Tag: nyt

Put it this way: suppose that from here on out we average 4.5 percent growth, which is way above any forecast I’ve seen. Even at that rate, unemployment would be close to 8 percent at the end of 2012, and wouldn’t get below 6 percent until midway through Sarah Palin’s first term.

Paul Krugman brings the optimism while not-so-gently chiding his fellow media travelers’ insistence that all focus be upon what are essentially made up problems of deficit and government spending. Employment is the problem. Fix that and you can work on wage growth and lessening income inequality across the spectrum, lard on some tax reform, and all these so-called existential spending issues and all the hooha over the “right” size of government will evaporate.
Even less clear is why the media forever focuses on the self-funded, no deficit impact at all for at least 40 years Social Security program when they do a story on the horrors of deficits. It’s a story for another post, but maybe (just maybe!) it’s because they don’t plan on needing it. Medicare, on the other hand, they know they need, know is a deficit ballooner, but just don’t care so long as they get theirs. Very Patriotic.

Re: Several of The Big Lies

dont-bs-me-bro:

Sorry, you are free to believe what you like, but this graph proves none of that, because it only goes back to Jan. 2010. It ignores the first 11 months of Obama’s adminstration, and seasonal changes in employment from quarter to quarter, year over year. It simply is not possible to examine just the most recent 11 months of data and draw any kind of big picture conclusions about the economy.

People choose cutoff points in graphs for a reason, to amplify the message they are trying to send. Let’s see some graphs that go back to 2007, or even earlier, for some context, and then we can debate facts about the economy.

So that takes care of (A) and (B). 

Or, not. Does this graph go back far enough for you? Total non-farm jobs under Bush and Obama:

Same conclusion: The United States under Obama is creating jobs. Period. Fewer than desirable, but job creation nonetheless.

You continue:

As for ©, of course government-funded jobs are not real jobs, because we have to fund them. This distinction causes confusion among those who don’t understand the difference between “real” jobs and government, taxpayer-funded jobs.

A real job is created when a private citizen or business dips into its own assets, or takes out a loan, to hire a person.

This is unadulterated horse-shit. A job is a job. A person is hired to perform a task in exchange for money. Period. They are jobs every bit as real as any other. They transfer money, also just as real, directly into the broader economy. That money spurs a larger overall economy. More people are hired. Lather, rinse, repeat: the Federal Government gradually reduces support as the private markets recover and can employ more people. I’m not sure why this is remarkably hard to understand other than the fact that it demonstrably works (see original three-part graph) and yet is incompatible with a worldview that states that no action of government, large or small, can be for the betterment of society. Ever.
All that aside, though, it is indisputably true that federal/state/local government employment has been distinctly reduced under Obama. Perhaps this graph has a sufficient time scale to pass your ever-so-sensitive BS detector?

That’s government employment relative to population. While the government did indeed get a lot bigger under such noted socialists as DD Eisenhower, it has since shown no trend at all relative to population. There at the very end, under Obama, you’ll note both the census spike and a distinct downward slide.

But, feel free to believe whatever nonsense you are being peddled. These are just the rather inconvenient facts.

Several of The Big Lies put to, er, lie in one graph.

A) “No jobs have been created in the Obama administration, stimulus or otherwise,” unless, that is, you count all those jobs that have been created. Fewer than necessary to be sure, but indisputably there are jobs being created and tasks done in exchange for money.

B) “Government has exploded in the Obama administration” unless, of course, you exclude temporary census workers or set utterly arbitrary start/end dates to capture peak census-hiring (but not their subsequent and prompt return to zero). In fact, line 3 clearly shows government has indeed gotten smaller (as measured by employment) under Obama. This also holds as a percent of GDP, but that’s another graph.

C) “Government-funded jobs aren’t ‘jobs’ at all,” until you start to think about that line being parallel to the private jobs line, and where that, collectively, would put the overall employment line relative to population growth.
I mean, if you’re going to do crazy things like employ people by funding and then building infrastructure projects until the economy recovers, and then count those people as actually employed, well, then I think we know you’re a dirty fucking hippy who needs to shut the fuck up and worry a lot more about the bond vigilantes who are going to show up any day now to get 10-year bond interest rates up way, way above 2%, you can be sure. So there. Any. Day. Now.

…nobody, and I mean nobody, in a position of influence within the GOP cares about deficits when tax cuts for the affluent are on the line. Deficit hawkery is just a stick with which to beat down social programs.

Paul Krugman, reacting to the shocking news that the rising GOP House Majority will be moving to change the rules in ways “clearly designed to pave the way for more deficit-increasing tax cuts in the next two years. These rules stand in sharp contrast to the strong anti-deficit rhetoric that many Republicans used on the campaign trail this fall […] these new rules […] could have a substantial impact and risk making the nation’s fiscal problems significantly worse.”
As Krugman says: these guys don’t care about the deficit, now or ever. They simply use concern to whip up anger against then-as-now non-existent “Cadillac Queens of Welfare” and whatnot such that ever more wealth can be transferred to the richest of the rich. And rest assured: they won’t be satisfied until they have it all. It’s what is going on in corporate America, and it’s what is going in political America. Well, such as the two spheres are even distinguishable anymore it’s what’s going on…

[The GOP members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are issuing their own report, which will lay the entire financial crisis at the feet of] Fannie and Freddie, which somehow managed to cause housing bubbles in Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, and Spain as well as the United States; and the repo market had nothing to do with it.
And bear in mind that this wasn’t one Republican; it was all of them.
I really do wonder how this country can remain governable, when one party insists on creating its own reality. Next thing you know they’re going to reject the theory of evolution. Oh, wait …

Paul Krugman getting all shrill again while noting the invincible ignorance held in seemingly infinite supply by the GOP and their various political enablers.

Since all the evidence says that elections depend on the rate of change of unemployment, not its level, this is actually bad news for Obama: he’s setting himself up for an economic stall in the months leading into the 2012 election.

Paul Krugman, caught in the act of being exactly right. Couple this with the decision to let these Bush tax cuts expire in an election year again, and you’ve got recipe for disaster.
On what planet do these (so called) Democrats live? Do they expect to learn from the messaging disaster they perpetrated in the ten year leadup to this battle? Nothing I’ve seen from anybody, dog catcher up to President, has shown me that they have any chance of even budging the conversation, much less crafting a winning electoral message on this in the face of a still-stagnant economy and ~10% unemployment come 2012.
Obama’s determination to be the “next Carter” is really remarkably strong. I’d say he’s one killer rabbit away from being little more than a punch-line.
Get out there and fight for something, anything. What is so hard to understand about that? Why is it so terrifying for them? This is why they fail.

[President Obama] announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.
So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.
[…]
[He] apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. […] There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

Paul Krugman bringing the shrill. Excellent stuff.
Find me a single MSM story that in any way frames this as a GOP minority temper tantrum and willful, dangerous obstructionism in the face of overwhelming public opinion. This is before you even get to utterly foolish in light of the GOP’s supposed deficit focus. I think you’ll find it being framed systematically and pervasively in quite the opposite direction. Liberal Media.