Tag Archives: unemployment

Obama’s Economic Performance Is Even Better Than It Looks

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Paul Krugman presents us today with an updated version of his chart showing private employment gains during the Obama administration compared to the Bush administration:

But Obama’s performance is even better than it looks. Here’s an updated version of my chart showing total government expenditures for both the Bush and Obama administrations measured since the end of the recessions they inherited:

Bush inherited a mild recession and got a huge fiscal boost. Obama inherited a deep recession and got a huge fiscal headwind. Even so, Obama’s employment performance has been far better than Bush’s.

As it happens, I don’t think presidents have a dramatic effect on the economy. But they have some. John McCain wouldn’t have fought for stimulus spending or extensions of unemployment insurance. He would probably have appointed more conservative members of the Fed, who might have tightened monetary policy sooner. He would have insisted on keeping the portion of the Bush tax cut that goes to the rich.

So Obama deserves some of the credit for this. George Bush squandered his political capital on tax cuts for the wealthy and soft regulation of Wall Street. We saw the results of that. Obama spent his political capital on stimulus and health care and the social safety net. The result has been a sustained recovery despite a net decrease in government spending over the past six years. Not bad.

Follow this link: 

Obama’s Economic Performance Is Even Better Than It Looks

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama’s Economic Performance Is Even Better Than It Looks

Will the Economy Help Democrats or Republicans More Next Year?

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Paul Krugman notes that there wasn’t much talk about the economy in last night’s debate. Why not?

The chart shows private-sector job gains after two recessions — the 2001 recession, and the 2007-2009 Great Recession — ended, in thousands. You can argue that the economy should have bounced back more strongly from the deeper slump; on the other hand, 2008 was a huge financial crisis, which tends to leave a bad hangover.

….Now, am I claiming that Obama caused all that job creation? No — policy was pretty much hamstrung from 2010 on….Recovery should have been much faster, and I believe that there is still more slack than the unemployment rate suggests. But if President Romney were presiding over this economy, Republicans would be hailing it as the second coming of Ronald Reagan. Instead, they’re trying to talk about something else.

How is the economy going to play in the 2016 campaign? It’s a bit of a mystery at two different levels:

There’s the poli-sci model level, where the state of the economy is a background factor that affects the vote. A good economy helps the party in power, a bad economy helps the party out of power. Right now, though, the economy is in the middle: not bad, but not great. Next year, when we start plugging numbers into the models, they’re probably going to show a tight race.
Then there’s the campaign level, where candidates actively offer economic proposals (and criticisms) that they think will resonate with voters. Hillary Clinton will have a hard time here, since “it could have been worse” is not a winning slogan. Nor is “Republicans would be crowing if they had done it.” But it’s going to be hard to brag on the economy when it’s only in modestly good shape.

If Jeb Bush is the nominee, he’ll be blathering about 4 percent growth and claiming that anyone who says that’s impossible is just a defeatist who’s given up on America. Unfortunately, a lot of voters will probably believe him, because voters generally believe anything a candidate says. And Hillary won’t be able to fight back much, since it really would make her look like a defeatist. Luckily, “4 percent growth” is a fairly abstract concept to most people, and probably isn’t a great campaign slogan in the first place.

In the end, I suspect the economy will be in one of those middle states where it’s just not that big a deal in the campaign and won’t help either candidate much. Instead, the big campaign issues are going to be more specific: stuff like Obamacare, Common Core, ISIS, Clinton/Bush Derangement Syndrome, etc. Unless something big happens over the next 12 months, it’s going to be one of those grind-it-out campaigns based on small-ball issues, foreign policy, and GOTV mechanics. Lotsa fun, no?

Read this article: 

Will the Economy Help Democrats or Republicans More Next Year?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will the Economy Help Democrats or Republicans More Next Year?

Unemployment Is Low, But It Can Still Go a Lot Lower — And It Should

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Justin Wolfers makes a good point today. There’s a concept in economics called NAIRU, which rather awkwardly stands for the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment1. Basically it means that there’s a “natural” rate of unemployment in the economy2, and if you go below it then inflation will start to accelerate. When that happens, the Fed raises interest rates to slow down growth before inflation gets out of hand.

But what’s the actual value of NAIRU? Based on past experience, most economists think it’s around 5.5 percent or so—which happens to be where we are now. And yet, inflation is still very low, and definitely not accelerating. This could be just a temporary phenomenon as we recover from a huge balance-sheet recession, or it could be something more permanent. For two reasons, my guess is that it’s mostly the latter. First, inflation has been steadily dropping for 30 years in the US, and there’s some reason to think that it’s the 70s that were a high-inflation anomaly, not the rest of the low-inflation 20th century. Second, there’s reason to think that the headline unemployment rate is not measuring quite the same thing as it used to. If you look at long-term unemployment, marginally attached workers, and the decline of the labor force participation ratio—which has been falling for 15 years now—it appears that a headline rate of 5.5 percent probably implies more slack in the economy than it used to. Here’s Wolfers on the natural rate of unemployment:

The problem, though, is that no one really knows what that rate is. Our uncertainty is even greater today than it normally is, because no one knows the extent to which those workers who dropped out of the labor force in response to the financial crisis will return when jobs become plentiful. By this view, today’s most important macroeconomic question is what the natural rate actually is.

The latest jobs report helps answer this question. The unemployment rate has fallen to 5.6 percent, and there are still no signs that wage inflation is rising. Indeed, with wage growth running at only 1.7 percent, the economy is telling us that we still have the ability to bring many more of the jobless back into the fold without setting off inflation.

It is only when nominal wage growth exceeds the sum of inflation (about 2 percent) and productivity growth (about 1.5 percent) that the Fed needs to be concerned that the labor market is generating cost pressures that might raise inflation. So the latest wage growth numbers suggest that we are not yet near the natural rate. And that means the Fed should be content to let the recovery continue to generate more new jobs.

There’s one more thing to add: Even when unemployment falls to around 4 percent, we should remain cautious. We’ve tolerated an inflation rate that’s under the Fed’s 2 percent target for the past five years. There’s no reason we shouldn’t tolerate a catch-up inflation rate that’s a little over the Fed’s target as we begin to recover. If inflation runs at 3-4 percent for the next five years, it’s probably a good thing, not a bad one.

1Obviously economists could have used a branding expert to help them with this. On the other hand, if they’d done that we might have ended up with Xarelxo or JobsMax™. In any case, we’re stuck with it for now.

2The idea here is that even a thriving economy has a certain amount of natural unemployment as people leave their jobs and move to new ones—because new sectors pop up, old companies go out of business, etc. That’s a good thing and a perfectly natural one in a competitive economy that’s producing lots of innovation. Trying to push unemployment lower than the natural rate is basically fruitless.

Read the article:

Unemployment Is Low, But It Can Still Go a Lot Lower — And It Should

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Unemployment Is Low, But It Can Still Go a Lot Lower — And It Should

Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in February

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The American economy added 175,000 new jobs in January, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth clocked in at 85,000. If we accept the notion that bad weather has been holding back the economy, that’s pretty good. If we don’t, it’s mediocre—but still better than the past couple of months of dismal job numbers.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7 percent, caused almost entirely by an increase in the number of long-term unemployed. Since long-term unemployment isn’t much affected by weekly variations in the weather, my guess is that our severe winter hasn’t played a big role in the job picture. This is confirmed by the establishment data, which shows that construction employment is up while retail and IT employment are down. That’s not bulletproof evidence or anything, but it’s not the kind of thing you’d expect to see if weather were a big factor. It’s what you’d expect to see if consumer spending is weak.

Bottom line: we continue to plod along. Things could be worse, but they still aren’t very good.

Read article here – 

Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in February

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in February

We Shouldn’t Denigrate the Diginity of Work, Even Accidentally

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Paul Krugman writes today about the Republican insistence that when they oppose safety net programs, they’re doing it because they really care about the poor. Paul Ryan, for example, says that Obamacare is bad because it reduces incentives to work: “Inducing a person not to work who is on the low-income scale, not to get on the ladder of life, to begin working, getting the dignity of work, getting more opportunities, rising their income, joining the middle class, this means fewer people will do that.” Here’s Krugman:

Let’s talk, in particular, about dignity.

It’s all very well to talk vaguely about the dignity of work; but the idea that all workers can regard themselves as equal in dignity despite huge disparities in income is just foolish. When you’re in a world where 40 money managers make as much as 300,000 high school teachers, it’s just silly to imagine that there will be any sense, on either side, of equal dignity in work.

….Now, one way to enhance the dignity of ordinary workers is through, yes, entitlements: make it part of their birthright, as American citizens, that they get certain basics such as a minimal income in retirement, support in times of unemployment, and essential health care.

But the Republican position is that none of these things should be provided, and that if somehow they do get provided, they should come only at the price of massive government intrusion into the recipient’s personal lives — making sure that you don’t take advantage of health reform to work less, requiring that you undergo drug tests to receive unemployment benefits or food stamps, and so on.

In short, while conservatives may preach the dignity of work, their actual agenda is to deny lower-income workers as much dignity — and personal freedom — as possible.

There’s so much here that I agree with. Massive levels of inequality are indeed corrosive to both dignity and a basic sense of fair play. Making certain entitlements universal is indeed a way of enhancing dignity. And the endless Republican efforts to shame the poor are simply loathsome.

And yet….I really hate to see liberals disparage the value of work, even if it’s only implicit, as it is here. Even people who hate their jobs take satisfaction in the knowledge that they’re paying their way and providing for their families. People who lose their jobs usually report intense stress and feelings of inadequacy even if money per se isn’t an imminent problem (perhaps because a spouse works, perhaps because they’re drawing an unemployment check). Most people want to work, and most people also want to believe that their fellow citizens are working. It’s part of the social contract. As corrosive as inequality can be, a sense of other people living off the dole can be equally corrosive.

I know, I know: Krugman wasn’t trying to advocate a life of government-supported sloth. I’m not trying to pretend he was. And yet….we should be careful about this stuff. Work is important for dignity, both at a personal level and a broader societal level. We all acknowledge this when we talk about economic policy, making it clear that our goal is to attack high unemployment and create an economy that provides a job for everyone. We should acknowledge it just as much when the talk gets more personal.

Continue at source: 

We Shouldn’t Denigrate the Diginity of Work, Even Accidentally

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We Shouldn’t Denigrate the Diginity of Work, Even Accidentally

Watch Elizabeth Warren Slam the GOP for Blocking Unemployment Benefits

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Monday evening, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) denounced GOP lawmakers for blocking an extension of federal unemployment insurance, which expired at the end of last year, and called on Congress to act immediately on behalf of the roughly 1.6 million Americans who depend on the benefits.

“Unemployment insurance is a critical lifeline for people who are trying their hardest and need a little help—a recognition that Wall Street and Washington caused the financial crisis, but Main Street is still paying the price,” Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor.

She added that it’s hypocritical for Republicans to push for an extension of a package of mostly corporate tax breaks called “tax extenders” without offsetting the cost, but are demanding that aid for the unemployed be paid for. “Republicans line up to protect billions in tax breaks and subsidies for big corporations with armies of lobbyists,” the senator said, “but they can’t find a way to help struggling families trying get back on their feet.”

Each year since the onset of the recession in 2008, Congress has re-authorized federal emergency unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, which kick in after state unemployment benefits run out—usually after 26 weeks. The number of extra weeks of federal unemployment insurance has varied over the years, but last stood at 47 weeks.

The long-term unemployment rate—the percentage of those without a job for 27 weeks or longer—remains at record high levels, but Republicans in the House and Senate don’t want to extend federal unemployment benefits unless they are offset by savings elsewhere. A Senate plan to renew the benefits failed a couple of weeks ago, because Republicans said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wouldn’t allow them to amend the legislation to their liking. The upper chamber is now working on a new proposal that would pay for the $6-billion extension by temporarily increasing taxes on employers. But even if the Senate passes the measure, it is unclear whether House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will bring the bill up for a vote, according to Democratic House aides.

Original article:  

Watch Elizabeth Warren Slam the GOP for Blocking Unemployment Benefits

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch Elizabeth Warren Slam the GOP for Blocking Unemployment Benefits

How to Ensure a Republican Landslide in November

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

RNC chair Reince Priebus thinks Democrats are playing politics with the poor:

All of this kind of stuff is ridiculous because we’re spending all of our time actually talking and perpetrating what the Democrats actually want. They don’t want this to pass, what they want to do is they want to talk about these things, they want to talk about minimum wage and what they want to do ultimately is create a campaign issue, this sort of rich vs. poor, the same old thing they can do and avoid Obamacare. That’s what they want.

You know what Republicans should do? They should totally call the Democrats’ bluff. They should just go out there and pass an extension of unemployment insurance; pass an increase in the minimum wage; and pass a farm bill that doesn’t cut food stamps. It would hardly cost anything—maybe 0.3 percent of the federal budget—and it would blow away Democratic campaign plans for November. Plus it would be good for the economy!

It’s a win-win-win: good for the poor, good for the Republican Party, and good for America. It would sure teach Democrats a lesson if Republicans sneakily agreed to all this stuff. I say they should go for it.

See more here: 

How to Ensure a Republican Landslide in November

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to Ensure a Republican Landslide in November

Congress Set to Decide Whether It Cares About Poor People or Corporations

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Brad Plumer lists seven things that Congress needs to do this month. Two of them amount to “don’t be stupid and shut down the government.” One is just miscellaneous stuff. And another is confirmation of Janet Yellen as Fed chairman, which is uncontroversial and should take only a day or two. So really, we’re left with three things:

  1. Decide whether to extend emergency unemployment insurance.
  2. Pass a farm bill.
  3. Decide whether to extend 55 different tax breaks.

Unemployment insurance is a social safety net program. The farm bill is stalled over whether to enact cuts to food stamps. The 55 tax breaks mostly benefit corporations and campaign donors.

Any guesses about which of these urgent priorities will produce adamantine opposition from Republicans and which will get broad support and pass without too much trouble? Did you guess that #3 would be the easy one, despite the fact that it costs about five times more than the other two combined? Congratulations! You too can be a political pundit.

Original article: 

Congress Set to Decide Whether It Cares About Poor People or Corporations

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Congress Set to Decide Whether It Cares About Poor People or Corporations

House Dems Can Block GOP Food Stamp Cuts—by Killing the Farm Bill

Mother Jones

The food stamps program—which helps feed 1 in 7 Americans—is in peril. Republicans in the House have proposed a farm bill—the five-year bill that funds agriculture and nutrition programs—that would slash food stamps by $40 billion. But by taking advantage of House Republicans’ desire to cut food stamps as much as possible, Democrats might be able to prevent cuts from happening at all.

To pull it off, Democrats would have to derail the farm bill entirely, which would maintain food stamp funding at current levels. Here’s how it would work, according to House Democrats who’ve considered the idea.

It’s an idea rooted in the last food stamp fight: In June, the House failed to pass a farm bill that cut $20 billion from the food stamp program. The bill went down because 62 GOP conservatives thought the $20 billion in cuts weren’t deep enough, while 172 Democrats thought they were too drastic. After the bill failed, House conservatives passed a much more draconian food stamps bill with $40 billion in cuts. But that bill was dead-on-arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

CHARTS: The Hidden Benefits of Food Stamps

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has vowed to pass a farm bill. To win agreement from the Senate and President Barack Obama, he’s going to have to bring forward a bill with much shallower food stamp cuts. But introducing a farm bill with less than the full $40 billion in food stamp cuts will cost Boehner a lot of Republican votes—especially because conservative groups, including Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, and Americans for Prosperity, have been urging House Republicans to vote no.

That means Boehner is going to need some Democratic votes. His problem is the same as it was in June: math. He needs 216 votes to pass a bill. In June, 62 Republicans voted against a bill with $20 billion in cuts. If Boehner loses the same 62 Republicans this time around, he’ll need at least 47 Democrats to vote yes. But just 24 Democrats voted for the June bill. So Boehner will likely have to introduce a bill with lower cuts—costing him more Republican votes. The more Republicans Boehner loses, the more Democrats he’ll need.

And as Boehner saw in June, winning House Democrats’ votes for a bill that slashes food stamps by billions of dollars is a heavy lift—after all, if no farm bill passes, food stamps spending would remain at current levels. Why compromise when you can win by doing nothing at all? “It would make sense,” emails a House Democratic aide, “for progressives to vote against the farm bill. Makes me think of this”:

Some House Democrats are already publicly skittish about voting for any level of food stamp cuts. “Many progressive members of Congress, especially those of us who represent areas with high levels of unemployment and food insecurity, may have a hard time voting for additional cuts to federal nutrition programs,” Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the powerful judiciary committee, explained in an email. A staffer for Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who is part of the farm bill negotiating committee, says the congressman is “willing to compromise,” but “will not vote for a bill that makes hunger worse in America.” A staffer for Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) says that the lawmaker doesn’t want to get into “hypotheticals,” but that DeLauro does not support any further cuts to the food stamp program.

All this leaves Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Democratic minority leader, in the driver’s seat. If she wants to deliver 75 or 80 Democratic votes for a farm bill that cuts food stamps, she probably could. But so far, she hasn’t committed to asking her caucus to vote for a farm bill—even one with lower cuts. And she’s already demonstrated that she can unify her caucus against a farm bill with cuts she thinks are too deep. Without Pelosi pushing for a yes vote, a compromise farm bill could go down again.

Stopping the farm bill could backfire on Dems. If the bill passes, the funding levels it sets for food stamps would be locked in for the next five years. But if the bill doesn’t pass, Republicans on the appropriations committee would have to approve continued funding for food stamps. Usually, appropriators from both parties simply continue funding programs at previously authorized levels unless or until the law changes. However, they do technically have the power to refuse to approve new funding. That scenario “is pretty much unthinkable,” though, argues another Democratic aide.

New legislation could also end up shrinking the food stamp program—without a five-year bill locking in current funding, a future budget deal could more easily include food stamp cuts.

If Dems succeed in piggybacking on Republican opposition, and kill the farm bill, other important programs and key agriculture reforms will be neglected. Funding for conservation programs and for organic and small farms would dry up, for example. Wasteful subsidies to Big Ag would continue. But these things “are not life or death” like food stamps are, argues the second Dem staffer.

Conyers feels the same way. “As much as I support some of the needed reforms to wasteful direct payment programs and subsidized crop insurance,” he says, “I’m not willing to balance our budget by taking food out of the mouths of children.”

Read original article: 

House Dems Can Block GOP Food Stamp Cuts—by Killing the Farm Bill

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on House Dems Can Block GOP Food Stamp Cuts—by Killing the Farm Bill

October Jobs Report: Economy Improving Despite GOP

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The economy added 204,000 jobs in October, according to jobs numbers released Friday by the Labor Department, despite the two-week government shutdown that put thousands temporarily out of work, and which economists predicted would dampen last month’s numbers. The jobs gain is about twice as many as expected. Employment numbers for August and September were also revised upwards by a total of 60,000 jobs, signaling the economy is strengthening, despite Republican efforts to tank it through budget cuts, shutdowns and default scares.

Even though jobs were added, the unemployment rate increased a tenth of a percentage point to 7.3 percent. This is because of the way job growth is tallied. As Catherine Rampell explained at the New York Times last month:

The jobs report is based on two different surveys—one of households, and one of employers—and it turns out that furloughed federal government workers will be treated as unemployed in the first survey but employed in the second. In other words, the temporary layoff of federal workers will probably increase the unemployment rate, but not (at least directly) depress the payroll job growth numbers.

Continue Reading »

Continued here – 

October Jobs Report: Economy Improving Despite GOP

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on October Jobs Report: Economy Improving Despite GOP