The article started with the usual liberal routine of blaming Bush for Obama’s failure, crediting Obama with “steering us through” the Great Recession, and then assuring us that this time the economy really is finally working and growing and everything is going fine. Pro forma bullshill from the left. What interested me was that it then lamented the fact that despite all of that, Obama’s economic legacy is going to be crappy. Aww.
According to the Commerce Department, the economy grew at 3.2% in the final quarter of 2013. They are hoping for 4.1% growth through the summer. Yet, even if these numbers hold up, Obama’s numbers won’t be anywhere near as good as Clinton’s numbers or Bush W’s numbers... and forget Reagan’s numbers! Consider these:
● Up to now over the first five years of his presidency, the Obamaconomy has grown by an anemic 1.8%. Over Clinton’s first five years, the economy grew 3.6%. Bush’s first five years saw 2.5%.But hey, Wall Street doubled under Obama.
● Disposable income, i.e. what you can spend after taking care of your needs, rose a pathetic 0.6% annually under Obama. Clinton and Bush both saw 2% growth each year.
● Unemployment is currently at a five year best at 6.7% (more on this in a moment). Obama's worst was 10.09% and he spent most of his term in the 9% range. By comparison, unemployment under Bush and Clinton was 4.7% at this point, and the worst Bush ever got was 6.5% in one month. In other words, Obama has yet to achieve a best that is better than Bush’s worst and he spent most of his time with an unemployment rate that is about 1.5 times the worst Bush ever had.
Indeed, let me point out this too. Obama is talking about income inequality, which is a much stronger issue than conservatives want to believe (we need to capture and define this issue), but income inequality has spiked under his reign to the worst since the 1920s. Black unemployment has been at or near all-time highs. Youth unemployment has been at or near all time highs. Etc.
And then there’s this...
While Obama is touting his amazing 6.7% unemployment rate... a rate that is still worse than the worst the evil Bush ever achieved, the primary reason this number has been falling is that people are dropping out of the workforce rather than getting jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, if you count the people who gave up looking and thus get excluded from the official unemployment figures, the true unemployment number would be more than 11%.
Nice.
There’s Obama’s legacy: twice as crappy as Bush.
Funny how the media can't decide whether Wall Street does or does not reflect the economy.
ReplyDeleteWell, there are a lot of factors to consider: (1) will it help the Democrats to say so.
ReplyDeleteOT: By the way, a few weeks back, I spoke about Gene Autry and how genuinely nice guys not only get people's respect but become hugely successful because of the way they think and the way people respond to them.
ReplyDeletePete Caroll of the Seahawks is one of those people. Read this article and you might be surprised. The conventional wisdom is that you need to run an NFL team like some 17th Century Warship, but Caroll showed that you can get better results with respect and caring about your people. It's an interesting read. LINK
No surprise here. People have been told for years that the 'recovery' is ongoing. That may be technically true, but no one in real life feels it/believes it.
ReplyDeleteIncome Inequality - I don't disagree that this is a potentially big issue, particularly since it has been adopted by the Obama Administration and it's allied media (e.g. +90%) as the "official" distraction issue to try and salvage voter discontent. Make no mistake, the propaganda will continue non-stop, and it is the kind of issue that when framed properly can strike a chord. In the Quinnipiac University poll released January 22nd, the 3 most important issues were 1) health care, 2) jobs, 3) the economy in general. Only 1% of the respondents listed income or class equality as an important issue. Look for the Democrats to work har to increase that number as the year progresses.
ReplyDeleteIdentification of classes of voters as victims has been a tactic of Democrats for years. It has seen as a success particularly when Republicans do such a poor job of defining their own position. That issue has, of course, been discussed at this site numerous times.
ReplyDeleteTJ - I don't think Andrew means income inequality is a real issue in the merely political sense, but in the really real sense. As in, it will impact people and the nation whether they care about it or not. Kinda like foreign policy
ReplyDeleteRemember when everyone complained about Bush's "jobless recovery"? This is what a jobless recovery really looks like.
ReplyDeleteThe only time the Democracts like to point to Wall Street for anything is when their people are in the White House and the market is doing well,,,I was a stockbroker for 10 years and I can tell you that the market can be doing well for many reasons, not all are related to the economy in general or who is in the WH.
ReplyDeletetryanmax - it is both a real issue, and a political issue. I have always believed that free market capitalism generates wealth better than any other economic system. It's weakness is that it tends to concentrate that wealth in fewer and fewer hands. The opposite notion, e.g. government controlling and distributing wealth tends to stifle individual initiative. Say what one will about George W. Bush, he understood that business is a good thing, but Wall Street, not so much. Wall Street has focused management's focus and allegiance on stock price and large shareholders. Government and wealth = power. They go hand in hand and breed corruption. Corporations try and stack the deck in the favor of a few. This is why American workers have lived with corporate lay-offs, and associate jobless recovery with Republicans and not Democrats.Hence the need to address the the very real issue of helping American workers while remaining mindful we must try and keep globally competitive. It is hard to compete with, say, the Chines on unskilled labor costs. Better to educate as much of the workforce as possible to encourage business innovation and jobs with skill sets that are harder to duplicate. There always will be, of course, a business cycle.
ReplyDeleteAnthony, It's not a surprise. What is the surprise to me is that a liberal journalist realizes/admits that Obama isn't going to be remembered as having a good economic record. That's an interesting admission.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I was surprised that Obama's record is that much worse than Bush's record. I knew Bush wasn't as bad as the MSM paints him economically, but for his worst (which happened in only a couple months near the end) to be better than Obama's best is interesting.
Koshcat, So true. This has been a jobless administration and you can see the effects of that all around... even if Wall Street and Washington pretend that everything is good.
ReplyDeleteTJ - I get all that. I'm just saying it's a mistake to write it off as an issue just b/c Democrats are wanting to take it up. That's an error that Republicans, conservatives and especially talk radio love to make.
ReplyDeleteCritch, Exactly. And I'll tell you what, from what I've seen, the market does best in bad times. I can't explain it, but the market seems to love recessions -- probably because companies work harder on making their share price look good in bad times.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I read an interesting article the other day which said that the primary reason (after Fed handouts) for the market to be up is that companies are buying back shares in record numbers which makes their earnings per share soar, even as their revenues fall.
Put another way, here is how we don't want conservatism to look from the outside (and sorta how it does):
ReplyDelete1. Ignore/deny all problems.
2. Let liberals propose solutions.
3. Oppose solutions - offer no alternatives.
Jed and tryanmax, On "income inequality"....
ReplyDeleteFirst, this is a real problem that is becoming a political problem, and we are going to get run over with the way our side plays it.
The problem for our side is that we embrace everything that is upsetting the public under the false belief that this is all part of capitalism -- it's not, this is a government and Big Business created problem. It is the result of cronyism.
Secondly, our side is blind to this because (1) they knee-jerk oppose everything the left does and the left has seized this issue under the umbrella of "income inequality." (2) And our side wrongly relies on polls that say that the public doesn't rate "income equality" as a high concern.
This misreads the public in a fundamental way. Before I explain, let me give you an analogy. If you asked the public how important "Gender Equality" is in the same poll, you would probably find 1% rate it, if that. But do you really think this means the public doesn't care about women having equal rights under the law or job protections? Of course not. There is a disconnect here. And it's the reason for the disconnect that is important.
The reason for the disconnect "Gender Equality" is a meaningless umbrella term that is simultaneously too broad and too narrow for the public to support it. In other words, no one knows what it really means, i.e. how far would this go and what shape would it take. Would it include issues I like? Would it include issues I don't? What power would this give the Democrats? It's like being asked, "Would you like the Democrats to make things better?" Uh, no.
(continued)
ReplyDeleteNow keeping that in mind, consider the polls again. There have been several where the public ranks "income inequality" very lowly. And the reason for that is that "income inequality" is a meaningless umbrella term invented by the left to act as a code word for redistribution. The term does not provide a precise meaning for how unequal would be considered unequal nor does it provide any sort of limits on the solution, i.e. what exactly are the Democrats asking for. Would everyone get the same pay? Would it matter if I worked longer? Would this be one of those "everyone is equal except the groups the liberals like who get more"? What exactly would the Democrats do to fix this? Etc. Some people will hear this as socialism. Others will hear it as ticky-tacky trying to makes sure that they and their coworkers earn the identical wages. Others will hear it as nonsense. But no one will have any idea what it means. Who's going to support that?
But when you take "income equality" apart into its component pieces, you find some very different things. What you find are poll numbers that say in the 60%-80% range that (1) middle class is getting screwed and isn't represented in Washington, (2) Big Business is too powerful and doesn't have the interests of workers or the country in mind, (3) Wall Street is a menace, (4) lawyers are a menace, (5) people are less secure in their own jobs/incomes, (6) income growth is anemic, (7) people no longer believe the rich earn their income, (8) people no longer believe that hard work will be rewarded, (9) people believe the stock market is rigged, (10) they believe the housing bubble is the result of Big Business and Big Government screwing us, etc. These things show up in poll after poll and they are growing, not receding.
Ok, you say, so people think this way, but maybe they don't really intend to act on any of this. Could be. Except I would suggest to you that the rise of the fringes, both left and right, is the direct result of this issue. Indeed, these issues are at the very heart of both the Tea Party movement and OWS and voter apathy. Yet, none of those groups would say their goal is "income equality." To the contrary, they describe the same thing but at the symptom level -- they complain about fairness, common sense, cronyism, the damaged middle class, etc.
(continued)
(continued)
ReplyDeleteNow, is this a real problem or an imagined problem? Well, it's a real problem first, and here it is.
(continued)
As I see it, the problem is this. For decades now, probably starting in the 1960s, our government has done two things. First, it's made employees more expensive with pointless regulations. Secondly, it's made starting businesses harder and more expensive with similarly pointless regulations. The result has been a shift in "quality" jobs overseas, i.e. jobs with middle class incomes and potential for moving up the ladder. The lower middle class lost the factory jobs and the upper middle class lost the mid-level management jobs.
Some of this would have happened anyway with technology, but the effects would have been much less severe if we didn’t impose so many regulations and taxes as to make it really expensive to hire Americans.
Then it gets worse. Rather than fighting this, Big Business latched onto this. They realized they could boost their balance sheets by outsourcing and moving assets overseas. They also learned that they could shut down their competitors with the right regulations. So they joined the government in imposing this massive regulatory scheme on America, causing everything to snowball.
Then the finance guys and the legal guys realized they could write the laws in such a way to inject themselves into everything as middle men and rape the crap out of the country. All the money that in the past went to expand plants or hire people now vanished as fees to these middle men... all with the help of the government. This group also began taking risks with taxpayer backing (heads I win, tails I still win and you lose), they changed laws to enslave most middle class people to banks (student loans, housing), they’ve rigged the stock market (and to a degree the housing market), and they’ve disrupted the economy with a series of speculative bubbles, each of which has crushed the public while leading to all-time profits for the people who caused the problem... unless you worked for sacrificial lamb Lehman Brothers.
The result has been job flight overseas, a burst housing bubble, a half dozen burst stock bubbles, bank bailouts, Big Business bailouts... and record profits which go to a tiny few who caused the mess we are subsidizing. On the other hand, the middle class has found there is no ladder to the top, you need to find ways to hop (like going to law school), their incomes are shrinking in real terms, and nothing they own is secure. In effect, there are three Americas (to borrow from Edwards) – the middle class who are struggling and losing, the smarter middle class who hopped their way into the class that services the rich, and the ultra-crony-rich, i.e. Warren Buffet, G.E., etc.
Even worse, every time the government has acted to help its friends, be they the poor welfare class (Democratic clients) or the rich corporate welfare class (Democratic and Republican clients), they’ve done it by imposing more taxes and hidden taxes on the middle class.
These are very real problems which will lead to political chaos. You can only whip people so long before they turn the whips on you. And how they do that will be up to them. Will they vote for some whacko communist who upends they system? Will they turn terrorist? Will they simply quit and let the system crush under trying to support them? History suggests it will ugly. History also suggests that the Republicans can head this off now by fixing it. But if they don’t, they will be the first victims of the new order.
So that is why I see this as a real problem that is becoming a political problem.
Finally, let me say that I am not a doomsdayist. The government won't go bankrupt, the economy isn't going to collapse. That's a jerkoff fantasy for the fringe.
ReplyDeleteBut I can tell you that attitudes are what matter. And right now, we are at an inflection point where attitudes are changing -- the middle class has lost faith in the system. And if the Republicans truly like what America has stood for, then they better get off their butts and recognize this issue or they are going to have no say over what the new attitude will be.
I have seen the public make this kind of shift in the past on issues like environmentalism and smoking, and each time the GOP got caught with their pants down because they fundamentally misunderstood what was upsetting the public and they just parroted the "establishment" line. And on both issues, the GOP remains essentially irrelevant to the public to this day.
One of the things that led to Rome's political instability in the 1st Century BCE and the eventual Roman Civil War that ended the Republic was a severe economic situation created by greedy landowners who bought up land owned by Roman soldiers that had gone bankrupt while the soldiers were away (soldiers had to serve until the campaign was over). The result was massive wealth inequality with lots of landless people, quite a few of whom were veterans. You can see a problem here.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note: I find the parallels between the Depression era and now interesting and kind of in reverse. Where as the stock market crash coincided with a major catastrophic drought in the Midwest mainly Oklahoma, that cause thousands of farmers to be displaced during the "Dust Bowl" migration west.
ReplyDeleteNow California is having its own "Dust Bowl" drought situation that may drive those people back to the Midwest. Grapes of Wrath in reverse.
Kit, Exactly. Extreme income inequality (much worse than we have) has been the cause of several revolutions and is pretty much behind the problems in places like South America and Africa. Stable countries have stable middle classes.
ReplyDeleteBev, There are a lot of interesting parallels to the era. Most interesting to me is that Obama tried to solve the problems in the same way FDR did and it didn't work, just like it didn't work then.
ReplyDeleteNice rant, Andrew! Loved it!
ReplyDeleteI think the hardest part to getting anywhere is that one of the fastest growing sector to serve the rich is the bureaucrats. They are more entrenched than a tick on a hound dog. What the IRS issue has shown is that even when they individual workers admit it was going on, there still hasn't been any punishment. It has gone nowhere and now you have el presidente dingleberry claiming that it was all made up by Fox news.
Thanks Koshcat. :)
ReplyDeleteAgreed. The bureaucracy becomes entrenched and becomes a class unto itself, another interest group to be subsidized. And to keep it happy and growing, the government lets the bureaucracy intrude more and more into private life.
BTW, Jed and tryanmax, My answer is apparently more rantish than I intended -- a couple people have called it a rant now. No offense was intended to either of you. I was just laying out what I see as the problem and I wasn't meaning it as a rebuke to anyone. :-)
ReplyDelete“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” ―Oscar Wilde
ReplyDeleteThere are good rants and crazy rants. This wasn't the crazy type.
ReplyDeleteKit-
ReplyDeleteToo scary. Wasn't that said over 100 years ago?
Ok, good. I was starting to worry this had been a crazy rant. LOL!
ReplyDeleteIt was a pretty good rant, Andrew.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kit! :)
ReplyDeleteLooking back though, I am dismayed at the typos. Typos are the bane of my existence. :(
Andrew - re: the typos. It is not you, it is your computer. No really, I have the same problem and I swear my computer leaves words out and changes the spelling on purpose. Revenge or something.
ReplyDeleteKit - Oscar Wilde has a quotable quote for just about every occasion.
ReplyDeleteat a freaking rant!!!! :) Seriously, although it took me longer to read than the original article, it certainly didn't offend me. Nothing you said really was at odds with what I was stating either. Well, perhaps you are more optimistic than me. I don't really see the Republicans willing to address the problem
ReplyDeletefirst word was supposed to be "what"
ReplyDeleteBev, I think you're right. At least, I like to think you're right... it's the computer!
ReplyDeleteJed, Sadly, I don't know if I'm any more optimistic than you. I think what they need to do is obvious, but what they will do is probably not the right the thing.
ReplyDeleteTypos aren't nearly as sinister as auto-correct. (More like "auto-mistake.")
ReplyDeleteYeah, you get some pretty funny things when auto-correct gets in the mood.
ReplyDelete