Krugman on Jobs
Romney has critiqued Obama for being ‘”a “job killer” who is “in over his head”’; and one quote (which I can not source at the moment) has him claiming to have created more jobs as Governor of Mass. than Obama has done for the country.
It turns out, according to Paul Krugman, that this is bullshit. The figures are illustrative enough to be reproduced here. While they’re somewhat self explanatory, I’m going to bore you with some explanation. The first two measure total employment. The one on the left covers 2007 – 2012, the right 1999-2004.
The best figure to illustrate these data is that which has been released by the Obama campaign itself. The reason I prefer the data to be illustrated in this manner is that it makes two features blunt: the difference between job losses as opposed to job gains, and the arc of the trend. From a campaign perspective, this figure makes for a better narrative: Obama took over in the midst of a bad economic downturn, and while he didn’t turn it around during his first 100 hours in office, things did begin to improve in that the rate of decline was arrested.
And neither include today’s report that 200K jobs were created in December.
The problem being that ~150K jobs per month are needed to keep up with population growth. I do not know what the corresponding number for Massachusetts would be, and sadly only about 1 month in 6 since 2007 has shown net job growth.
The employment to population ratio has been stuck at ~58.5% since September 2009. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000
So while Romney is lying, the job numbers during the Obama administration have hardly been an unalloyed joy.
I’m always interested in hearing what Obama, realistically, could have done differently to make the recovery go faster. Key word: realistically. For example: the stimulus package was too small, as Krugman and many others observed at the time. But, realistically – could he have gotten Congress to approve a larger one?
Realistically, Obama and the Congressional Democrats could have done a better job selling the accomplishments of 2009-2010 to the American people so that the elections of November 2010 would have gone better.
Realistically, Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership could have insisted on a vote on continuing only the “middle-class” portion of the Bush tax cuts before the election, an enormously popular measure that would have put the Republcians on the spot. That they didn’t is, of course, much more Congressional Dems’ fault than Obama’s.
Realistically, Obama could have not created the Cat Food Commission, which helped lay the groundwork for months wasted while the White House focused on auterity instead of jobs.
Obviously, none of these things would have directly affected unemployment. But they would have improved Obama and the Democrats’ political standing which might have given them a less hostile Congress this term and made reelection a little easier this coming November. And both of those things would eventually have an impact on jobs.
austerity*
(preview, please)
I think you’re missing one big one. Obama could have not delayed the implementation of the ACA. He delayed it to make the budget numbers look better over a 10 year forecast. By skipping out on short term deficit spending in a recession. Great. Maybe it was necessary to get the bill passed. But it has the look of yet another own goal.
Also, it’s hilarious that down thread JFL remains convinced that Obama does not prefer austerity. I think that most of the US elites have a view of economics that is inherently contradictory but goes something like this: deficits are really bad, but in a pinch, you need deficit spending to stave off a depression/recession. But then you need to return to balanced budgets as soon as possible. It’s just that the belief does live inside the framework of a coherent economic model and so 8.5% unemployment with flat hiring numbers seems like a good time to return to managing the deficit once you have stopped the bleeding. This is really the only way, in my opinion, to explain the statements and actions by DC elites.
Realistically speaking, Obama could have at least tried to get a larger and better targeted stimulus package through Congress. Realistically speaking Obama could have tried not starting with a lowball stimulus proposal too highly oriented towards tax cuts and then negotiating against himself downwards from there. Maybe Obama could have gotten something better if he tried, maybe not, but the people who excuse Obama by saying that it couldn’t realistically have worked are blowing smoke out their ass in the tradition of the Fox News and the Republican Party.
The claim that good policy is politically impossible is never credible when made by people who make it clear that they personally don’t understand or care about policy.
Realistically, Obama might never have started talking up deficit-reduction and could have made it clear that in a recession employing people is far more important than worrying about deficits. Realistically, he could have turned Cheney’s line that “deficits don’t matter” into a club with which to hammer the Republicans. Realistically, he could have suggested some Rooseveltian approaches, like more shovel-ready road-repair projects, and hammered the Republicans when they failed to fund them.
…and realistically he could have not wasted his political capital on the ACA. Passed! Now time to pivot to austerity.
But that’s not at all what happened.
The ACA was signed into law at the end of March 2010. The White House spent the rest of the year trumpeting the benefits of their Keynesian economic policy (lots of events talking about X number of jobs created). Their main argument during the 2010 elections was the superiority of Democratic economic management (Remember the car in the ditch?). They continued to push for stimulus right through the lame duck, including policies like the payroll tax cut and other targeted spending and tax efforts in their demands during the tax bill negotiations.
They got their asses kicked in the election, while running on the benefits of stimulus spending, against a party that ran on austerity. It wasn’t an Obama pivot that brought that position to the fore.
So, to sum up: realistically, there were apparently many billions of dollars in realistic stimulus money left laying on the table, despite the fact that the stimulus that passed did so by a hair’s breath, and we know this because a bunch of people who’ve never been elected dog catcher just know that this is the case. As opposed to the people whose political skills have led to the top of the American political heap, who say the opposite.
And, realistically, nobody would have spoken about austerity – which had led to roughly zero in actual spending cuts – despite it being the central campaign theme of a party that won the elections in a landslide, because winning elections doesn’t ever give the winners the opportunity to set the agenda, unless Barack Obama then responds.
And not just a few billion dollars. Not just tens of billions of dollars. An extra, say, $60 billion spread out over three years would have increased jobs and economic growth in our economy by only an infinitesimal amount. It would have taken hundreds of billions of dollars – making the ARRA at least a third larger – to have any discernible effect.
So, to make an argument that the White House could have noticeable increased employment by playing its cards better is to say that of the 60 votes it took to pass the bill, not a single one would have quailed at the word “trillion.”
A marginal increase in the size of the bill might or might not have been realistic. Humans being what they are, Obama probably didn’t play his cards 100% perfectly every step of the way during that fight, and there was probably some amount of money that the bill could have been increased by if he had. But enough of an increase to make an actual difference in the rate of recovery, not so much.
Bill Murray is right. Another thing to look at is the participation rate which is at it’s lowest point in at least ten years: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 –that means that at best employment growth is way behind population growth; at worst, fewer people are working now than at almost any time in the past decade.
Even assuming Obama made all the right moves, the jobs picture looks like shit. Remember, most of the decline in the unemployment rate comes not from job growth, but from people having been unemployed so long that the BLS stops counting them. We’re lucky the Republicans couldn’t manage to put up a decent candidate, or Obama would have been toast.
Can you pull up data for “over 16 but under 65?” One thing that is going is the beginning of the Baby Boomer retirements.
Retired persons are not counted in the participation rate. FWIW, the over 65 component was growing through 2008 (I can’t find more recent) http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm
it’s worth remembering the context of keynes’ comment that “in the long run we’re all dead.”
the context is that, as keynes noted, sooner or later, demand recovers on its own: clothes wear out. cars need new tires (or to be replaced). the roof has to be repaired. the bridge collapses.
given enough time, in short, demand repairs itself, but if we rely on that, “we set ourselves too simple a course.” recovery in the long run doesn’t mean much, because in the long run, we’re all dead: the point is to recover in the short run.
what we are at the very beginnings of seeing is demand recovering more or less on its own. it’s a helluva way to run a country.
and just to note: whether i agree with the precise particulars of ib, i agree in general that obama could have used his rhetorical gifts to shift the debate leftward, but he didn’t (’cause he ain’t a lefty) but unless he was willing to make an all-out effort to get rid of the filibuster and shift the fulcrum to the 50th least progressive voice in the senate rather than the 60th least progressive voice in the senate, i don’t think there’s much that could have changed in terms of the facts on the ground.
but unless he was willing to make an all-out effort to get rid of the filibuster and shift the fulcrum to the 50th least progressive voice in the senate rather than the 60th least progressive voice in the senate
This is key. And it is not only on Obama but the party bosses.
As one blogger at a far far far left site (powwwow at FDL) commented:
“The Democrats don’t need to use (or change, or violate) any of the rules before they can end supermajority passage of legislation and get back to simple-majority order in the Senate. Why?
Because Rule 22′s cloture process is, in fact, voluntary, and invoked only by the majority, these days in response to mere threats to filibuster (debate…) by a Senate minority. [It might make it easier to understand or remember this point, and to see why this isn't some mere "word game," if you realize that this use of cloture (deployment in response to mere threats) was not its intended use when the rule was originally adopted in 1917, or amended since. Senate practices have fallen so far, so fast, that people don't even recognize now that cloture was always intended to be deployed only in the midst of a real filibuster (that is, uninterrupted floor debate) that the majority no longer felt there was any merit in waiting out.]
Regular, daily, Senate order in fact provides for (Constitutional) simple-majority passage of legislation. A regular, daily order which is only changed if and when 16 majority (Democratic, these days) Senators file a “cloture motion” [Harry Reid, on an almost-weekly basis, to the Presiding Officer: "I have a cloture motion at the desk"] – and, by the filing of that cloture motion, thus choose to replace regular simple-majority Senate order with Rule 22′s supermajority requirements.”
And if you’re skeptical of a far left analysis,
Mark Kleiman seems to concur:
“This raises a Constitutional question. The Constitution gives each chamber the power to make its own rules. It assumes that motions are passed by simple majorities, except in the cases of treaty ratification, conviction on impeachment, and expulsion of a member, where super-majorities are specified. So when the House organizes itself each year, rules are adopted by a simple majority vote.
But the Senate is different. Because only one-third of the Senators are replaced at each election, the Senate has long considered itself a “continuing body,” which means that the rules remain in force until changed, rather than requiring new adoption in every new Congress. That allows the dead hand of the past to control the present, as the Rule XXII case illustrates.
But it is an elementary principle that no Congress can legislatively bind a future Congress. I have no doubt that the Senate could, by simple majority vote, pass a rule requiring unanimous consent to proceed to final passage of any bill, and requiring unanimous consent also to change that rule. The rule so passed would be Constitutional during the Congress that created it. But if today’s Senate can change procedure in a way that binds future Senates, that rule would in effect create a permanent unanimous-consent rule not present in the Constitution, converting the Senate into a Polish Diet. Would such a move really be consistent with the vision of the Framers? I don’t think so.
When something is described as a Constitutional question, the usual inference is that its final resolution rests with the Supreme Court. Not so in this case. The rules of the Senate are made by the Senate, and the courts may not interfere.
So I claim that it is in the power of a simple majority of the Senate to abolish the “continuing body” doctrine and pass new rules in the teeth of Rule XXII.”
Back to powwow:
“We should try not to assign to (the idea of) a real filibuster the power of a permanent obstruction to something passing in the Senate, when in fact – here’s a dirty little secret – real filibusters, in my opinion, don’t amount to very serious obstruction of the regular order and business of the Senate at all. Because real filibusters rely on human endurance and commitment. Especially in this day and age, how many Senators are going to volunteer for that duty, even for a day, never mind for a week?
As I’ve pointed out above, that power actually lies in the hands of the majority Party – which simply needs to cease filing cloture motions unless and until a real filibuster (actual, taxing physical debate, as you describe) is underway on the floor, and the Senate majority feels it can’t wait it out for a simple-majority vote any longer.
In other words, no rule changes are needed for the Senate to return to real filibusters, but only a change in practice, which the Senate majority has the ability to implement, any time it wants. …
… The Parties today – underwritten by corporate money, and shielded by the high cost of corporate-controlled-television advertising – are in the business of dangerously concentrating power, for the benefit of the Parties and their incumbents (Party “platforms” mostly be damned), through a hierarchical structure dominated by a few appointed Congressional powerbrokers at the top, who are in turn allowed by a partisan majority of Congressional colleagues to hand over the Congressional levers of power to a President of the same Party, in private – to one man already in full possession of all the levers of power of the sprawling Executive Branch of government (police, military, intelligence, prosecutorial, “state secrets,” etc.).”
Unless this issue is addressed and a strategy is devised to circumvent it, the Senate will continue to be the burial ground of progressive legislation, and all of the well-intentioned activism lower down the food chain will never amount to more than small incremental changes tossed like scraps from the aristocrat’s table to his underfed dog.
So, does Romney think nobody will point out that, when he was governor, Massachusetts was 47 out of 50 for job creation?
One problem with reflexively lying the way Romney does is that you begin to lose track of whether or not your lies are actually believable, and eventually you even lose the ability to determine whether or not your lies are believable.
Lying is tough work if you want to do it right, and intellectually lazy people who lie a lot inevitably get in the habit of doing it wrong.
I don’t think he cares whether they are believable. He has internalized the Republican strategy that if you repeat a lie often enough people come to accept it as the truth.
The right side figure needs a vertical line marking start of Bush’s term. or to overlay the two with inauguration date aligned.
<emTo a significant and growing degree, any increases in employment are bound up with brutal cuts in workers’ wages, benefits and conditions. Speaking in Washington DC on Friday, Obama emphasized the modest gains in manufacturing employment (23,000 in December), declaring that “after shedding jobs for more than a decade, our manufacturing sector is also adding jobs two years in a row now. So we’re making progress. We’re moving in the right direction.”
</emHe neglected to note that American-based corporations are shifting some production from abroad back to the US in order to take advantage of massive wage cuts directly fostered by his administration. The forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009 under the auspices of the White House Auto Task Force, and with the support of the United Auto Workers union, was used to expand tier-two wages in the auto industry, with new hires making half the wages of senior workers. This established a new benchmark of poverty-level wages ($12-$14 an hour) in unionized manufacturing industries.
<emSystematic wage-cutting is at the center of Obama’s pledge to halt the collapse of US manufacturing and double US exports by 2015. His administration has deliberately used mass unemployment as a weapon to impose wage cuts and speedup on US workers. By declaring the December jobs report a vindication of his policies, Obama sent a clear signal that he intends to continue to use high unemployment to support the corporate assault on the working class.
http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/jobs-j07.shtml
So the theory here is that there would have been no wage cuts resulting from the collapse of the American automobile industry, except for the intervention of the Obama administration?
Hokay.