal in the Dominican Republic) but paid less than agreed. There are plenty of reasons to vote against Menendez based strictly on his voting record. That a US senator has to pay for sex is pathetic: a lot of women are attracted to men with power versus say an obscure conservative blogger
I think it was also Daily Caller which reported that Obama's Columbia GPA was allegedly a 2.6 ( revealed by a wealthy alumnus)--in laymen's terms, not quite a B-, certainly not enough to get accepted to an Ivy League elite program on a color-blind basis. I'm missing other data--was the GPA including his pre-Columbia college work? If it was upper-division work, which graduate schools look at, that is a particularly low average. I don't know his LSAT. If he scored a perfect LSAT and could argue his grades steadily improved during college, perhaps. But as I've said before, it's one thing to get into Harvard--it is no diploma mill.
Political Humor
Adorable Abby (4 yo), I've been tired of Bronco Bamma, too, since before you were born.. Paraphrasing the late John Denver, "Lady, my sweet lady, do those tears belong to him?"
No doubt Abby is scared by Obama ads suggesting Romney is going to eat Big Bird for Thanksgiving and no more $4 cookies for Cookie Monster... And Elmo will no longer feel a tickle going up his leg.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Carpenters, "Rainy Days & Mondays". Perfect pop performance, pop music doesn't get better. Fourth consecutive (non-holiday) adult contemporary #1, fourth Top 3 in the Hot 100,
