If you read only one op-ed today, I'd recommend this item from Obama campaign advisor Jeffrey Liebman in the Wall Street Journal. It's tough to summarize the nature of the debate over jobs and its connection to the presidential race in 800 words, but Liebman, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, pulls it together nicely.
The defense of President Obama's jobs agenda is pretty straightforward: the economy lacks demand, is held back by public-sector layoffs, and desperately needs infrastructure investments, and the White House plan addresses exactly what's ailing us. But what stands out is Liebman's assessment of the president's challenger.
What would Gov. Romney do to create jobs now? In a word, nothing. In fact, the proposals he has put forward would slow the recovery, reversing the gains we have made since the recession ended.
Gov. Romney himself has acknowledged that excessive spending cuts can have a damaging impact on the economy.... If Gov. Romney is correct about the impact of spending cuts, then the House budget, which cuts spending by $187 billion in 2013 relative to the president's budget, would reduce economic output by about 1%. That would shrink employment next year by more than one million jobs.
The rest of Gov. Romney's economic agenda -- $5 trillion in deficit-increasing tax cuts with no plausible path to pay for them, divesting from clean energy, and repealing rules of the road for Wall Street -- would almost certainly undermine confidence in the U.S. economy and reduce employment further. But even if you dismiss this risk, what is clear is that there is no plausible argument for how Mr. Romney's policies would address the jobs crisis we face today.
That strikes me as unambiguously true. In fact, in my dream, head-in-the-clouds, hopelessly-naive vision of how the 2012 presidential race should play out, voters would be presented with two competing options on the nation's top issue: Obama would explain the economic benefits of his plan, while Romney would highlight the benefits of his plan.
Voters would consider the two options and choose the superior plan.
Of course, at least at this point, that's impossible -- not because voters wouldn't bother to evaluate two competing economic agendas, but because Romney doesn't dare offer a detailed plan. As Ari Berman recently put it, "Obama Has a Jobs Plan. Romney Doesn't."
This isn't to say Romney's platform is a complete mystery. We know from his speeches, ads, and website what he intends to do in a general sense: roll back access to health care, slash taxes, increase military spending, relax Wall Street safeguards, expand oil drilling, etc. The Republican candidate avoids specifics and policy details, but we can analyze Romney's intended plan based on the broad outline.
We can also take what we know and determine whether Romney's approach would lower unemployment. There's no great mystery here: while independent analysis found Obama's Americans Jobs Act would create as many as 1.9 million jobs in 2012, independent analysis also finds that Romney really doesn't have a jobs plan at all.
As Greg Sargent recently talked to two nonpartisan economists about Romney's stated goals.
"Are all these things going to reduce the unemployment rate from eight to five in two years? No," Joel Prakken, the chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, tells me. He described Romney's ideas as a "a bundle of reasonable policy proposals that could well stimulate the economy from the supply side over a number of years, but would do little to stimulate aggregate demand in the short run. The reason that unemployment is as high as it is is inadequate aggregate demand, not inadequate supply."
"On net, all of these [Romney] policies would do more harm in the short term," added Mark Hopkins, a senior adviser at Moody's Analytics. "If we implemented all of his policies, it would push us deeper into recession and make the recovery slower."
If Romney and his team disagree, no problem. I propose a simple challenge: both major party campaigns should produce detailed jobs plans, then allow independent economists to scrutinize them and publish the results. May be the better agenda win.
I think Team Obama is up for it. How about Team Romney?
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Yeah, what in the world do we need this man for? A horror movie ending. History repeats itself and the characters are all the same except the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Romney is now throwing the Tea off the ship, and The partiers are just standing there in dismay, knowing they were uninvited to the The Rich mans' Ball. It's a Ballroom Blitz.
I've heard this argument before "Less government spending actually creates less jobs"
What does deficit spending do? Do you know that at the current rate, every dollar the government spends that it does not have has attached to it INFINITE interest and will NEVER be repaid.
Can't imaging that could be good for the economy or jobs. How about cutting spending AND paying down the debt....OMG what a concept!
FromDownHere - so how do you propose we fix crumbling infrastructure such as public highways and bridges? How do we improve on a lagging public education system? The list goes on; are you saying nothing should be done about those? Because we can't fix them without allocating resources (i.e., spending) to do so. The private sector isn't going to do it just out of the goodness of their hearts.
You don't think putting people back to work to do those things would increase overall demand for goods and services, injecting any money into the economy?
The implication of your comments is that fixing these things would have to be done through deficit spending. Why does it have to be deficit spending? why can't either a balanced budget be drawn up to address those things, or some method of collecting enough revenue be found? We were doing fine with the tax rates we had under Clinton; why not go back to those? Better yet, why not end tax subsidies and close loopholes for "people" like oil companies, who pull in record profits with each passing fiscal quarter? OMG - what a concept!
You DO see what austerity measures are doing to Europe, don't you?
Ah, the old deficit and budget discussion, are we back to that? Haven't you got anymore smoking mirrors or tricks in your bag to try? Why not the Lady in the Red dress, that's a good one. But, who will it be? The President himself, no that one's been tried. How about Biden, could he be playing with fire?
If you assume that bridges, water and sewer systems will have to be repaired (vs letting them collapse and become useless) then the only question becomes whether to:
Bear in mind that currently interest rates on Treasuries are less than inflation -- in effect, the market is paying the Treasury to move spending forward.
What does deficit spending do? It creates jobs. People with jobs create demand for goods and services, demand for goods and services create more demand, which creates more jobs, all of which increases the growth of GNP and increases tax revenues, increasing tax revenue reduces the deficit.
That's how it's worked, recession, after recession, after recession, including the Reagan and Bush II recessions, since the country gave Herbert Hoover and the Republicans--who, quite literally subscribed to and applied your theory--their walking papers in 1932.
Take a look at Greece, Ireland, and Britain right now if you want to see how slashing government spending during a recession works out.
Give Wall st. and The Large Corporations the bill for once, they created this mess, with their speculations. Shame on them, letting their minds and souls turn to gold and displaying the disease of greed. Money is truly the root of all evil.Let those with all the money fix the roads and the bridges that deliver thier goods and services to many. Let them start catering to the poor and to the Salvation Army they oughta be on their knees begging to help the less fortunate in this Country. And while we're at it we should ask Bush to start footing the bill to pay for all the veteran's bills, him and Cheney oughta be able to donate all their money to that great cause. But, will they, no. They would much rather take a few more courses at Rove and Norquists' school of Scams.
I'm sure everyone here has heard what taxing the top 10% - 100% of their income will do for the deficit. Literally 4 weeks of deficit spending with no application to the interest. This problem is so enormous I don't think you get it.
So I suppose you want the bottom 90% to carry the burden? I'll let you do that, but for me?
No thank you!
"Short-term Stimulus with Long-Term Deficit Reduction".
Look back at previous recessions and you will notice that in each case Federal Spending increased to support government jobs and for infrastructure.
This was the commonly accepted, bi-partisan, specifically Republican approved action to take.
We are historically really good at Short-term Stimulus.
You can, however, make the argument that we are really really bad at the other piece - long-term deficit reduction. It's easy to spend to address a crisis (swipe the credit card) - much harder to make the adjustments to pay off the bill.
My opinion: The resistance to short-term stimulus is not so much thinking it would not work but the fear that the credit card would be too big to ever pay off.
[Oh and also that at least some of the people resisting are doing so specifically to hurt the economy and thus defeat President Obama]
What do you think of this analogy:
Please refer to DeLong and Summers' paper from last month where they worked the numbers and showed that under some conditions short-term deficits actually reduce long term debt/GDP ratio.
I would try living in my yard before I took out a loan from a bank or I would camp out on The Capitols' lawn.
If Romney tanks the economy should he win the election (God forbid) you all know who he will blame.But here's what I think.Corporations are not hiring now,but if Romney wins they will start hiring slowly at first so they do not arouse suspicion that they have been dogging it for 3 yrs.Banks then will start lending some of that 2 trillion bucks they've been sitting on to small business so they can hire more people.This plot between repubs and big business has been going on for some time now,probably right after the Pres.signed Dodd-Frank. Just a hunch.
If The Corporations were going to hire they would have done that when Bush was President, they didn't then, what makes you think they will ever hire any Americans, they enjoy their slaves who live in other Countries. They would have to first take away all employees rights before they would hire us. They would need to lower the minimum wage, or do away with it completely. They will never again offer health insurance, or pensions, they are a thing of the past for your average worker. They might scrape us off their factory floors and throw us in the wagon as it moves along, Bring out your dead, bring out your dead. Get real they are saving up for the new house or Buffys' new dress-up Horsey. They haven't bought an island in a few days.
And how do you expect Memory Isn't There Today (MITT) to remember his plan once he's made one?
"Obama Has a Jobs Plan. Romney Doesn't."
Romney has said he has a jobs plan but doesn't intend to release it til after the election because people wouldn't vote for him if they knew what was in it! Frankly that says to me - vote for the other, I really don't want this job!
Why any single person would actually cast a vote for Romney is beyond me. The ONLY reason to vote for Romney is because you are a stupid racist. If not a racist, at least an uninformed bigot. Romney is an empty suit.
As long as Mitt is staying close without releasing any details on an economic recovery plan, why would he release one? He is running neck and neck with Obama purely by running an "I am not Obama" campaign. Winning politics is about limiting risk, and Romney hasn't been forced to actually say anything specific. It is safe to say nothing, because it gives you ultimate flexibility for forming future policy positions... It is June, most of the voting public isn't really paying attention yet.
Unfortunately the problem of "who has a better job/economy plan" is a moot point.
Obama has had good job plans. Obama has had good plans to reinvigorate the economy. Unfortunately with this obstructionist Congress, none of these plans had/have/will have a chance to succeed.
He can only do so much by executive order, Legislative and Executive branches must both want the country to recover. The abysmal recovery you see now is the result of Congress blocking everything and anything that might help. The concept of compromise is lost to the right wing, as is the term common sense apparently.
Sweet Buffy, I haven't laughed so hard in weeks.