January 20, 2011
The NYT Magazine piece providing the inside story on President Obama’s economic team in his first two years is littered with conservative talking points. For beginners we get the hoary myth that businesses are not hiring because they are “uncertain about government policy.”
While businesses like to blame uncertainties over tax policy or regulation, there is zero evidence to support this assertion. If firms were seeing demand for labor that would cause them to hire, except for their uncertainty, then we should expect to see large upticks in average hours per worker and increased hiring of temps. In fact, average weekly hours is still down from its pre-recession level. Temp employment is down almost 15 percent from its pre-recession level. This suggests that the problem is lack of demand pure and simple, not uncertainty about regulation and taxes.
It is also worth noting that investment in equipment and software has been rising at almost a 20 percent annual rate over the last four quarters, so it’s not accurate to say that businesses are not investing. It is also important to recognize that this component of the economy is only 7 percent of GDP, so if Obama’s economic team is counting on business investment to boost the economy out of its slump, they are not very good at arithmetic.
The second business myth is the assertion that trade: “represents one of the ‘solutions on the cheap’ the president wanted, a way of promoting growth without deficit spending.” This comment is made in reference to the South Korea trade agreement. In fact, in both theory and practice these trade deals are projected to have a minimal effect on jobs. U.S. trade deficits have in fact risen with many countries, such as Mexico, following the signing of trade agreements, meaning that they have been in the short-run job losers, not job gainers.
Finally, the piece tells readers that:
“Republicans have made shrinking government the core of their economic message.”
Of course they are not really for shrinking government. Most of the Republican leadership supported the bank bailouts. They also support strong patent and copyright protection, which would have the government policing every aspect of people’s lives. (One effort at copyright enforcement sought to make the Girl Scouts pay for the songs they sing around camp fires.) The Republicans also supported the 2005 bankruptcy reform that would have the government provide business with a much greater role in acting as a bill collector. The reality is that the Republicans are not interested in shrinking the role of government, even if this is what they say. They are interested in shrinking the government functions that help low and middle income people.
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