Friday, July 06, 2012

Gotta Love the NYTimes

The lede on the story on the jobs report, from the Grey Lady:

The increase in jobs, reported on Friday by the Labor Department, is not enough to significantly reduce the backlog of unemployed workers.

Um...yes. That's something of an understatement, since the cut-off for producing new jobs fast enough to reduce unemployment is 175,000 per month, and more like 225,000 per month if you take into account labor force participation effects. (What THAT means is that if we start creating jobs at 250k per month, people will reenter the labor force, and the unemployment rate may even go UP slightly).

David Leonhardt, playing the "Defend Obama at all costs!" game, said in May that 150,000 was the cutoff. And he also bent over backwards to say that things were getting better, when there is exactly zero evidence that that is true.

Look, folks, until someone makes some effort to (a) reduce military spending, (b) solve the growth of entitlement spending, and (c) turn off the spigot flooding businesses with new and unpredictable regulatory burdens, there will be no increase in jobs created. We are doing the deficit-spend thing about as much as is possible, and the Fed keeps firing its own bullet, right into the ocean. Ploop! Nada.

If this helps Romney, it's not because he has any kind of plan, or deserves to be helped. Romney has given no specifics of what he would do, or even how he thinks of what he might do.

Romney is running like an incumbent, in fact. Even though he has no indication of being able to address the three problems above. And the reason is, just like David Leonhardt said in May, that bad job growth numbers mean Obama loses. Not that Romney "wins," but that Obama loses.

I never thought Obama and co. would be this inept and pigheaded, but they are. They absolutely refuse to move from their position that the solution to the economic malaise is to pay more money to government employees and to fund their pensions.

"The private sector is doing fine," indeed. That was NOT a gaffe. It was a statement of core beliefs. Some people have said that Obama does not trust markets.  That's actually not true.  He has too MUCH faith in markets.  He thinks he can tax, regulate, and abuse people, and they will still doggedly go to work and try to make that cheddar.  That's not actually working out very well for him.

Or for us.

5 comments:

John Thacker said...

I thought that the Washington definition of a gaffe was an accidental statement of core beliefs?

Angus said...

Very nice JT! You are winning the internet this morning.

Luca T. said...

"They absolutely refuse to move from their position that the solution to the economic malaise is to pay more money to government employees and to fund their pensions."

I don't understand. Government jobs have dropped very slightly (-47K) in the past three months. So... you're suggesting the administration should stop funding government employees' pensions? Cut their wages? Aren't government employees incompetent enough as it is?

Or, can they keep doing these things, as long as they also do (a-b-c) above?

Steve said...

Mike,
Can you elaborate on "Romney is running like an incombent". My sense is that he is intentionally being as vague and mercurial as possible so that he can win and then so he can govern as he see's fit when and if he is elected. And I have this irrational hope that maybe he will govern better than we think he will if he is unconstrained by campaign promises. (Although he does have some ideas/promises (not vague) that are truly horrendous such as fixing military spending to 4% of GDP!)

JWO said...

All Government programs should stop automatic CPI increases. They should also freeze pay.