To Krugman:
Posted on 07/05/2004 8:15:08 PM PDT by The Bandit
When does optimism — the Bush campaign's favorite word these days — become an inability to face facts? On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news: "We're witnessing steady growth, steady growth. And that's important. We don't need boom-or-bust-type growth."
But Mr. Bush has already presided over a bust. For the first time since 1932, employment is lower in the summer of a presidential election year than it was on the previous Inauguration Day. Americans badly need a boom to make up the lost ground. And we're not getting it.
When March's numbers came in much better than expected, I cautioned readers not to make too much of one good month. Similarly, we shouldn't make too much of June's disappointment. The question is whether, taking a longer perspective, the economy is performing well. And the answer is no.
If you want a single number that tells the story, it's the percentage of adults who have jobs. When Mr. Bush took office, that number stood at 64.4. By last August it had fallen to 62.2 percent. In June, the number was 62.3. That is, during Mr. Bush's first 30 months, the job situation deteriorated drastically. Last summer it stabilized, and since then it may have improved slightly. But jobs are still very scarce, with little relief in sight.
Bush campaign ads boast that 1.5 million jobs were added in the last 10 months, as if that were a remarkable achievement. It isn't. During the Clinton years, the economy added 236,000 jobs in an average month. Those 1.5 million jobs were barely enough to keep up with a growing working-age population.
In the spring, it seemed as if the pace of job growth was accelerating: in March and April, the economy added almost 700,000 jobs. But that now looks like a blip — a one-time thing, not a break in the trend. May growth was slightly below the Clinton-era average, and June's numbers — only 112,000 new jobs, and a decline in working hours — were pretty poor.
What about overall growth? After two and a half years of slow growth, real G.D.P. surged in the third quarter of 2003, growing at an annual rate of more than 8 percent. But that surge appears to have been another blip. In the first quarter of 2004, growth was down to 3.9 percent, only slightly above the Clinton-era average. Scattered signs of weakness — rising new claims for unemployment insurance, sales warnings at Target and Wal-Mart, falling numbers for new durable goods orders — have led many analysts to suspect that growth slowed further in the second quarter.
And economic growth is passing working Americans by. The average weekly earnings of nonsupervisory workers rose only 1.7 percent over the past year, lagging behind inflation. The president of Aetna, one of the biggest health insurers, recently told investors, "It's fair to say that a lot of the jobs being created may not be the jobs that come with benefits." Where is the growth going? No mystery: after-tax corporate profits as a share of G.D.P. have reached a level not seen since 1929.
What should we be doing differently? For three years many economists have argued that the most effective job-creating policies would be increased aid to state and local governments, extended unemployment insurance and tax rebates for lower- and middle-income families. The Bush administration paid no attention — it never even gave New York all the aid Mr. Bush promised after 9/11, and it allowed extended unemployment insurance to lapse. Instead, it focused on tax cuts for the affluent, ignoring warnings that these would do little to create jobs.
After good job growth in March and April, the administration declared its approach vindicated. That was premature, to say the least. Whatever boost the economy got from the tax cuts is now behind us, and given the size of the budget deficit, another big tax cut is out of the question. It's time to change the policy mix — to rescind some of those upper-income cuts and pursue the policies we should have been following all along.
One last point: government policies could do a lot about the failure of new jobs to come with health benefits, a huge source of anxiety for many American families. John Kerry is right to make health care a central plank of his platform. I'll analyze his proposals in a future column.
Oh yeah, what percentage of adults are working in France and Germany? Thought so. Go back to Cuba Comarade Krugman.
He still misses Saigon.
Even Maureen Dowd doesn't take his phone calls.
pure DNC crap....the times has hit bottom
I hope Monica will be paying attention. She'll learn a thing or two.
So he admits we were in a Bush Boom.
It must really suck to be Krugman, always goin' around with a little black rain cloud over your head.
He's on the list with Dowd, Ivins, Clift and other lib-prattlers that I won't waste my time reading.
I'm shocked..you mean..a writer from the ny slime thinks President Bush is doing a bad job..everything I know is a lie...NO NO NO....(sarcasm off)
The economy will eventually turn down. Not now, maybe next year, certainly during the next administration. It would almost be a silver lining if Kerry wins. By '08 Peak Easy will be painfully obvious. Whoever wins in '08 is going to face a horrible economy and no way to fix it.
But how about with this one: What should we be doing differently? For three years many economists have argued that the most effective job-creating policies would be increased aid to state and local governments, extended unemployment insurance and tax rebates for lower- and middle-income families.
I'd like to hear just exactly how Krugman concludes government handouts, at any level, will create jobs, especially when Krugman links this with higher taxes on producers.
If Krugman's proposal is to put more money into the hands of the parasite mascot classes at the expense of the producing class, the only way that this could actually create jobs is if the producing class is forced to send more family members out to find jobs to support Krugman's mascot classes.
This is policy is evil and dishonest at best, moreover it is unlikely to work.
I thought Krugman was an economist, but I must have been mistaken. He's just a liberal, and that's that.
Yes, we are always surprised by Krugman's take on world events. So unpredictable.
Right, F**kwad, and when the tissue of lies that was the Clinton economy unraveled, what happened to all those (Mc)jobs? The Clinton Justice Dept. killed the tech boom with their marxist pursuit of Microsoft, and the Clinton Commerce Department overstated (lied about)corporate profit figures anywhere from 10 to 30% in 1999 and 2000, thus giving false and misleading GDP figures for at least those 2 years (Bob Novak column, August 2002). You know, the same thing democrats scream for the scalps of businessmen when they do it.
To Krugman:
Private enterprise creates opportunity. Not govrnment.
Hey Grampa! Isn't this the same dork (Krugman) you were chewing up and spitting out a few months ago?
Well, you see, when you extend unemployment benefits you are giving the unemployed more time to look for work, so they're more likely to find a job. If we extended unemployment benefits for 20 years then the odds are pretty good that during that 20-year period somebody would find a job, so really extending unemployment benefits would increase the number of people employed.
[/sarcasm]
Here we find Paul Krugman trying to scare down the Consumer Confidence and hurt the economy. His obscure "measures" are right out of the Michael Moore School of Economics. Breathtakingly deceptive and fallacious.
We heard this same lament from the libs the last time there was a disappointing jobs report.
Which of course was followed by great jobs gains over the next few months.
With the unrest in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the record high oil prices we should feel good that things ONLY slowed down during that past month.
I'm so tired of these chicken little Bush haters in the media shrieking "Vietnam" and "Herbert Hoover" at every shred of negative news they can find.
We can only pray that Bush beats these doom and gloom losers in Nov.
Yeah the economy will turn down eventually but why do you think it will be in 2008? It could go down before then and be heading upward by then.
The schmoe pukes once again...who cares?
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