Yeah, if you put it that way, Obama is a very successful president

December 18, 2014

Got this chart from the national Democrats, The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC):

Obama is a very successful president.

Obama’s presidency is a success, by the GOP’s favorite numbers.

An old friend on Facebook told me he wants verification of the numbers, because he doesn’t feel it. Few of us below the very, very rich feel it — which is what Obama’s been saying, and what Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have been saying in various ways daily.  That’s what the struggle on income inequality is all about.

But the numbers check out.  Go see for yourself (some of the sites I list below update monthly, or daily, so if you’re not looking at this in December 2014, they may vary; look for the link to historic numbers).

I wrote:

Numbers are dated in Consumer Confidence (but much higher than I thought! See below).

But the other numbers are well published.

Dow Jones Index plugged at least nightly on NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS — hourly at least on CNN and MSNBC (I don’t get the latter two).

http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/historical/djia1900.html

Unemployment is updated monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and again, plugged on national news when it happens.

http://www.bls.gov/bls/unemployment.htm

GDP growth:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG
and
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/glance.htm

US deficits as % of GDP:

Bloomberg press report:
http://www.bloomberg.com/…/u-s-deficit-decline-to-2-8…

St. Louis Branch, Federal Reserve:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FYFSGDA188S

Consumer Confidence is tracked by the anti-Obama Conference Board:

http://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerdata.cfm

Reuters report on October Consumer Confidence report:

http://www.reuters.com/…/us-usa-economy-confidence…

As a socialist anti-free market guy, Obama is the worst in history.

Now will you listen to Obama when he tells you that we need to do something OTHER than what the GOP says, to make the growth something YOU feel? Please?

So tomorrow, and every day until January 21, 2017, when your very conservative and otherwise not stupid friends tell you we must “cut government” because “America can’t afford to be great any longer,” instead of flipping them the bird like you usually do, send them here to get the links to look at the numbers for themselves.

Don’t take my word for it, nor the DCCC’s word for it. Look for yourself, using the sites I’ve listed above.

Now ask: Why can’t Congress figure this out, and give Obama some support?

4 Comments | Deficits, Employment, History, Income Distribution, Income Inequality, President Obama, Stock Markets | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What happens when “austerity” budget cutting blows up on the GOP? See Kansas

July 8, 2014

Kansas finds itself in a big, big pickle.

Republican Governor Sam Brownback managed to get the legislature to make massive tax cuts, claiming it would boost jobs in Kansas and stimulate the Kansas economy, thereby  paying for themselves.

Instead the Kansas economy is failing. Massive cuts have gutted Kansas’s once-revered public education system, and deeper cuts will be necessary to keep the state government afloat, unless there is some change in tax policy, or a massive, miraculous influx of business beyond what even the Koch Bros. could arrange.

Gov. Brownback is running for re-election, and finds himself behind in popularity in Kansas — behind even President Barack Obama.

Wow.

Full story at Vox, “Kansas was supposed to be the GOP’s tax-cut paradise, but now can barely pay its bills.”

And of course, there is comedy of the kind that you couldn’t make up:  Brownback blames Obama.

Oy.

Chart from Vox, showing what happened to Kansas's surplus revenues, promised to balloon with the tax cuts Gov. Brownback asked for, and got.

Chart from Vox, showing what happened to Kansas’s surplus revenues, promised to balloon with the tax cuts Gov. Brownback asked for, and got.

Turns out Americans, and especially the citizens of Kansas, want government that works.  They’d like taxes to be low, but low taxes won’t make voters happy when the roads are bad and the kids’ schools are crappy.

Wonkblog's chart showing job creation in Kansas is terrible, also.

Wonkblog’s chart showing job creation in Kansas is lagging, also, contrary to the GOP promises when tax cuts were instituted.

Government’s first job is to govern; just governments are established among men to secure human rights, old Tom Jefferson wrote.  Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness make a snappy line in a patriotic reading on July 4, but when the crowd drives home, they don’t want to be dodging potholes, and they don’t want their kids to complain from the back seat of the car that they don’t know what the Declaration of Independence is or what it says, “and who is Jefferson — I thought it was just a street in Dallas?”  When government fails to do basic jobs, voters may not be happy.

Will false advertising be able to bail Sam Brownback out?  Watch Kansas.

More:

31 Comments | Economics, Employment, Politics, Taxes | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hey, Congress! Fix the roads!

April 24, 2014

Just a crazy idea, I know: But do you think Congress could pass a bill to help the states fix potholes in federal highways, make the thousands of decrepit bridges, safe, and put a few thousands of people to work?

Economist wrote:

ONLY the drunk, they say, drive in a straight line in Chicago. The sober zigzag to avoid falling into the city’s axle-breaking potholes. This year the craters, caused by continual freezing and thawing, are worse than ever, and the spring thaw has brought three times the usual number of complaints from citizens.

As winter retreats, holes in roads and budgets are being revealed—especially in midwestern states, which were hit hard by the polar vortex. Those states with money have made emergency appropriations for repairs; those without will have to cut summer programmes. This means not mowing the grass in parks or picking up litter. It also means delaying resurfacing of highways or fixing guard rails, and putting off capital spending.

Looking after America’s roads is a persistent headache. Although $91 billion is spent on them every year, that is nowhere near enough to keep the country’s 4.1m miles (6.6m km) of public roadways in good nick. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that $170 billion in capital investment is needed every year. Last year a report from a civil-engineering group said that 32% of America’s major roads were in poor or mediocre condition. Main roads through cities were in worst shape: almost half the miles travelled over urban interstates in 2013 were a bumpy ride. Ray LaHood, a former transport secretary, thinks the roads are probably in the worst shape they have ever been.

Is it too big a stretch to go back to the hopes in 2009, that we might get a jobs bill to fix this stuff?  Yeah, it’s 2014 — and the roads, and the American people, need a jobs bill more than ever.

Photo from The Atlantic

Photo from The Atlantic

More:

12 Comments | Economics, Employment, Politics, Public Works, Roads | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

You need to watch this: Paul Krugman, ‘Jobs NOW, the key to our recovery’

January 15, 2013

As so often the case, Bill Moyers finds THE expert, who has the real answers.  Hint:  Cutting deficits now could bring economic disaster; Paul Krugman carefully and clearly explains why.

Description at Vimeo:

Krugman's book End This Depression Now!

Cover of Paul Krugman’s book, End This Depression Now!

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains why our top priority should be getting America back to work – if only Congress and the President would stop throwing distractions in the way. He also details the catastrophic impact the economic downturn continues to have on average Americans, as well as avenues of hope and recovery. Krugman’s latest book, End This Depression Now!, is both a warning of the fiscal perils ahead and a prescription to safely avoid them.

Yeah, yeah, I know — this thing is 47 minutes long!  Watch ten minutes now, and come back to it.

It’s only the fate of our nation, and the planet, that rides on this information.

Moyers explained on his blog:

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that saving money is not the path to economic recovery. Instead, he tells Bill, we should put aside our excessive focus on the deficit, try to overcome political recalcitrance, and spend money to put America back to work. Krugman offers specific solutions to not only end what he calls a “vast, unnecessary catastrophe,” but to do it more quickly than some imagine possible. His latest book, End This Depression Now!, is both a warning of the fiscal perils ahead and a prescription to safely avoid them.

Some moments from the conversation:

ON JACK LEW, NOT KRUGMAN HIMSELF, AS POSSIBLY THE NEXT TREASURY SECRETARY
“I probably have more influence doing what I do now than I would if I were inside trying to do the court power games that come with any White House, which I don’t think I’d be any good at… What the president needs right now is he needs a hard-nosed negotiator. And rumor has it that’s what he’s got.” Watch this clip.

ON SAVING VERSUS SPENDING
“We’re awash in excess savings. And if you decide to save more, it’s not actually going to help society… If there’s one crucial thing to understand about all this it is that the global economy, money moves around in a circle. And my spending is your income, and your spending is my income. And if all of us try to spend less because we want to save more, we don’t succeed. All we end up doing is creating a global depression… the thing that all the evidence of history says works in a situation like this is the private sector won’t spend, government can step in and provide the spending that we need in order to keep this economy afloat.”

ON THE POWER OF JOB CREATION
“The only obstacles to putting people to work, to having those lives restored, to producing hundreds of billions, probably $900 billion a year or so of extra valuable stuff in our economy, is in our minds. If I could somehow convince the members of Congress and the usual suspects that deficit spending, for the time being, is okay, and that what we really need is a big job creation program, and let’s worry about the deficit after we’ve had a solid recovery, it would all be over. It would be no problem at all… All the productive capacity is there. All that’s lacking is the intellectual clarity and the political will.”

ON WHAT SHOULD BE OBAMA’S ECONOMIC PRIORITY
“[Obama’s] policy priority right now should be doing whatever he can to at least move in the direction of the kinds of policies that we want for full employment, that we need for full employment. And that the obsessions of Washington about a grand bargain on the deficit are really pretty much beside the point right now. That, if given a choice between doing something that will help the economy in the next two years, and something that will allegedly settle our budget problems for all, you know, for all time, which it wouldn’t, that he should go for the stuff that will help the economy now…

Great Depression

In the Great Depression, people listened to Franklin D. Roosevelt urge full employment, on their radios; this statue is part of the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C. – Photo credit: Koshyk

We happen to have a very intelligent man as president. He’s for real. And he does understand. You can have real discussions with him. And I think he understands that, although things have improved some… it’s a glacial pace, compared with the way we should be… We cannot allow ourselves to be blackmailed into spending cuts, partly because blackmail should not be part of how the U.S. operates, and partly because spending cuts would be disastrous right now. So Obama’s right to say he doesn’t negotiate. I’d like to know exactly what he will do if it turns out that there is not a quorum of sane people in the Republican party.”

ON THE LONG-TERM DAMAGE OF A BAD JOB MARKET
“We have pretty good evidence on how long does it take to make up for the fact that you happen to graduate from college into a bad labor market. And the answer is forever… You’ll miss years getting onto the career ladder. By the time you get a chance to get a job that makes any sense, you know, that makes any use of your skills, you will already be tarred as somebody, ‘Well, you’re 28 years old and you haven’t held a responsible position?’ ‘Well, yeah, I couldn’t because there were no jobs.’ It just shadows your whole life. And it’s very clear in the evidence from past recessions, which have been nowhere near as bad as this one.” Watch this clip.

ON COVERING BOTH THE ECONOMY AND POLITICS
“If you write about economics right now and implicitly adopt the perspective, ‘Well, let’s get reasonable people together in Washington and reach a solution here,’ you’re paying no attention to reality. And, of course, if you talk about the politics without talking about the economics, you’re also missing everything. So how could I not be writing about both?”

More:

5 Comments | Economics, Employment, Politics, Taxes | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

12 million jobs — but not until when?

October 16, 2012

Oy.

It’s extraordinary to consider with just three weeks until Election Day, but Mitt Romney’s central argument to voters has been exposed as a total fraud.

Greg Sargent added, “Let’s recap what Kessler has discovered here. The plan that is central to Romney’s candidacy on the most important issue of this election — jobs — is a complete sham. This is every bit as bad — or worse — than Romney’s claim to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, or his vow to cut spending by eliminating whole agencies without saying which ones, or his refusal to say how he’ll pay for his tax cuts.”

Obama’s budget NOW creates 12 million jobs in the next four years, according to projections.  Romney?  He stretches it out to ten years, but reduces the job creation, so it’s 2.5 times as long to get the same number of jobs.  Say what?  Romney’s plan reduces the number of jobs created by cutting the rate at which they are created.

Read more at Rachel Maddow’s blog, with links to the actual studies.  Maddow links to Greg Sargent’s blog, The Plum Line, at The Washington Post. 12 million jobs, Mitt Romney, economy, Bain Capital

More:

Leave a Comment » | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, Economics, Elections, Employment | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How do you know it’s as bad as it is?

March 20, 2009

My father lived through the Great Depression.  That was what we noted whenever he cheered when somebody got a job with the Post Office.  “It’s a steady job,” he’d say.  “The Post Office doesn’t lay people off.  They have good health care, and a pension.”

That was then.  My father died in 1988.

This is now.

Yeah, it’s that bad.

3 Comments | Economics, Employment, Government, Great Depression, History | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

California unemployment map, for economics classrooms

March 20, 2009

The Sacramento Bee, one of America’s great newspapers which we hope can stay in business through these tough times, today put up a map of California unemployment, county by county.  The map shows unemployment changes over the past year with an interactive slide that makes it great for classroom use in economics, but makes it impossible for me to embed here (it’s in Adobe Flash).

California’s unemployment is at about 11% statewide.  Colusa County’s unemployment is 26.6%.  Two counties away, in Marin County, it’s only 6.8%

California economics classes can use their knowledge of agriculture and industry in the state to make educated guesses about what is going on in each county.  Surely there are uses the rest of us can find.  Colusa and Imperial Counties are two of the hardest hit — with the internet, can your students tell what that is going to mean for prices on fresh produce and processed foods?

This is where computers and the internet step out ahead in the education tilts, with tools like this interactive map.  Thank you, SacBee.  Can you give teachers a download?

Another unemployment map, national, for December 2008, The Swordpress

Another unemployment map, national, for December 2008, The Swordpress

Leave a Comment » | Classroom technology, Economics, Employment, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Internet, Maps, Newspapers, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Republicans: ‘Sorry, we can’t afford to save America’

February 8, 2009

Krugman’s got his figures half-way done, and the numbers already show that the stimulus package Congress has before it is too small to do the job.

Obama had the right view:  Yes, there is a lot of spending, that’s what a stimulus package is all about.

But the Republicans refused to budge.  ‘Can’t use the ring-buoy to save the drowning nation — the rope might get wet.  If we pulled it in, we’d have to pull it into the boat, and the boat would get wet.  Why not leave it in the water a while longer — we can recover the body with a dredge, it will look pretty much like it looks now.  What’s the problem?’

At his blog at the New York Times site, Krugman lays it out concisely:

I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.

According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

Is there any economist who thinks the situation is not so dire, or that this legislation spends enough money?

Politics triumphs over economics, common sense and national welfare, once again.

Call your Congressional representatives, let ’em know your thoughts.

Update: I regret I didn’t make the connection earlier — go read “The Pony Chokers” at Edge of the West. Don’t let stiff-necked Congressional representatives choke your pony.

29 Comments | Economics, Employment, Politics, President Obama, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Economics: Tracking layoffs

January 28, 2009

Economics students doing reports or projects on employment or unemployment rates?

Need something depressing?

Check out Layoff Daily.

Let’s hope they run out of news, very, very soon.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Californian in Texas.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Capitalism, Capturing history, Economics, Free market economics, Government, Labor and unions, Student projects | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Robert Reich: Prophet? Or just a very good observer?

September 21, 2008

Is Robert Reich a prophet, an economic and employment Jonah sent to Nineveh-on-the-Potomac?

Read Reich’s remarks, about the economics conditions of most Americans, including people in Pennsylvania, and Barack Obama’s observation that some people left behind by our economy are bitter.

Especially read the final three paragraphs, where he warns we are headed into even more turbulent economic waters.

Now notice the date of that piece.

What is your definition of “prophet?”

4 Comments | Barack Obama, Campaigns, Economics, History, Obama 2008, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into technology

September 18, 2008

Hewlett-Packard announced plans to cut thousands of jobs from tech consulting giant EDS, in Plano, Texas.

About 25,000 people will lose jobs in the next 36 months under plans from HP.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Technology, Texas | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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