William Galston on President Obama's Choice of Reform over Recovery

In a superb op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "[h]ow Obama's Economy Spawned Trump," William Galston of the Brookings Institution contends that the weak economic recovery that began in 2009 fueled the popular discontent that begat the presumptive Republican nominee. While Galston gives the President credit for securing passage of the 2009 "stimulus package" and formulating the "bailout" of General Motors and Chrysler, he also contends that the President had no follow up plan for bolstering the recovery which, as previously explained on this blog (see also here), has been exceedingly slow. Instead, Galston says, the President chose to spend his scarce political capital on securing passage of the so-called "Affordable Care Act" and regulatory efforts to combat "Global Climate Change."  Had the President remained focused on nurturing the recovery, Galston says, he could have expended his political capital on advocating and securing additional deficit spending on various infrastructure projects, such as highways, thereby further stimulating the economy and bolstering the recovery.

Galston's trenchant analysis bolsters the adage that those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. This is not the first time that a President facing a deep recession has chosen reform over recovery.  In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt secured passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, his administration's central economic recovery plan.   Among other things the NIRA imposed so-called "codes of fair competition," along with above-market minimum wages and requirements that firms recognize and negotiate with labor cartels also known as unions.  As John Maynard Keynes explained in a letter to the New York Times, the NIRA's wage and price fixing provisions were tools of "Reform and probably impeded recovery."  Subsequent analysis has verified Keynes' prediction, finding that the NIRA's wage-fixing provisions in particular, while furthering what Keynes called "redistribution," also helped deepen and lengthen the Great Depression by several years.  (See here and  here)  If Galston is correct, then President Obama, too, chose reform over recovery, with negative consequences for the nation's overall economic well-being.

At the same time, Galston overstates his case in a couple of ways. First, he likely overstates the impact of the initial stimulus package. For one thing, the $800 Billion package was spread over several years, thus constituting a very small share of overall GDP each year. Indeed, in 2009, Galston himself opined that some of the package's proposed projects would "take effect slowly over many years, muting their stimulative consequences." Like Martin Feldstein, Galston proposed allocating stimulus funds to immediate military spending (see also here discussing Feldstein's proposal.). Moreover, as this blog explained at the time, the net impact of the 2009 package was likely smaller than its nominal price tag, insofar as some such deficit spending simply displaced debt and resulting spending that states would have incurred anyway.  (See this testimony by John Taylor at Stanford, who summarizes research finding such a displacement effect.)  Second, as previously explained on this blog, any claim that the auto bailout was worth the cost does not survive scrutiny.  All in all, however, Galston makes a powerful point.  It would be ironic indeed if the President choice of reform over recovery leads to the election of a President hostile to those reforms.

Should Candidates (and Voters) Be More Optimistic?

Justified Optimism

Maybe Not

In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, Jonathan Capehart praises President Obama's optimism about America's future, optimism the President recently expressed in his final state of the union address. Capehart also analogizes President Obama's optimism to that expressed by President Ronald Reagan in the latter's 1989 farewell address.  In that address, President Reagan referred to America as a "shining city on a hill" that was, at the end of his administration, "more free, more prosperous, more secure and happier than it was eight years ago." Capehart also chastises the current field of Republican presidential candidates for rejecting such optimism. According to Capehart, these candidates repeatedly invoke Reagan, but "bombard us with gloom, doom and defeatism."

Capehart is certainly correct that both President Obama and President Reagan struck optimistic tones as their administrations came to a close.  He is also correct that many Republican candidates for President seem anything but optimistic about the nation's current trajectory.  At the same time, Capehart does not mention the fact that most Americas do not seem to share President Obama's optimism. For instance, two thirds of Americans believe the nation is "on the wrong track," compared to 55 percent early in President Obama's first term.  (Go here for these data.)  Only one third of Americans believe that today's children will be better off than their parents.  (See here.)  The rate of new business formation is near a 30 year low. Capehart does not consider the possibility that glum Republican presidential candidates are simply reflecting the mood of the people --- Republicans, Democrats and Independents --- they hope will elect them.

Of course it may be that the American people are simply unduly pessimistic about what the future holds for this country. However, a little reflection, informed by recent economic history, suggests that there is significantly less reason for optimism about the nation's economic future than there was when Reagan delivered his farewell address in 1989.  While President Reagan left his successor a booming economy resulting in robust job creation, President Obama's successor will inherit a tepid economic recovery which has left millions of Americans behind and with little or no prospect of improvement.

Like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a deteriorating economy.  When Reagan took office in January, 1981, the prime interest rate had just hit 21.5 percent, inflation was running over 13 percent, and unemployment was 7.5 percent, on its way to 10.8 percent in December, 1982.

Like President Obama, who proposed an economic stimulus package that Congress would later pass, President Reagan proposed a package of tax cuts also designed to stimulate the economy, and Congressman Jack Kemp led the Congressional efforts to enact Reagan's proposals.  (To his credit, President Obama would later award Kemp the Medal of Freedom.)   The plan, which cut tax rates for all Americans, was similar in design and rationale to that offered by President John F. Kennedy in 1962.  As previously explained on this blog, President Kennedy sold his plan as an effort to stimulate economic growth, reduce unemployment, and, ultimately, eliminate the short run budget deficit that such cuts would produce.   As President Kennedy explained in a December, 1982 speech to the Economic Club of New York:

"The purpose of cutting taxes is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring about a budget surplus."

Congress enacted President Reagan's proposed tax cuts in the summer of 1981.  While a portion of the cuts took effect immediately, most were phased in over the next three years.  His administration also accelerated the pace of deregulation. What followed was a veritable economic boom.  While the economy contracted in 1982, a recovery started in November of that year.  Over the six year period 1983 through 1988, the American economy grew at an annual rate of 4.6 percent on average.  (See here)  During the same period, total employment increased from 88,993,000 in January, 1983 to 106,906,000 on December 1, 1988, a 20.1 percent net increase. (See here).

The economy has not experienced a similar boom under President Obama, despite passage of his stimulus package.  The economy contracted during 2009 and began a recovery in the summer of 2009. Over the six year period of 2010 through 2014, GDP grew an average of 2.2 percent, less than half the rate during the Reagan boom, with annual growth never exceeding 2.4 percent.   During the same period, total employment grew from 129,717,000 in January, 2010 to 143,242,000 in December, 2014, a 10.3 percent net increase.  (See the sources cited in the prior paragraph for these data.)

In short, the rate of economic growth during the Reagan recovery was more than double the rate for Obama recovery.  Moreover, the rate of employment growth during the six years of the Reagan recovery was more than 60 percent higher than the rate during the first six years of the Obama recovery.  Nor is there any indication that the Obama recovery is picking up steam, with 2015 growth predicted to be a disappointing 2.5 percent.  (By contrast the economy grew 3.7 percent in 1989.)  It is little wonder that many Americans are pessimistic about the nation's economic future.  Even former President Bill Clinton recently expressed his view that, if elected, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would "do what needs to be done now to restore prosperity."  Like former President Clinton, many Americans are old enough to recognize robust economic growth when they see it, and they know this is not it.

Of course, GDP and employment growth are not the only indicators of national well-being.  A nation might choose policies that alleviate poverty or result in a more equitable distribution of income, even if such polices cause somewhat smaller economic growth.  However, there is no indication that slower growth has bought us greater equality or lower poverty.  Poverty rates are higher than when President Obama took office and lower than 1989, when President Reagan left office.  (See page 12 of this report.)  Income inequality is by many accounts on the rise.  The Reagan boom brought greater wealth and less poverty; the Obama recovery has been disappointing by comparison.

None of this is to condone the sort of pessimism that Capehart claims to see in today's crop of Republican candidates.  In 1980 then-citizen Reagan believed the country was moving in the wrong direction but was nonetheless optimistic about America's future.  In particular, he had faith in the power of free markets and individual initiative and a plan for unleashing both to serve the common good.  With the help of Congress, his administration implemented that plan, and the rest is (economic) history.  Hopefully one of the current presidential candidates will follow Reagan's example and articulate an optimistic vision for the nation's future coupled with a workable plan for making that vision a reality.

A "Win Win" for American Workers

Wants to Make Work Pay

Ditto, But Has a Better Plan 

Speaking in Wisconsin on Labor Day, President Obama reiterated his call for a higher national minimum wage. The President claimed that such coercive wage fixing will help ensure that "hard work pays off --- with higher wages, and higher incomes."  The President did not mention a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office predicting, consistent with economic science, that the President's proposal to mandate a minimum wage of $10.10 per hour would throw 500,000 Americans, and perhaps more, out of work.  Nor did the President mention other scientific evidence rebutting his previous claims that raising the minimum wage will stimulate the economy and increase employment.

President Obama is right to be concerned about the economic plight of America's working poor. Fortunately a resident of Wisconsin has offered an alternative plan that would improve the living standards of millions of Americans without the various negative consequences of higher minimum wages.  In particular, Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed expanding the earned income tax credit ("EITC") for workers without children, thus significantly raising the effective wage that such individuals receive.

As currently structured, the EITC provides an annual tax credit of $5,500 to an individual with two children who works full time at minimum wage.  When combined with the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and the refundable child tax credit of $1,000 per child, the EITC pushes the effective wage for such individuals to just under $11.00 per hour.  (See this tax calculator to generate these data.)  Individual workers without children fare far worse under the current tax code, however.  Such individuals are of course not eligible for the child tax credit.  Moreover, the EITC provides such individuals only $503 per year, less than one tenth what individuals with two children receive.

Congressman Ryan's proposal would double the $503 credit for such employees, lower the eligibility age from 25 to 21 and raise the income cap that limits participation in the program. The Ryan proposal would be superior to increases in the minimum wage in several ways. First, the proposal would not throw any Americans out of work.  Second, raising the EITC would confer its benefits only on individuals who need assistance.  By contrast, raising the minimum wage would confer benefits on all minimum wage employees, including, say, teenagers and college students in high income households.  Indeed, most individuals who work for minimum wage are not in or near poverty, with the result that higher minimum wages redistribute income from businesses and consumers (some poor) to individuals in the middle and upper classes.  Third, the burden of an increased EITC would fall on the community as a whole, and not merely upon those employers (and their consumers) that happen to occupy low wage industries.  Fourth, the cost of increasing the EITC would be transparent, unlike the cost of the minimum wage and other labor regulations.   Fifth, the EITC would preserve a level playing field between employers competing with one another in the marketplace. By contrast, mandating a higher minimum wage would disproportionately burden small, labor-intensive firms vis a vis those with capital-intensive production processes, thus protecting large incumbent firms and distorting firms' choices of production technology.  (See pp. 293-95 of this article for additional detail regarding how minimum wages and other labor regulation can disadvantage firms with labor-intensive production processes.)   It is thus no surprise that leading economists, such as Christina Romer, have endorsed the EITC as superior to the minimum wage as a means of ensuring that hard work pays off.  Nor is it surprising that various newspapers, including the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, have endorsed Congressman Ryan's plan.  (See here and here).  Indeed, President Obama has himself advocated such an increase in the EITC, albeit in addition to a job-killing minimum wage.

It should be noted that, even if Congressman Ryan's plan becomes law, the effective wage of a childless American earning the minimum wage will still be less than $10.00 per hour.  Perhaps there is room for a compromise of sorts between the President and Congressman Ryan.  That is, President Obama could back off his demand that Congress increase the minimum wage, and Congressman Ryan could propose a more generous increase in the EITC. Such a plan would be a "win win" for millions of American workers.

Even Binding on the GAO 

Various media outlets are reporting that the Obama Administration violated federal law when it swapped five Taliban prisoners for Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, whom the Taliban had held captive for five years.  (See here and here, for instance.) These stories uniformly cite a report by the non-partisan General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, prepared at the request of the several U.S. Senators. This report asserts that the swap violated two different statutes. First, the report concludes that the swap violated the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014, which provides that the President must notify Congress 30 days in advance before releasing any prisoner from Guantanamo Bay. Second, the report concludes that the expenditure of money necessary to effectuate the transfer violated the "Antideficiency Act," which prohibits the expenditure of funds that exceeds Congressional authorization.

The GAO report is incomplete to say the least.  Federal law includes more than just statutes duly enacted by Congress.  The paramount Federal law is the U.S. Constitution, which declares itself the supreme law of the land.  Article II of the Constitution vests the Executive power in the President and also provides that the President is "Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." As previously explained on this blog, this provision grants the President power over what Joseph Story called "the direction of war" once Congress has initiated such hostilities.  Congress has authorized hostilities against individuals and organizations that planned and perpetrated the 9-11 attacks, included those, like the Taliban, who aided and/or harbored the perpetrators.  (See here, elaborating on the September 18, 2001 "Authorization to Use Military Force"). Having authorized the use of military force against our enemies, Congress cannot interfere with the President's exercise of the powers as Commander-in-Chief, any more than Congress can interfere with the President's authority to nominate a judge once it has created the judgeship by statute.

There is a strong argument that the detention and release of prisoners falls squarely within what Story called "the direction of war."  The conduct of military operations often results in the capture and subsequent detention, sometimes for the duration of the conflict, of those who surrender.  Direction of battlefield operations requires continuous decision making about whether to detain such prisoners, how and whether to collect intelligence from such prisoners, and which prisoners to release and when.  Such decisions are bound up with other tactical decisions, such as whether to conduct raids to capture additional prisoners, whether to enter temporary truces during which wounded prisoners are exchanged, and whether to release prisoners for the purpose of planting false intelligence with the enemy. The detention and treatment of prisoners can have strategic implications as well; an enemy might decline to surrender unless it receives adequate assurances that its captured soldiers will be released in a timely fashion.  Finally, successful negotiations with adversaries, again pursuant to the President's Article II powers, often depends upon preventing leaks so as to ensure the utmost secrecy.   Requiring the President always to notify Congress 30 days before releasing one or more such prisoners could in some cases unconstitutionally infringe on Article II of the Constitution.

If in fact the detention and release of prisoners falls within the President's authority to "direct war" and negotiate with adversaries, then President Obama was free to ignore, as unconstitutional, legislative constraints on the exercise of that power. In the same way, for instance, President George W. Bush was free to ignore legislation that purported to require the military to obtain a judicial warrant before gathering military intelligence from phone conversations between Americans and suspected members of Al Qaeda located in other countries. Presidents, like courts, are duty-bound to decline to enforce legislation they believe to be unconstitutional, regardless of whether courts have agreed or will agree with the President. (See here). Indeed, when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014, President Obama issued a signing statement contending that the notification requirement could in some cases infringe upon the President's Article II authority by depriving the President of the "flexibility, among other things, to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers."  As previously explained on this blog, such statements are an entirely legitimate means by which the President may publicly contest legislation he or she believes to be unconstitutional.

The GAO report did not examine whether the statutory provisions it invoked infringed upon Article II of the Constitution.   Instead, the report reiterated the GAO's apparent practice of declining to opine on the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes.  The GAO also asserted that statutes passed by Congress and signed by the President are "entitled to a heavy presumption of in favor of constitutionality."

GAO's failure to consider the constitutional dimensions of the question was unfortunate and weakens the persuasiveness of the report's conclusion that the Administration "broke the law," given that unconstitutional statutes are not "law" in the first place. Moreover, the report's invocation of a presumption of constitutionality is misplaced. Such a presumption might make sense in the judicial context, when judges evaluate the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress and defended in court by the President.  Where, however, Congress and a sitting President disagree about the constitutionality of legislation that purports to constrain the President, the application of such a presumption is unwarranted.  As Justice Scalia once explained, in such cases there is simply  no rationale for according the constitutional views of one branch of government greater deference than those of the other. See Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 687, 704-705  (Scalia, J. dissenting).  As James Madison explained in Federalist 49: "The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers." (quoted in id.)  Thus, "[a]s one of the interested and coordinate parties to the underlying constitutional dispute, Congress, no more than the President, is entitled to the benefit of the doubt."  Morrison, 487 U.S. at 705 (Scalia, J. dissenting).    By ignoring James Madison and Justice Scalia and invoking this misplaced "heavy presumption," the GAO avoided the sort of analysis that may have clarified and helped resolve the constitutional dispute between Congress and the President.

Hopefully GAO will discard its practice of disregarding the Constitution when opining on the legality of executive branch actions.

The Minimum Wage As Economic Alchemy

 

 

Believed in (Chemical) Alchemy

 

 

Touts Economic Alchemy Instead

 

A few days ago President Obama issued an executive order requiring firms that provide goods or services to the federal government to pay employees working pursuant to such contracts a "minimum wage" of $10.10 per hour, substantially higher than the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. (See here for the story.)   The requirement will take effect slowly, over time, as new contracts are awarded and current contracts renewed in the ordinary course of business. 

The President also used the event announcing the order to advocate national legislation raising the minimum wage to the same level, $10.10 per hour, which he said, was "just like" what he had done with his executive order.  The President claimed that such legislation would "is not going to depress the economy.  It boost the economy [because] it will give more businesses more customers with more money to spend.  It will grow the economy for everybody."  (See here for a video of the President's remarks.)

Any parallel between the President's Executive Order, on the one hand, and the proposed increase in the national minimum wage is illusory.  Indeed, the juxtaposition of the two policies will help illustrate why raising the minimum wage applicable to private markets will, if anything, reduce overall employment and stunt economic growth.  Assertions to the contrary, as explained below, are reminiscent of arguments by alchemists that, with enough practice, humans could learn how to transform lead into gold. 
 

Take the Executive Order first.  Presumably such contractors will simply pass the costs of higher wages on to the federal government.  (The Secretary of Labor claims this will not be necessary, because paying workers more will increase their productivity.  But of course if this were true firms would increase wages voluntarily so as to reap such gains.).  The federal government, in turn, will spend more to receive the same services.  If one subscribes to the Keynesian macroeconomic paradigm, the net impact of such additional spending will depend upon the method of financing it.  For instance, the government could simply raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere, thereby offsetting the stimulatory impact of increased spending for the services provided by such contractors.  However, the government could finance such additional spending by borrowing, in which case the net impact of the Executive Order on aggregate demand could be positive, partly offset, of course, by the impact of higher interest rates resulting from more government borrowing.
 

What, though, about the proposed legislation raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour in private markets? Unlike federal contractors, other private employers cannot simply pass along the entire cost of higher wages to their customers who, after all, lack the power to raise taxes or issue ever-increasing debt.  Thus, as Nobel Laureate George Stigler explained long ago, basic price theory predicts that increasing wages by legislative fiat will reduce current employment. See George J. Stigler, The Economics of Minimum Wage Legislation, 36 American Econ. Rev. 358 (1946).   After all, firms will hire any employee whose marginal product equals or exceeds the prevailing market wage. At some firms, the marginal product of the firm's least productive employee will just equal or barely exceed the prevailing wage. Legislation that coercively raises the prevailing wage by a non-trivial amount will thus force some firms to pay one or more employees more than their marginal product, an irrational decision for firms free to lay off one or more workers. As a result, the minimum wage will cause some firms to discharge one or more employees, just as a state-imposed increase in the price of steel or electricity will cause firms to reduce their consumption of such inputs.  Thus, two economists recently estimated that a ten percent increase in the minimum wage would reduce employment among minimum wage workers by between two and four percent. See Eric French and Daniel Aronson, Product Market Evidence on the Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage, 25 J. Labor Economics 167 (2007).   Some individuals will lose their jobs altogether, while some will work fewer hours in the same jobs.  The President's proposal, of course, would raise the minimum wage by far more than that, namely, by thirty-nine percent.

Of course, some on the political left continue to resist the predictions of basic microeconomic science, claiming that raising the minimum wage will have little if any impact on employment for low wage workers.  A recent post by William Poole at the Cato Institute provides some additional confirmation of the predictions that some on the left reject, as if such confirmation was necessary.  In particular a recent paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded, after surveying numerous studies of the impact of minimum wage increases, that such coercive increases reduce employment, particular for low-skilled workers.  Poole's post quotes from the abstract of the paper, which summarizes its findings:

"[T]he oft-stated assertion that recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few - if any - studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups."  (emphases added).

Thus, minimum wage legislation will, to paraphrase the President, mean fewer, not more, "customers with money to spend."

One might still argue that raising the minimum wage will, despite these disemployment effects, still stimulate the economy.  After all,  raising the federal minimum wage will increase the income of some of those employees fortunate enough to keep their jobs.  Such increased wages may even reflect a more just remuneration for these individuals' hard work than a purely competitive market would products.  Perhaps increased spending by these workers will offset the reduced spending by those who lose their jobs.

Unfortunately, legislation that raises the minimum wage does not magically create the money necessary to pay those employees who retain their jobs higher wages.  If it did, Congress should increase the minimum wage to $25 per hour or more!   Instead, to pay higher wages, business must reduce their profits (assuming they have profits), increase their prices (and suffer reduced sales), or both.  In other words, even if one assumes away negative employment effects,  increasing the minimum wage is  a zero sum game.  Yes, some workers will have more money to spend.  However, businesses and their customers will have less money to spend.  To be sure, low wage workers may spend a higher percentage of their income than business firms or their consumers, but even this is not certain. After all, many minimum wage workers are members of middle class or even upper middle class households. Indeed, according to one study, a significant majority of minimum wage workers are in the middle and upper classes, with the result that low income individuals receive only a small fraction (fifteen percent) of the benefits of higher wages, even assuming no negative employment effects.

In short, basic economic science informed by empirical evidence predicts that increasing the minimum wage will reduce employment, thereby reducing the number of customers "with money in their pockets."  Moreover, additional spending by those employees who retain their jobs will not offset the combination of reduced spending by those who lose their jobs, businesses who see profits fall and consumers who pay higher prices.  Arguments to the contrary rest on some form of economic Alchemy, whereby legislation that does not increase output or income but instead reduces employment magically rearranges purchasing patterns of consumers and business so as to increase aggregate demand.   The theory of chemical alchemy did not work for Rudolf II (pictured above) who, as Holy Roman Emperor, subsidized research on the topic.  Nor will it work for President Obama and those members of Congress who vote for such legislation, once again rejecting economic science.  (See also here.)

One need not rely solely upon scientific theory to rebut the claim that increasing the minimum wage will stimulate the economy. After all, the Nation has in the past experimented with the manipulation of wages as a means of inducing economic recovery, and the results were not encouraging. In particular, during the Great Depression, Congress, via the National Industrial Recovery Act ("NIRA"), imposed so-called "Codes of Fair Competition," including minimum wages, on over 500 American industries.  By coercively raising wages, it was said, enforcement of the Codes would increase "purchasing power" and thus increase workers' demand for goods and services, stimulating the economy and counter-acting the Depression.

While the Supreme Court unanimously invalidated the NIRA in 1935, see Schechter Poultry v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), Congress doubled-down on this approach to macroeconomic stabilization,  passing the National Labor Relations Act that same year.    The Act, whose preamble asserted that free market wage setting had the effect of  "depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners" required private firms to allow employees to form unions --- labor cartels --- if they wished, as a means of increasing purchasing power and thus aggregate demand.   Three years later, Congress passed Federal minimum wage legislation as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

While there was some popular enthusiasm for these policies, those who knew better predicted they would make things worse.   For instance, a report commissioned by Columbia University concluded that the NIRA "would make for general impoverishment and would solve the problem of 'poverty in the midst of plenty' by removing the plenty."  See Economic Reconstruction: Report of the Columbia University Commission, 20 (1934).  Moreover, as previously explained on this blog, in an open letter to President Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes argued that the NIRA probably impeded recovery and that FDR's sympathizers in England wondered "whether some of the advice you get is not crack-brained."  Henry Simons at the University of Chicago also argued, again in 1934, that labor unions and other monopolistic combinations exacerbated the Depression by artificially raising wages and prices.   See Henry Simons, A Positive Program for Laissez Faire (1934). 

Empirical research by economic historians confirms the prediction by the Columbia Report, Keynes and Simons.  For instance, President Obama's first Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, concluded that the NIRA raised prices and wages and thus slowed economic recovery. See Christina D. Romer, Why Did Prices Rise in the 1930s?, 59 J. Econ. Hist. 167, 187-93, 197 (1999).   More recently, two UCLA economists, Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian, concluded that various New Deal policies, including the NIRA and NLRA, both deepened and lengthened the Great Depression, particularly by artificially increasing wages. Indeed, these scholars conclude that these policies prolonged the Depression by seven years.  (See also pp. 1664-66 of this source summarizing the findings of Professors Romer, Cole and Ohanian.)

None of this is to say that States or even the national government should stand idly by while some individuals are unable to earn enough income to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.  Instead, in the opinion of this blogger, society should take steps to increase the rewards that individuals receive for work.  Fortunately, society has already put into place a mechanism to do just that, namely, the Earned Income Tax Credit.  Indeed, according to this tax calculator, an individual with two children who earned the minimum wage at a full time job would pay no federal income tax and also receive a $5,372 refundable tax credit in 2012.  The same individual would also receive $2000 in refundable child tax credits combined,  thereby increasing his or her effecive wage to over $10.00 per hour and household income by more than 40 percent.  It is thus no surprise that, in a 2013 Op-Ed, Professor Romer, mentioned above, endorsed increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit instead of increasing the minimum wage.  Such an approach would also help stimulate the economy, at least according the Keynesian paradigm, so long as the government borrowed the money necessary to pay for such increased spending.   Hopefully "cooler heads will prevail," and Congress and the President will follow Professor Romer's advice instead of clinging to economic theories that, like Alchemy, were debunked long ago.
 

President Obama's Strange Critique of Michigan's Right to Work Law

 Wolverine Fiercely Protecting the Right to Work (Finally)

Michigan has the nation's highest rate of unionization and one of the nation's highest rates of unemployment.  Many in the state and elsewhere believe that this correlation is not accidental, that is, that the state's union-friendly environment unduly raises wages and other labor-related costs and deters business investment and resulting employment opportunities.  See George J. Stigler, The Theory of Price, 279 (4th Ed. 1987) ("The labor union is for the labor market the equivalent of the cartel for the product market.").   (See this previous post discussing some data on the question.)  Indeed, as previously discussed on this blog, Michigan and other union-friendly states are losing population to states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina and Utah, as businesses and the jobs they create migrate to states with tax and regulatory environments that are more friendly to productive economic activity. 

Just yesterday the Michigan Legislature added the Wolverine state to the growing list of states known as "right to work states."   In so doing, Michigan followed the lead of Indiana, which passed similar legislation in February of this year.  To precise, the legislature banned so-called "closed shop agreements," and "agency shop agreements."  Such provisions in collective bargaining agreements require a firm's employees to join a union (closed shop agreements) or, in the alternative, to pay dues to support the union's collective bargaining activities (agency shop agreements).  As a result of such legislation, Michigan workers may now choose to work wherever they wish, free of any compulsion to support unions they oppose.  Governor Rick Snyder signed the legislation into law last evening.

Support for Michigan's right to work legislation was not unanimous, with some on the Progressive Left decrying the legislation.  Chief among the detractors was President Obama, who flew to Detroit to denounce the pending legislation earlier this week, in a speech otherwise devoted to fiscal policy.  The Huffington Post reported the President's remarks as follows:

"And by the way, what we shouldn't do -- I've just got to say this -- what we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions," he added to loud applause from the audience. "We shouldn't be doing that. The so-called 'right-to-work' laws -- they don't have to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money."

President Obama's attempted and failed intervention in Michigan politics is perplexing on several levels.  For one thing, the Taft-Hartley Act, which authorizes states to ban closed shop and agency shop agreements is the Supreme Law of the Land and expresses national policy of the subject.  As previously explained on this blog, that policy encourages states to decide for themselves whether compelled support for unions will enhance growth and economic opportunity within their borders.  As President, Mr. Obama must, according to Article II of the Constitution, "take care that [Taft-Hartley] is faithfully executed."       President Obama may well believe Taft-Hartley was a bad idea.  Moreover, he is perfectly free to introduce legislation repealing Taft-Hartley if he wishes.  Absent such a repeal, however, he should embrace the legislation and respect Michigan's choice.

Moreover, the President's account of the Michigan legislation is, simply put, false.  The legislation in no way limits "rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions."  On the contrary, the legislation leaves each and every Michigan worker perfectly free to affiliate with a union and thus bargain collectively for higher wages and better conditions.  All the legislation does is prevent unions and the firms with which they bargain from compelling individuals to subsidize a union as a condition of pursuing his or her chosen vocation.

Finally, the President's claim that "right-to-work" legislation  is about "politics" and not "economics" does not withstand even cursory scrutiny.  According to economists who have studied the question, rampant unionization of American industry during the mid-late 1930s hampered economic recovery and lengthened and deepened the Great Depression.  (See here and here for previous discussions of these data.)  To put a finer point on it, federal imposition of labor cartels distorted the allocation of the nation's resources and reduced employment, as many predicted at the time.  Millions of Americans became poorer as a result.  While coercive imposition of trade unions on American business raises the wages of some workers, other workers and, ultimately society at large,  suffer. 

Update (4:50 PM, December 12):  Over at CNN, William Bennett has penned an Op-Ed praising Michigan's choice of Right-to-Work status.  In so doing, Bennett echoes some of the arguments made above.  In particular, Bennett offers an effective rebuttal of President Obama's claim that right to work laws are all about politics and not about economics.  According to Bennett:

"[C]ontrary to President Obama's thinking, right-to-work laws are directly related to economics. Right-to-work laws give employers the freedom to hire non-union workers and negotiate contracts with more than one party. For this reason, right-to-work states are more attractive to private business than non-right-to-work, and could increase private-sector wages.  For example, on CNBC's annual list of the best states for business, nine of the top 10 states are right-to-work states. It's no coincidence that foreign automobile manufacturers often build new plants in right-to-work states like Tennessee and Alabama, rather than Detroit -- the "Motor City."  Perhaps Michigan's new right-to-work status will unlock employers from burdensome union contracts and attract new private enterprise to Detroit, which is predicted to go bankrupt by the end of this year. After all, Gov. Scott Walker's union reforms in neighboring Wisconsin helped eliminate the state's budget shortfall."

 

Conservatives Embracing Science, While the Left Balks

Accepts Science 

Ditto

Rejects Science/Thinks He Knows Better

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Pat Robertson, both pictured above, have made news recently, both embracing the scientific consensus that the earth is 4.5 Billion years old.   As Senator Rubio, a Roman Catholic,   put it:  "Science says (the earth) is about 4.5 billion years old.  My faith teaches that's not inconsistent. . . . God created the heavens and the earth, and science has given us insight into when he did it and how he did it."   Mr. Robertson, a Southern Baptist and the Chancellor of Regent University, put things this way:

"Bishop Ussher [who opined that the Earth was created in 4004 BC] wasn't inspired by the Lord when he said that it all [creation of the Earth and Man] took 6,000 years. It just didn't. You go back in time, you've got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things and you've got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas.  They're out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don't try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That's not the Bible."

Mr. Robertson's remarks won the praise of national luminary "Bill Nye the Science Guy," who expressed hope that Mr. Robertson would continue to press his view on the age of the Earth.  Previously Mr. Nye had argued that the belief that the Earth is 6,000 years old "threatens science."

Unfortunately, some public officials still reject basic scientific teachings.  For instance, as previously explained on this blog, President Obama's repeated claim that tax cuts caused the recent "Great Recession" contradicts basic economic science of the sort taught to thousands of college freshmen each year in the United States and around the world.  More recently, Vice President Biden (pictured above) joined the anti-science chorus, claiming, again contrary to basic economic science, that tax cuts and increased spending during the G.W. Bush Administration caused the Great Recession.  Here's what the Vice President said, during his debate with Congressman Paul Ryan.  According to the Vice President:

"And, by the way, they [Republicans] talk about this Great Recession [of 2008-2009] as if it fell out of the sky, like, 'Oh, my goodness, where did it come from?' It came from this man [Congressman Ryan] voting to put two wars on a credit card, to at the same time put a prescription drug benefit on the credit card, a trillion-dollar tax cut for the very wealthy. I was there. I voted against them. I said, no, we can’t afford that."

Like President Obama's claim about tax cuts, Vice President Biden's claim that deficit spending caused the recent recession is economic nonsense, akin to a claim that the Earth is flat or the center of the Universe.  Just as there is a scientific consensus that the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, there is a longstanding scientific consensus that increasing the deficit, whether by tax cuts, increased spending or both will stimulate aggregate demand, increase employment and increase the nation's real economic output.  See e.g. N. Gregory Mankiw, Macroeconomics, 296 (7th Edition 2010) (explaining how tax cuts increase the budget deficit and thus aggregate demand and national output); Rudiger Dornbusch and Stanley Fischer, Macroeconomics, 73-83, 401-11 (2d Edition 1981) (explaining how tax cuts and spending increases can increase aggregate demand and thus national output).  The only exception is for cases in which the economy is already at full employment.  In such cases, deficit spending cannot increase output but can only result in inflation.  However, so far as I know, no one contends that the economy was at full employment when, say, Congress enacted the so-called Bush tax cuts in 2001.  In the same way, the economy was at less than full employment when President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax cuts in an effort to "get the economy moving again."

Of course, there are other reasons to oppose budget deficits and the resulting increase in the national debt.  For instance, government borrowing to encourage consumption can crowd out private investment, thereby partly (but only partly) offsetting any resulting increase in national output.  A nation could decide to forgo higher GDP in the short run in the hopes that, in the longer run, increased private investment will increase national productivity and thus potential national output.  But it bears emphasis that this argument against increased deficits assumes that such deficits increase national output, contrary to Vice President Biden's assertion.

Oddly the economics profession has been relatively silent in the face of this Administration's rejection of basic economic science.  To be sure, hundreds of economists endorsed Mitt Romney in the recent general election.  Six of these individuals were past recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science.  However, so far as I know, no such economist has called out President Obama or Vice President Biden for their rejection of basic science.  This is surprising, because the rejection of economic science can have serious real world consequences for millions of ordinary Americans.  (Imagine if, instead, the President and Vice President claimed that vaccinations do not work or that smoking does not harm your health.  Surely the relevant scientific professionals would (properly) be up in arms.)

Perhaps the economics profession needs its own "Bill Nye the Science Guy" to shame public figures who reject basic economic science. 

Is our Navy Too Small?

Not a Ship, But Can Sink One

Ditto 

 Victim of  Land-Based Bombers

Over at the "Monkey Cage," Political Scientists Brian Crisher and Mark Souva have published a guest post evaluating Governor Romney's claim, made during the third and final Presidential debate, that projected defense cuts will leave America with a dangerously small navy of fewer than 300 ships, smaller than any time since 1916.  (Some will recall that Congressman Ryan made a similar claim during the Vice Presidential debate.)  Crisher and Souva invoke a paper they have co-authored, which measures the relative strength of various national navies during the 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries.  As they put it:

"In 1916, the US controlled roughly 11% of the world’s naval power. This is an impressive number that ranks the US third in naval strength behind the UK (34%) and Germany (19%), and just ahead of France (10%). What about the US navy in 2011? In 2011, the US controlled roughly 50% of the world’s naval power putting it in a comfortable lead in naval power ahead of Russia (11%).

The US Navy has decreased in absolute size as Governor Romney argues (although this decline has been ongoing since the end of Cold War). U.S. warships are more powerful now than in the past, as President Obama implied. However, neither the number of warships nor the power of our ships is what is most important for understanding military and political influence. It is relative military power that matters most. In this respect, the U.S. navy is far stronger now than in 1916."

In so arguing, Crisher and Souva echo similar but less scholarly arguments to the effect that the modern U.S. Navy could defeat the U.S. Navy of 1917, with the result that the size of the modern Navy is beside the point.

This analysis is incomplete, to say the least.   For one thing, the fact that our modern navy could defeat the navy of 1917 is irrelevant and "proves too much."  After all, a single modern U.S. Aircraft carrier could defeat the Navy of 1917.  Does that mean one such ship would suffice for our current needs?  Of course not.

Moreover, comparing the size and composition of different navies is a good start, but it's only a start.   One also has to define our Navy's mission and determine what non-naval capabilities our potential adversaries possess that might thwart that mission.  Three examples --- two historical and one current --- help make this point.

1.  In 1940, the British Navy was far superior to that of Germany.  In 1840, such naval superiority would have prevented any invasion of Britain.  It did not in 1940.  Why?  Because Germany had a large and effective air force capable of sinking any British vessels that ventured into the English Channel.  Only the British Air Force, combined with the "untested" tool of radar, prevented Germany from gaining air superiority over the Channel and thus executing "Operation Sea Lion," Hitler's plan to invade and conquer Britain.     In short, a comparison between the British and German Navies in 1940, while important, ultimately provided a misleading assessment of the balance of power between the two countries.

2.  During the 1980s, the U.S. Navy was tasked with maintaining open sea lanes between the continental USA and Europe, so as to facilitate the re-supply of Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion.   Crisher and Souva conclude that the U.S. navy, built around more than a dozen aircraft carriers at the time, was more than a match for the Soviet navy, including the Soviet submarine fleet, during this period.  Probably so.   However, the Soviet surface and submarine fleet was not the only threat to American carriers during this era.  Instead, the Soviets deployed hundreds of land-based bombers, such as the TU-22M Backfire (pictured above), each carrying anti-ship cruise missiles with a range of several hundred miles and designed to destroy aircraft carriers, their escorts, and, ultimately, troop ships.  (Those who have read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" will recall how TU-22M's devastated a joint French-American convoy early in that fictitious war.)  Thus, even if the U.S. Navy could have sunk each and every Soviet surface ship and submarine in the Atlantic Ocean, it might still have failed in its objective to maintain open sea lanes between the U.S. and Europe.  The British learned this type of lesson the hard way when, on December 10, 1941, Japanese land-based bombers sank the battleship HMS Prince of Wales (pictured above) as well as the battlecruiser Repulse.

3.   The U.S. Navy is currently tasked with the possible defense of Taiwan in the unlikely event of a forcible invasion of that island.  Indeed, during his Presidency, Bill Clinton ordered the U.S.S. Nimitz to sail through the Taiwan Straits to demonstrate American resolve.  No one doubts that the U.S. Navy is vastly superior to any other navy in the world at this moment in history.   However, China has other military capabilities that could thwart the U.S. Navy's ability to perform its assigned mission.   For instance, as previously discussed on this blog (see also here), China has developed and deployed an intermediate range ballistic missile designed to strike large ships such as aircraft carriers from over 1,000 miles away.  Indeed, according to one source, China has produced 80 such DF-21 "carrier killer" missiles, which are also capable of striking U.S. bases in the region, along with other missiles.  Moreover, China deploys a large air force, including hundreds of H-6 bombers modeled on the Soviet TU-16 Badger.  Like the Badger, the H-6 can be armed with anti-ship cruise missiles.  Moreover, Russia has recently agreed to license the production of TU-22Ms to China, which plans to produce 36 such planes in its first production run.  In short, in addition to its growing navy, China has numerous land-based assets that could make a U.S. defense of Taiwan quite difficult.

To be sure, the fact that a navy cannot perform the mission assigned to it "on its own" does not thereby establish that the Navy is too small.  Doubling the size of the British Navy in 1940 would not have prevented a German invasion, unless, perhaps, the increase took the form of more aircraft carriers.  Instead, Britain needed more land-based Hurricanes, Spitfires and the pilots to fly them.  However, in some cases, only a navy can "do the job" required.  For instance, during the 1980s, land-based air power could not have fully countered the threat to our shipping from Soviet bombers and submarines, with the result that only aircraft carrier, defended by escorts, could do the job.  In the same way, a robust naval presence in the Pacific, for instance, may be the only way this nation can accomplish its objectives.

President Obama Won't Pardon Ohio State

Can't Pardon Ohio State and Won't Try

Would Agree

 Ditto

NBC Sports is reporting that Ohio State fans have petitioned President Obama unilaterally to lift the NCAA's ban on post-season play by the Buckeyes, who are currently 11-0 and ranked number 4 in the Associated Press poll.  (See also here for an earlier story by FoxSports).  In particular, the fans' petition includes the following language:

         “The Ohio State University football team is one win away from an undefeated season. However, due to imposed sanctions, they are not allowed to participate in their conference’s championship game or the following bowl season. While a punishment for past indiscretions is to be expected, a bowl season ban is too harsh for a few young men trading memorabilia for tattoos and some change. The offending players and coach who covered it up are no longer part of the program. Please exercise your executive power to pardon the NCAA’s excessive sanctions placed on The Ohio State Buckeyes to enable a rightful, satisfying culmination to the college football season for the American people.”  (emphasis added)

Unfortunately for Buckeye fans, it seems highly unlikely that President Obama will intervene.  To be sure, the President has shown great interest in the NCAA post-season Bowl structure, even going so far as to encourage an unwarranted antitrust investigation of the BCS.  However, the President has no authority to intervene.  Article II of the Constitution merely empowers the President to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." (emphasis added).  The Buckeyes committed no offense "against the United States."  Instead, the NCAA, a private organization, found that Ohio State violated certain standing rules of the organization.  These violations were not criminal offenses but were instead analogous to breaches of contracts between Ohio State and other members of the NCAA.

To be sure, Article II also confers upon the President the "Executive power," which the petition also invokes.  From the beginning, scholars and pundits have disagreed about the nature and scope of the power conferred by this provision.  According to some, this power merely includes the authority to execute pre-existing laws passed by Congress, in addition to the express grants of power included in Article II, such as the power to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces and the power to negotiate treaties.  James Madison, pictured above, was an early proponent of this view.  Others, however, contend that the "Executive power" includes, in addition to the powers just described, all authority that is inherently "executive" in nature, particularly the power to conduct foreign affairs.  Alexander Hamilton, also pictured above, was an early proponent of this view.  Indeed, Madison and Hamilton debated the question, albeit through pseudonyms, during the early 1790s, in the context of President Washington's 1793 Neutrality Proclamation.  (See here for a summary of that debate, including the primary documents.)  

In this blogger's view, Hamilton probably got the best of this particular argument, and history has vindicated the Nation's first Secretary of the Treasury.  For one thing, the text itself seems to support Hamilton's view.  While Article I confers upon Congress all legislative power "herein granted," Article II's grant of the Executive power is plenary and unqualified.  Moreover, from the beginning, Presidents have entered "Executive Agreements" with foreign powers, without obtaining the Advice and Consent of the Senate, relying upon their "Executive power" to do so.  Finally, as Madison himself advocated while a member of Congress, Presidents have from the beginning exercised the power to remove executive officers, a power that does not expressly appear in Article II.    Thus, Presidents have apparently derived this authority from Article II's grant of "the Executive power." 

Still, neither Hamilton nor Madison articulated a view of the "Executive power" that is broad enough to empower the President to nullify a sanction that a private organization has imposed on one of its members, even if that organization has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.  Such power instead would reside in the Congress, which the Constitution authorizes to regulate commerce "among the several states."  Any Presidential effort unilaterally to nullify such a sanction would quite properly suffer a fate similar to President Truman's unlawful effort to seize the Nation's private steel mills during the Korean War.  See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer,  343 U.S. 579 (1952) (rejecting this seizure as an unlawful exercise of Presidential power).

Obama "Recovery" Still Fizzling

This morning the Labor Department reported that the economy added a mere 114,000 jobs in September.  (See here for the story)  That's less than half the number of jobs the economy added in September, 1984, during the Reagan Recovery, when employment increased by 240,000.  (Go to this website and insert the appropriate dates to obtain the September, 1984 figures.)    This poor showing is no surprise, given that real GDP is growing at a snail's pace: annual rates of 2.0 percent and 1.3 percent in the first and second quarters of 2012, respectively (see this Department of Labor Press Release for the GDP figures), compared to real economic growth of 6.8 percent in 1984.

Moreover, as previously explained on this blog with respect to prior months (see also here and here), the actual jobs gap between the Reagan and Obama recoveries for this most recent month is even larger than these data suggest.  After all, the 1984 labor force was significantly smaller than it is today, with the result that the addition of 240,000 new jobs reflected a larger rate of employment growth than would a similar increase today.  Thus, to replicate the September, 1984 rate of job grow, the economy should have created over 300,000 jobs in September, 2012.  (See here for an example of such a calculation in a prior month.)  Thus, the jobs gap between the Obama and Reagan recoveries, which stood at 1.7 million for the months of April through August, is still growing.

August Jobs Report Disappoints

This morning brought another disappointing jobs report from the Department of Labor.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added a mere 96,000 jobs in August.  By contrast, in August of 1984, during the Reagan Recovery, the economy added 241,000 new jobs.  (Go to this website and insert the appropriate dates to locate this figure.)   As previously explained on this blog, the labor force was much smaller during the Reagan Recovery.    Thus, in order to replicate the rate of job growth the country experienced in August, 1984, the economy should have created over 300,000 new jobs in August, 2012.  In short, the Obama "recovery" is still sputtering, and the Reagan-Obama jobs gap is still growing.  To be precise, for the months of April, 2012 through August, 2012, the Reagan-Obama jobs gap stands at 1.7 million.  (See here for a calculation of the April through July gap).

The President and his allies often speak of the need to share the fruits of prosperity.  Many Americans likely wonder "what prosperity?"

Who Will Fact-Check the Fact-Checkers?

Probably Had Better Fact-Checkers in 1942

The New York Times apparently needs a fact-checker to check its articles that purport to fact-check political speeches.

Case in point, an article in the Times today claims that Congressman Ryan's speech contained a "Litany of Falsehoods."   However, the very first example the Times provides is not a falsehood at all.  According to the Times:  "[r]epresentative Paul D. Ryan used his convention speech on Wednesday to fault President Obama for failing to act on a deficit-reduction plan that he himself had helped kill."  Congressman Ryan was referring to the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which President Obama appointed.  The Times offers no evidence that contradicts Congressman Ryan's assertion that President Obama failed to act on the Commission's recommendations.  Thus, Congressman Ryan's assertion stands unrebutted.

Instead, the Times claims that Congressman Ryan helped blocked the Commission's recommendations.   But the Times fails to note that, unlike President Obama, Ryan offered his own budget that would have cut the deficit.  Moreover, one of the Commission's co-Chairs praised Conrgessman Ryan's budget.   In fact, here is what Erskine Bowles, former Chief of Staff to President Clinton and co-Chair of the Simpson Bowles Commission, had to say about Congressman Ryan's proposed budget:

"And the budget that he [Ryan] came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion... The President came out with his own plan and the President, as you remember, came out with a budget, and I don’t think anybody took that budget very seriously. The Senate voted against it 97 to nothing."  (Bowles goes on to assert that, after much pressure, the President finally offered a budget with back-ended spending reductions that would have achieved about $2.5 Trillion in deficit reduction, that is, 37.5 percent less than proposed by Simpson-Bowles.

In sum, Congressman Ryan's assertion that President Obama failed to act on the Simpson-Bowles recommendation is unrebutted.  Moreover, unlike President Obama, Congressman Ryan introduced a budget that achieved the same level of deficit reduction as the Simpson-Bowles Commission.   The Times' assertion to the contrary appears to be, well, a falsehood, though no doubt an inadvertent one. 

Reagan-Obama Jobs Gap Still Growing

Today's jobs report reconfirms that the current economic recovery is far weaker than the recovery from the deep recession of 1981-82, the closest parallel to the recent "Great Recession" of 2008-2009. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added just 163,000 jobs in July. By contrast, in July, 1984, well into the Reagan recovery, the economy added nearly twice as many jobs --- 312,000 to be exact. (Go to this website and insert the appropriate month to confirm this figure.) Moreover, as previously explained on this blog, these figures actually understate the relative strength of the Reagan and Obama recoveries. After all, the current civilian workforce of 155,013,000 (the July, 2012 figure) is much larger than it was in 1984, when the figure stood at 113,500,000. (The exact figure for July, 1984, is currently not available on the BLS website.)   Thus, in order to replicate the rate of employment growth that occurred in July, 1984, the economy would have to create 426,000 jobs, instead of the 163,000 actually created in July.  As a result, the real gap between July, 1984 and July, 2012 employment growth is 263,000  jobs, bringing the actual gap between the last four months of the Reagan recovery and the last four months of the Obama recovery to nearly 1.5 million jobs.  (As explained in this post, the real gap between the second quarter of the 1984 Reagan recovery and the second quarter of the 2012 Obama recovery was 1,205, 415 jobs.)

The American people deserve a stronger recovery.

Associated Press Rewrites Economic History

Orwell Would Be Proud

Today's Associated Press reports that the Obama campaign plans to give former President Bill Clinton a more prominent role in the upcoming Democratic Convention.  News outlets from Fox News to MSNBC and everywhere in between are republishing the story as "news." (See here, here and here for examples.)  In "reporting" this story, the AP, like the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984, attempts to rewrite economic history.   In particular, the story asserts that the move to highlight Clinton will:

"remind voters that a Democrat was in the White House the last time the American economy was thriving."

The statement that "a Democrat was in the White House the last time the American economy was thriving" is simply false. In 2005, the nation's unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in the first quarter, 5.1 percent in the second quarter, and 5.0 percent in second and third quarters.  (See this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)   Moreover, as previously noted on this blog,  the unemployment rate was at or below 5.0 percent for all 24 months of 2006 and 2007.  Indeed, between late 2005 and early 2008, the nation's unemployment rate was at or below 5 percent for 30 straight months.   By contrast, during President Obama's Administration, the unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent for 41 months, and job growth is stagnant compared to that experienced during the Reagan Administration, for instance.

Perhaps Republicans should feature George W. Bush at their convention, to remind the American people just how robust the economy was less than a decade ago.