Tuesday, June 12, 2012



1851- IS THE PRIVATE SECTOR DOING FINE?


The other day I posted about the ‘new narrative’.

I talked about the argument that austerity [cutting spending] in the Euro zone- as well as the U.S. - is the new reason to blame for the globes economic woes.

I won’t re-post my rebuttal- suffice it to say I don’t agree.

So- when the president made his recent gaffe ‘the private sector is doing fine’ the right went nuts- and the left ran with the new [false] narrative.

With all the talking heads out there- you would think that they would have put these things together- after all they get paid lots of money.

I mean even though I’m a regular critic of MSNBC- I do see them as family.

How so?

When the Nielsen ratings come out- and Chris Matthews rating is 2 people- at least he knows his wife watches the show [or has it on mute?].

And I’m number 2.

So let’s weave the web here.

When Obama kicked off his campaign year- he had some very rough starts.

The Bain capital thing- well that didn’t work too well.

Then they jumped to the Massachusetts job record of Romney- when he was governor.

Okay- that’s fair game.

But the argument they were making was Romney was a failure while overseeing the state.

Yet when he left office- unemployment was under 5 %- under Obama- we have 8.2.

Yeah- they dropped that line too.

So- the new story is that the Repub led congress [house] are to blame for the unemployment rate.

That Obama put a ‘jobs bill’ on the table- and the Repubs refuse to sign the thing.

Thus ‘the private sector is doing fine’ but because the jobs bill- which is geared towards providing around 250 billion dollars to the states- and union and govt. workers- that because the Repubs won’t pass it- therefore the ‘public sector’ is dragging down the economy.

This is the same argument that says austerity measures are the cause of all the worlds woes.

Last night as I was news surfing I saw some fill in for Maddow on her show- he seems to be a nice kid- have heard him before [Ezra something?]

He did the whole show based on this argument.

He said Romney and the Repubs are hypocrites because when they are in charge they are for public sector workers [cops- firemen- teachers].

But now that Obama is in charge they are cutting them back [note- they were never for trillions of stimulus- as a regular means of providing jobs. They were for the regular fed money that would normally go to the states].

Of course- this is the attack on the dumb [it was dumb] Romney line ‘we don’t need more firefighters and teachers and cops’.

What did Romney really mean?

He is arguing the conservative view that says the jobs market really isn’t a function of spending more federal money.

That even though the fed does provide money to the states [teachers] yet in the long run it’s the local and state economies that will decide whether or not to hire more of these ‘public’ sector workers.

As a firefighter- we did not get federal money to hire new guys- but if our city was doing well financially- then we had the tax revenue to hire new guys.

That’s Romney’s point.

Last year- the govt. did distribute billions [yes- with a b] to the states to stave off the laying off of many teachers and cops and firefighters.

Basically the original 800 billion stimulus simply paid the checks for another year.

But in reality you can’t keep propping up the jobs like this.

For one thing- it’s not ‘fair’.

What?

Look- any president can say ‘let’s spend another trillion- during my term- to simply pay people so they stay employed’.

If the majority of the money- like in this case- is going to workers who give your party lots of money [unions support Dems] then it would be like Bush giving money just to oil field workers- during his whole term

Second- we already have spent a little under 2 trillion fed dollars- propping up the economy.

We had the 900 billion dollar bail out of the banks- and the 800 billion dollar stimulus money.

Obama is blaming the Repubs for not passing his ‘jobs bill’.

Is this really a jobs bill?

No.

It was simply another 250 billion dollars of ‘stimulus’.

We- as a nation- can’t keep doing this.

Overspending is what got the Euro zone in deep trouble- not austerity.

Our very high debt is what is getting us in trouble- as a nation.

Right now- 40 cents of every dollar the govt. spends simply goes to pay the interest on the debt.

Imagine if almost half of your household income was simply interest on your credit card.

Would the answer be ‘lets get another card’?

So- the pres- and some progressive economists [Krugman- and the MSNBC crowd] are saying ‘let’s get another card’.

The Repubs are saying ‘no- let’s start paying the card down’.

You can decide which road is better.

While the president does have some truth to the argument he made the other day- the ‘macro’ picture looks much different.

What was he right about?

When the terrible jobs number came out last month- the 69,000 new jobs- part of the bad number did have to do with govt. layoffs.

The private sector created a little over 80,000 new jobs.

The govt [public sector] lost around 20,000.

So he was trying to make the point ‘see- if the Repubs let me spend another 250 billion- then the govt. would not have laid off folk- and the economy would be fine’.

This argument is being made right now- on both sides of the pond- but it is really not the full story.

In our country we have millions of people without work- the unemployment rate is 8.2%.

And the small % of govt. jobs that are being lost is not the reason why the country is in trouble.

And the solution- long term- is not to keep getting the country in debt.

Anyone can say ‘pass this jobs bill’.

If they simply mean ‘let’s spend billions more- to keep people on the job- just until my election [or term] is over’ then it really is not a jobs bill.

It’s another 250 billion in stimulus.

 I think we already spent too much.








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