The NYT told readers that the Republican Party:
“regards environmental regulations as job killers and a brick wall to economic recovery.”
Actually, the NYT has no idea how the Republican Party (presumably it means its leaders) views environmental regulations. It is entirely possible that most leaders are familiar with the research that shows that most environmental regulations have had little or no impact on jobs.
Republican leaders may also know that industry groups have a long history of making outlandish claims about job loss. (For example, the Clean Air Act was supposed to cost around 600,000 jobs. There was zero evidence of job loss after the bill was implemented.) Republicans may opt to echo such claims because they get campaign contributions from the affected industries and they know that the media will never hold them accountable for even the most absurd claims made on behalf of industry groups.
The NYT told readers that the Republican Party:
“regards environmental regulations as job killers and a brick wall to economic recovery.”
Actually, the NYT has no idea how the Republican Party (presumably it means its leaders) views environmental regulations. It is entirely possible that most leaders are familiar with the research that shows that most environmental regulations have had little or no impact on jobs.
Republican leaders may also know that industry groups have a long history of making outlandish claims about job loss. (For example, the Clean Air Act was supposed to cost around 600,000 jobs. There was zero evidence of job loss after the bill was implemented.) Republicans may opt to echo such claims because they get campaign contributions from the affected industries and they know that the media will never hold them accountable for even the most absurd claims made on behalf of industry groups.
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Everyone should read this article from the McClatchy News Service. The business owners they talk to don’t see taxes and regulation as the problem.
This just shows what I have been saying along, the Republicans are actually taking part in the Outrageous Claims Game Show. They are trying to find the most ridiculous story about a public policy issue that they get taken seriously in the Washington Post, New York Times and other major news outlets.
In keeping with this spirit for the national debate over economic policy, let me suggest that businesses are actually being held back by a fear of an attack from Mars. They know that their businesses could be destroyed in an instant by hostile aliens, therefore there is no reason to invest or increase hiring.
Hah, let’s see the Republicans top that!
Everyone should read this article from the McClatchy News Service. The business owners they talk to don’t see taxes and regulation as the problem.
This just shows what I have been saying along, the Republicans are actually taking part in the Outrageous Claims Game Show. They are trying to find the most ridiculous story about a public policy issue that they get taken seriously in the Washington Post, New York Times and other major news outlets.
In keeping with this spirit for the national debate over economic policy, let me suggest that businesses are actually being held back by a fear of an attack from Mars. They know that their businesses could be destroyed in an instant by hostile aliens, therefore there is no reason to invest or increase hiring.
Hah, let’s see the Republicans top that!
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That is a really strange thing to assert out of the blue. Usually newspapers like to back up such assertions with evidence, but readers would look in vein to find anything in this article to support such an assertion.
In fact, a study by Charles Rivers Associates suggests that the main impact of the regulation would be to hasten the replacement of old polluting power plants. This could help to create jobs in the private sector in the next few years, a period in which all projections show that the economy will still be suffering from substantial unemployment.
In other words, if Obama was interested in an action that he could take unilaterally that would create jobs, supporting the EPA on the ozone restrictions probably would have topped the list. In nixing the regulation, Obama went the job killing route.
That is a really strange thing to assert out of the blue. Usually newspapers like to back up such assertions with evidence, but readers would look in vein to find anything in this article to support such an assertion.
In fact, a study by Charles Rivers Associates suggests that the main impact of the regulation would be to hasten the replacement of old polluting power plants. This could help to create jobs in the private sector in the next few years, a period in which all projections show that the economy will still be suffering from substantial unemployment.
In other words, if Obama was interested in an action that he could take unilaterally that would create jobs, supporting the EPA on the ozone restrictions probably would have topped the list. In nixing the regulation, Obama went the job killing route.
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During the days when the housing bubble was inflating to ever more dangerous levels its main source on the housing market was David Lereah, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the author of the 2006 best-seller, Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit From It. Remarkably, its main source now for the housing market is Lereah’s replacement at the NAR, Lawrence Yun.
It seems that the Post still doesn’t understand that there was a housing bubble. This means that prices fell from bubble-inflated levels and that they are not coming back. This is just like the NASDAQ which peaked at over 5000 in March of 2000. More than 10 year later it stands at less than half this level.
It’s the same story with house prices. They peaked at levels that were more than 70 percent above their long-term trend. They still have not fully returned to their trend levels, having about 10 percent more to decline. There is absolutely zero reason to think that nationwide house prices will rise from current levels.
There continues to be an enormous excess supply of housing which can be most directly demonstrated by the fact that the housing vacancy rate remains near the record high set in 2010. There is nothing in the fundamentals of the supply and demand of the housing market that would indicate that we should expect house prices to rise from their long-term trend.
This means that when the Post or anyone else refers to “speeding a housing recovery” in a way that implies higher prices, they are trying to tell you that they know nothing about the housing market.
During the days when the housing bubble was inflating to ever more dangerous levels its main source on the housing market was David Lereah, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the author of the 2006 best-seller, Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit From It. Remarkably, its main source now for the housing market is Lereah’s replacement at the NAR, Lawrence Yun.
It seems that the Post still doesn’t understand that there was a housing bubble. This means that prices fell from bubble-inflated levels and that they are not coming back. This is just like the NASDAQ which peaked at over 5000 in March of 2000. More than 10 year later it stands at less than half this level.
It’s the same story with house prices. They peaked at levels that were more than 70 percent above their long-term trend. They still have not fully returned to their trend levels, having about 10 percent more to decline. There is absolutely zero reason to think that nationwide house prices will rise from current levels.
There continues to be an enormous excess supply of housing which can be most directly demonstrated by the fact that the housing vacancy rate remains near the record high set in 2010. There is nothing in the fundamentals of the supply and demand of the housing market that would indicate that we should expect house prices to rise from their long-term trend.
This means that when the Post or anyone else refers to “speeding a housing recovery” in a way that implies higher prices, they are trying to tell you that they know nothing about the housing market.
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I have been saying that it takes roughly 90,000 jobs a month to keep pace with the underlying growth rate of the labor force. This means that more rapid growth should lead to declines in the unemployment rate while less rapid growth would lead to increases.
Many other analysts have used higher numbers. For example, in her NYT blognote, Catherine Rampell suggested that the necessary number for keeping pace with the growth of the labor force is 150,000 jobs a month. People have often asked me to explain the difference.
I can’t say where others are getting their higher numbers from, but I know where I get my numbers. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the labor force will grow 0.7 percent annually for the next several years. If we go back to the pre-recession level of payroll employment (140 million), this implies 980,000 jobs a year or 82,500 a month.
There is another way to back out a growth number. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the civilian non-institutionalized population over age 16 increased by 1,781,000 people over the last 12 months. If we assume that 64 percent of this increment to the above age 16 population is employed (roughly the 2000 percent) then this would imply an increase in employment of 1,140,000.
However, this would overstate payroll employment slightly since roughly 6 percent of the workforce is self-employed. If we assume that 6 percent of the increment is also self-employed, this implies that roughly 1,070,000 payroll jobs are needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force, or just under 90,000 a month.
Anyhow, that is how I get my job growth estimate.
I have been saying that it takes roughly 90,000 jobs a month to keep pace with the underlying growth rate of the labor force. This means that more rapid growth should lead to declines in the unemployment rate while less rapid growth would lead to increases.
Many other analysts have used higher numbers. For example, in her NYT blognote, Catherine Rampell suggested that the necessary number for keeping pace with the growth of the labor force is 150,000 jobs a month. People have often asked me to explain the difference.
I can’t say where others are getting their higher numbers from, but I know where I get my numbers. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the labor force will grow 0.7 percent annually for the next several years. If we go back to the pre-recession level of payroll employment (140 million), this implies 980,000 jobs a year or 82,500 a month.
There is another way to back out a growth number. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the civilian non-institutionalized population over age 16 increased by 1,781,000 people over the last 12 months. If we assume that 64 percent of this increment to the above age 16 population is employed (roughly the 2000 percent) then this would imply an increase in employment of 1,140,000.
However, this would overstate payroll employment slightly since roughly 6 percent of the workforce is self-employed. If we assume that 6 percent of the increment is also self-employed, this implies that roughly 1,070,000 payroll jobs are needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force, or just under 90,000 a month.
Anyhow, that is how I get my job growth estimate.
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The NYT has been sponsoring a competition between Thomas Friedman and David Brooks to see who can say more silly things about the economy. Brooks has a couple of good entries in today’s column. Brooks told readers that:
“There’s strong evidence to suggest that the rate of technological innovation has been slowing down.”
Actually there is zero evidence to support this assertion. The standard measure of technological innovation is productivity growth. This was close to 3.0 percent annually from 1947 to 1973. It fell to about 1.5 percent from 1973 to 1995. It then increased to 2.5 percent in the years since 1995. Brooks might have a point if he were writing in the late 70s or early 80s, but he isn’t.
He then tells readers the distressing news that:
“nearly all of the job growth over the past 20 years has been in sectors where American workers don’t have to compete with workers overseas.”
This is true and it implies the exact opposite of the sort of genuflection that we get in the rest of Brooks’ piece. Suppose that the United States produces both manufactured goods and professional services (e.g. physicians’ services, lawyers’ services, etc.). Suppose that we prohibit the importation of professional services but promote the importation of manufactured goods with “free-trade” agreements. We would expect that we lose jobs in manufactured goods, although we might continue to generate jobs in professional services.
Let’s take it a step further and imagine that we then jack up the value of the dollar because the tough guys at the Treasury believe in a “strong dollar.” This will make U.S. manufactured goods even more expensive relative to their foreign competition, causing manufacturing employment to decline even further.
There are two simple remedies to the plunge in employment in manufacturing. One would be to open the professional services to international competition. This means eliminating the barriers that protect highly paid professions (e.g. doctors, dentists, lawyers) from international competition. This will make the services that they produce (i.e. medical care) much cheaper for the rest of the country, thereby raising real wages.
Increased imports of professional services will also put downward pressure on the value of the dollar, which gets us to the other simple remedy: get the dollar down. The dollar is the main determinant of the relative price of foreign and domestically produced goods. If we want to generate more jobs in sectors that compete internationally then the key is to make our goods relatively less expensive. This is very simple, although the politics of bringing about a lower valued dollar might be somewhat difficult.
So there you have Brooks’ entries. He has a tirade about a decline in the rate of innovation that does not exist, and he fails to notice the impact of trade barriers and an over-valued dollar on trade. This is pretty good in the missing the boat category, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Thomas Friedman.
The NYT has been sponsoring a competition between Thomas Friedman and David Brooks to see who can say more silly things about the economy. Brooks has a couple of good entries in today’s column. Brooks told readers that:
“There’s strong evidence to suggest that the rate of technological innovation has been slowing down.”
Actually there is zero evidence to support this assertion. The standard measure of technological innovation is productivity growth. This was close to 3.0 percent annually from 1947 to 1973. It fell to about 1.5 percent from 1973 to 1995. It then increased to 2.5 percent in the years since 1995. Brooks might have a point if he were writing in the late 70s or early 80s, but he isn’t.
He then tells readers the distressing news that:
“nearly all of the job growth over the past 20 years has been in sectors where American workers don’t have to compete with workers overseas.”
This is true and it implies the exact opposite of the sort of genuflection that we get in the rest of Brooks’ piece. Suppose that the United States produces both manufactured goods and professional services (e.g. physicians’ services, lawyers’ services, etc.). Suppose that we prohibit the importation of professional services but promote the importation of manufactured goods with “free-trade” agreements. We would expect that we lose jobs in manufactured goods, although we might continue to generate jobs in professional services.
Let’s take it a step further and imagine that we then jack up the value of the dollar because the tough guys at the Treasury believe in a “strong dollar.” This will make U.S. manufactured goods even more expensive relative to their foreign competition, causing manufacturing employment to decline even further.
There are two simple remedies to the plunge in employment in manufacturing. One would be to open the professional services to international competition. This means eliminating the barriers that protect highly paid professions (e.g. doctors, dentists, lawyers) from international competition. This will make the services that they produce (i.e. medical care) much cheaper for the rest of the country, thereby raising real wages.
Increased imports of professional services will also put downward pressure on the value of the dollar, which gets us to the other simple remedy: get the dollar down. The dollar is the main determinant of the relative price of foreign and domestically produced goods. If we want to generate more jobs in sectors that compete internationally then the key is to make our goods relatively less expensive. This is very simple, although the politics of bringing about a lower valued dollar might be somewhat difficult.
So there you have Brooks’ entries. He has a tirade about a decline in the rate of innovation that does not exist, and he fails to notice the impact of trade barriers and an over-valued dollar on trade. This is pretty good in the missing the boat category, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Thomas Friedman.
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The Post reported on a speech that General David Petraeus gave at the ceremony marking his retirement from the military. It noted that he warned against excessive cuts in the military. The piece notes that cuts in the range of $400 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade have been suggested by President Obama and members of Congress.
It would have been helpful to put these numbers in context for readers. The current projections show a baseline where the government will spend just under $8 trillion on the military over the next decade. This is approximately 4 percent of GDP and 17.0 percent of the total budget. (This does not count many military related expenditures like veterans benefits.)
If the larger $1 trillion sum was deducted from projected spending, the country would still be spending roughly 3.5 percent of GDP on the military. By contrast, it was spending just 3.0 percent in 2000. At the time, spending was projected to fall relative to the size of the economy. This means that even with the larger cuts mentioned in the article the country would still be spending far more on the military than was envisioned before the September 11th attacks.
The Post reported on a speech that General David Petraeus gave at the ceremony marking his retirement from the military. It noted that he warned against excessive cuts in the military. The piece notes that cuts in the range of $400 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade have been suggested by President Obama and members of Congress.
It would have been helpful to put these numbers in context for readers. The current projections show a baseline where the government will spend just under $8 trillion on the military over the next decade. This is approximately 4 percent of GDP and 17.0 percent of the total budget. (This does not count many military related expenditures like veterans benefits.)
If the larger $1 trillion sum was deducted from projected spending, the country would still be spending roughly 3.5 percent of GDP on the military. By contrast, it was spending just 3.0 percent in 2000. At the time, spending was projected to fall relative to the size of the economy. This means that even with the larger cuts mentioned in the article the country would still be spending far more on the military than was envisioned before the September 11th attacks.
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The Post notes the division among the members of the Fed’s Open Market Committee over the best course to reduce unemployment and maintain price stability. It then tells readers,
“The Fed will always have its critics, internal as well as external, and that is as it should be in a democracy. It would be more honest, though, if purveyors of economic solutions — whether in Washington, on Wall Street or in the media — displayed a little more humility and a little less certitude.”
It is worth noting that these lines were written by people who are employed at relatively well-paying jobs. People who are not employed or working at low-paying jobs with little security and few benefits might feel more need for action.
It is remarkable that the relatively well-paid Post editorial writers failed to notice the specifics of the division in views at the Fed. There are 5 Federal Reserve district bank presidents who are voting members of the open market committee. For practical purposes, these bank presidents are appointed by the banks within the district. These 5 bank presidents voted 3 to 2 against the statement committing the Fed to maintaining a near zero interest rate for the next two years.
By contrast, the 5 governors, all of whom are appointed by the President (3 appointed by President Obama, 1 appointed by President Bush and 1 [Chairman Bernanke] appointed by both) and approved by Congress voted unanimously in favor of this statement. This remarkable gap between the views of people appointed by democratically elected officials and the views of people selected by the financial industry should have jumped out at anyone reviewing the minutes and the vote.
The financial industry tends to be very concerned about inflation, since this erodes the value of its assets. They are less concerned about unemployment, since top executives in the industry can do very well even in a time of high unemployment. Profits for the financial industry hit a record as a share of corporate profits in 2010. On the other hand, Fed governors who are appointed through the political process are likely to be concerned about unemployment, since this jobs are the primary concern for most people.
This break suggests that it is not just confusion that caused the divisions within the Fed, it was fundamental differences in interests. The Post editorial writers should have been able to see this.
The Post notes the division among the members of the Fed’s Open Market Committee over the best course to reduce unemployment and maintain price stability. It then tells readers,
“The Fed will always have its critics, internal as well as external, and that is as it should be in a democracy. It would be more honest, though, if purveyors of economic solutions — whether in Washington, on Wall Street or in the media — displayed a little more humility and a little less certitude.”
It is worth noting that these lines were written by people who are employed at relatively well-paying jobs. People who are not employed or working at low-paying jobs with little security and few benefits might feel more need for action.
It is remarkable that the relatively well-paid Post editorial writers failed to notice the specifics of the division in views at the Fed. There are 5 Federal Reserve district bank presidents who are voting members of the open market committee. For practical purposes, these bank presidents are appointed by the banks within the district. These 5 bank presidents voted 3 to 2 against the statement committing the Fed to maintaining a near zero interest rate for the next two years.
By contrast, the 5 governors, all of whom are appointed by the President (3 appointed by President Obama, 1 appointed by President Bush and 1 [Chairman Bernanke] appointed by both) and approved by Congress voted unanimously in favor of this statement. This remarkable gap between the views of people appointed by democratically elected officials and the views of people selected by the financial industry should have jumped out at anyone reviewing the minutes and the vote.
The financial industry tends to be very concerned about inflation, since this erodes the value of its assets. They are less concerned about unemployment, since top executives in the industry can do very well even in a time of high unemployment. Profits for the financial industry hit a record as a share of corporate profits in 2010. On the other hand, Fed governors who are appointed through the political process are likely to be concerned about unemployment, since this jobs are the primary concern for most people.
This break suggests that it is not just confusion that caused the divisions within the Fed, it was fundamental differences in interests. The Post editorial writers should have been able to see this.
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That’s what readers of Kate Berry’s articles at American Banker know, why aren’t readers of the NYT, WAPO, and the WSJ learning this? Apparently the servicers are still inventing documents and forging signatures just like nothing ever happened.
That’s what readers of Kate Berry’s articles at American Banker know, why aren’t readers of the NYT, WAPO, and the WSJ learning this? Apparently the servicers are still inventing documents and forging signatures just like nothing ever happened.
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This true statement would have been much better than the sentence in an NYT article on whether disaster relief funding should be offset by other budget cuts that told readers:
“But with the federal debt now more than $14 trillion, the dialogue has shifted on Capitol Hill, and Republicans are under pressure to hold firm on spending.”
It’s not clear that the size of the debt is in any way requiring Republicans to “hold firm” on spending, apart from their own efforts to press the issue. The economic reality is that the debt is posing no problem whatsoever for the government in its efforts to borrow. Long-term interest rates are at the lowest level since the Great Depression.
Furthermore, the economy is in desperate need of additional stimulus. It would have also been reasonable to point out that the Republican efforts to cut other spending at a time when the economy is already suffering from 9.1 percent unemployment.
This true statement would have been much better than the sentence in an NYT article on whether disaster relief funding should be offset by other budget cuts that told readers:
“But with the federal debt now more than $14 trillion, the dialogue has shifted on Capitol Hill, and Republicans are under pressure to hold firm on spending.”
It’s not clear that the size of the debt is in any way requiring Republicans to “hold firm” on spending, apart from their own efforts to press the issue. The economic reality is that the debt is posing no problem whatsoever for the government in its efforts to borrow. Long-term interest rates are at the lowest level since the Great Depression.
Furthermore, the economy is in desperate need of additional stimulus. It would have also been reasonable to point out that the Republican efforts to cut other spending at a time when the economy is already suffering from 9.1 percent unemployment.
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