Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

"A body in every state"

Who said this Administration is lying about its achievements in creating jobs?

for people who reside in the bay area, it is not getting better. all of my friends are not working in high tech, some in retail sales for much less, some in other works they don't like. we are all hoping that it gets better but does not look that way especially when outsourcing is speeding up with no ends in sight.

hell, its easy to find work.
if you don't need more than 10K a year or so.

before taxes.

and you don't need healthcare.

or to ever retire.

or to have a pension or hope for a future that's anything other than endless wage-slavery. I think that's what Bush wants. I saw a link on Fark a while back that said basically "here's a refutation to every GOP argument ever...cheap labor". and it fits.

As it is, this election is based entirely on external factors rather than the actual capabilities of Bush and Kerry as human beings.

Only about 10 percent of the electorate is undecided, and they will remain undecided until November. They'll ask themselves, "Do I have a job?" and "Are too many Americans dying in Iraq this week?" If they feel like their job is safe, that's a vote for Bush. If they haven't seen too many gruesome photos in the past week, they'll vote for Bush.

Draft Dean and energize the race. http://www.draftdeanforvp.org/

Haha. These guys, they crack me up.

Yeah, the economy is improving. But, no, not in ways and at such a rate that people are going to feel it enough for it to be an asset to Bush.

I just don't understand how they can be this incredibly dumb. From day one they've thought that economic perception—particularly the *employment situation* of all things—was spinnable from Washington. But people damn well know if they have a job or not. It's mind-boggling to me that these guys can be so idiotic that they think they can convince people they have jobs when they don't, and that their wages are rising when they aren't.

What people want is to get the hell out of Iraq, even though most don't realize that it would probably be a disaster to do so precipitously. The Bush admin would have more luck (though not much more luck) trying to spin a quick withdrawal as the best thing and what everyone wants. I suppose they know that A) it won't happen; and/or B) even if it does, the immediate bloodbath will stain their credibility regardless. But, instead, they're gong to continue with the economic pollyantics.

I know I sound like a broken record, and not unlike Brad, but what is breathtaking about this admin is how staggeringly incompetent they are, even at the things that they were supposed to be competent at. They're not good at playing politics. They've confused luck with talent. Which, you know, isn't a surprise from these folks, is it?

It is madness. Even the New York Post, not exactly a liberal outlet, has speculated that the jobs growth in statistically enhanced by some of the BLS assumptions. I ref it on my site. The point is that if it's that bad, and I'm hearing a lot of news that the economy has actually peaked already on mainstreet, then the POTUS is going to look even more out of touch than usual.

Most people don't even know about that GDP/job's report *exist* much less what they are. What they know is what they see and feel and witness on "mainstreet". Fineman in Newsweek recently ran a story about how Ohio is losing a major factory associated with its local history for the last century. This is not the kind of news that is good for Bush.

Yet I believe that GWB truly believes the economy has turned around, even as he believes that things are still not in freefall in Iraq. This is like the moment the Coyote chases the Roadrunner right off the cliff and he's catching air, and he hasn't realized yet that gravity is about to work on him.

To answer your question Brad: *YES* they are mad, as mad as mad hatters can be with mercury soaked hat brims.

Suskind's O'Neill book has the answer: they always expected the economy would rebound on its own, so they'd give those mindboggling tax cuts to the rich, *sell* them as a jobs creation program, and be able to run on that when the economy finally turned around.

If they'd really thought they'd *have* to have job-creation programs to win this year, they would have had them. But they figured the economy would snap back on its own, so why waste money on average people that could be going to our friends instead?

Brad, whenever this administration publicly announces that they hope people will pay attention to something, they mean 'believe what we say'.

This is not a simple problem of "do A or don't do A" (have a real jobs program or don't). The Shrub administration faced trade-offs in policy-making. Which is more important, raising $200 mln in campaign funds or having a real job creation program? The calculation may well have been that it would prove difficult to do both. (The Halliburton crowd may not like job creation programs.)

RT's point is correct - they didn't think the labor market would perform as badly as it did. In fact, Bush apparently got good advice about the overall performance of the economy. GDP has been bubbling right along, at just the time that it should do Bush the most good. The model says that will mean jobs growth. Only in the unlikely case that somebody in the CEA guessed right about productivity and jobs, and that such a non-mainstream guess won the debate within the White House, would the risk of not having a jobs program been clear.

Meanwhile, being able to spend $171 mln on campaign ads, mostly in just 18 states, before either party has even held its nominating convention, has kept Bush in the race, despite a bad record on jobs, a bad record on the environment, a bad record on reasons for going to war, a bad record on promoting democracy and (for heaven's sake) human rights, a bad record on foreign affairs in general, no energy bill after nearly 4 years (one that would create a more secure energy market in the US without a big windfall to energy corporations), when energy prices are sky-high.

So maybe the jobs calculation wasn't dumb from the outset, just unlucky. The public can now choose to be "luckier" than Bush by firing him and getting somebody who won't have a bad record on just about every issue that comes to mind.

Every once in a while one of these people says what they REALLY think:

"The problems with Michigan's economy are the result of high wages . . ."--Betsy DeVos, Chair, Michigan Republican Party

I really wouldn't underestimate those sage words first spoken by a Democratic zealot, "It's the economy stupid", when predicitng how the "undecided" vote will break in November.

People who are truly in this "undecided" category, and who actually vote, simply don't form strong political opinions for whatever reason. They apparently form their Presidential vote decision within the last week or two before the election based on gut feel by asking themselves two questions: "How am I doing economically", and "How are my close circle of family, neighbors, and friends doing economically."

If they answer both of those questions in the affirmative, they're likely to vote for the incumbent.

What happened is that the Administration so polarized the political debate in Washington that nothing can get passed by the Congress any more. This is John McCain's complaint, and it's valid. To think that Bush came into power claiming he would bring the parties together...what a complete joke that turned out to be.

As for job creation, I know some parts of the country are hurting, but we can't hire enough people here in Washington, DC (national security related work, but quite apart from Iraq). All of the Beltway consultancies are booming; today's Post had a nice piece on Booz Allen Hamilton.

Big news here? They're beginning to see Louisiana as a swing state. They're also fighting for two other states they WON last time (Ohio and Florida).

If the Economy were really strong, they would be talking about visiting Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

I know this is a single day, and of course they have to fight for Ohio and Florida, but Louisiana? If Louisiana is in play, the Democrats are in the lead.

http://pep.typepad.com/public_enquiry_project/2004/05/prof_delong_con_1.html

Louisiana's a bellwether state, it's in play every election (from '72 to 2000, it's voted for the winner every time). The electorate is highly polarized, and so the results generally depend on who's got the better GOTV effort and environment. I predict that Bill Clinton is going to be spending a lot of time in LA, AR, and MO whipping up the base.

You are but a club of Bush haters trying to talk down our superb economy. The job market is vibrant! Are you seriously arguing the American economy would be doing better if the governement had raised taxes instead??? You hate Bush because he has a clear moral vision and does not support your homosexual atheist latte-drinking pacifist agenda.

Larry Lindsey has his faults but I have never seen his shirt tail hanging out. In fact only two economists with hanging out shirt tails come to mind immediately (you know who I have in mind). Were they the couple of economists who provided you with that line ? Where would we be now if Clinton hadn't been willing to listen to an economist who had to study for years to tuck in his shirt ? I guess Rubin would have saved the economy anyway.

There are 1.6 million fewer non-farm jobs, but there are 2.3 million fewer private sector jobs. Let Bush tell his "small government" supporters that he's solving the jobs recession through state employment and see what happens.

I thought Ken Rogoff had located Joe Stiglitz in the Gamma Quadrant - what's the Bush team doing there? - Struggling to push on to the Zeta Tesseract?

The reasoning is obvious: if Republicans say something enough, it's as if it's true. Hey, it worked for Saddam an Al-Qaeda.

Numbers are complicated. As you no doubt realize, the Republicans are hoping that the voters will notice the recent upturn in the economy but not the four-year record. The deficit and the debt are esoteric issues for a lot of folks, so the Bushies are hoping they can obfuscate until the election. They might have a winning strategy. Slightly off the issue, the Republicans seem to be more in tune with the average American from a cultural standpoint. Gay marriage, for example, may be acceptable in Berkeley but it really angers people in most of the country. Even moderates like myself are queasy about it. Not good timing for the Democrats.

How much of the recent job increases are related to hiring by the Federal Government. WHen he was running Bush was claiming that he would have balanced budgets. he proposed tax cuts taht would have driven us to deficits even if there had been no 911 or no Afganistan or no Iraq. Because of the inept handling of the wars in Afganistan and Iraq we are now looking at more then $100B in spending there alone. With his midcare fiasco we are not looking at spending $400B but $550B. This administration does not do the analysis they make policy because of ideology not what works.

The reality is that this administration is really not trying to do the things they claim they are trying to do. What they really want to do is to hamstring the Federal Goverment with enormous amounts of debt so that they can start unraveling all of the Great Society and New Deal programs that they abhor. Look at the activities they are trying to encourange with their tax ploicies. They are trying to support the investor class over the working class, which includes those making only $10k or $500k or more. If they can bind the government up enough then they will argue that the only way out is to get rid of so called entitlements, i.e. privitize Social Security, provide vouchers for health care when the evidence clearly shows that Medicare works, because its over head is only 1% versus 24% for private HMOs, POPs, and whatever.

This is an administration that has an agenda to roll us back to the early 1900's because they feel America and Americans have become "weak" and "overly coddled".

"That we have the worst employment growth performance since Herbert Hoover"

In fact employment is growing at the fastest rate for 20 years. But it jsut doesnt look that way in the shrill democrat quadrant.

Giles, do you think that anybody is fooled by you?

Giles,

Rate? What is this "rate" of which you speak? What period do you have in mind?

Probably some one-minute period, when some company announced that they were hiring 100 people.

President Bush's tax cuts are paying off, massively. And soon, Iraq will be the shining light of democracy, next to Israel, in the Middle-East, and the anti-American Democratic Party will be history!

Source, Giles?

JRossi writes: "Gay marriage, for example, may be acceptable in Berkeley but it really angers people in most of the country."

Except that it doesn't, except for the real loons, many of whom would be just as upset over interracial marriages or interfaith marriages. The right wing isn't getting any traction on it. The amendment will never pass.

Source Libertarian? And that is a phoney moniker. True libertarians hate that Bush started a war and has blown government spending out of the water. Guns and Butter are not the libertarian mantra but good try for baiting. Too bad nobody fell for it.

me, I think that he's being sarcastic. Although these days, it is hard to tell.

me: It was probably a joke.

Libertarian was a joke. Check his/her email address. (No, it wasn't me.)

go to http://data.bls.gov/. Get data for Private Sector non seasonally adjusted increase in employment per month. In April 2003 it was 1,127,000. This is the largest growth for more than 20 years. The only other months in recent times that come close in 1994 and 1998.

I appreciate that “non seasonally adjusted” figures are problematic when it comes to making comparisons but I use them because they are raw. Why? Well given that all recent seasonally adjusted figures have later been upgraded, I think the BLS’s adjustments are not very good at the moment. Hence I’m using the raw unadjusted figures as a pointer and, as you can see, these show the strongest growth for at least 20 years.

And I think that in a couple of months time the adjusted and revised figures will reflect this. Indeed I’d wager that for the quarter including April will show growth of more than 1 million.

"go to http://data.bls.gov/. Get data for Private Sector non seasonally adjusted increase in employment per month."
And there we hyave it. The purpose of seasonal adjustment is to make month to month comparisons valid.
It is not that the data is raw, it is inaccurate because of underlying problems with the survey that must be adjusted. Nor is the seasonal adjusment process flawed. These are updaterd and improved and relatively straightforward. So Giles is indeed looking at "some one-minute period," only worse. It is a one minute period that is incorrect.

Lawrence I’m not sure whether you were intending to agree with me or not – since you just repeated what I said. But let me spell it out for you- seasonal adjustment use past information to smooth out current figures. However because they systematically incorporate past information, they therefore don’t necessarily pick up movements when “things” change – by definition it takes at least a year before you can produce “accurate” seasonally adjusted figures.

Hence seasonlly adjusted figure are good for making month to month comparisons if the months are in 1996 and 1999, but current figures, such as those for April 2004 are at best guesses. Based on the raw data I think the BLS guesses at the moment are systematically wrong.

Hence I am prepared to wage that given that the unadjusted figure show the strongest employment growth for 20 years, the revised adjusted figures will do roughly the same in a few months – whether for the individual month of April or the quarter thereabouts.

Libertarian--I resent that characterization. I am not a latte-drinking liberal. Lattes have way too much milk, and nobody but an American drinks them after breakfast anyway.

I prefer to be called a cappucino-drinking liberal, although I am often an espresso-drinking liberal, too.

Oh.

No matter what the numbers supposedly say, if hiring was good, wages would be rising. They're not, that I can tell.

Giles wrote, "In April 2003 it was 1,127,000. This is the largest growth for more than 20 years. The only other months in recent times that come close in 1994 and 1998.

"I appreciate that 'non seasonally adjusted' figures are problematic when it comes to making comparisons but I use them because they are raw."

Seasonal adjustment isn't your mistake. Your mistake is that you're not looking at the record for the entire Bush presidency. So you're cherry picking.

Not that *I* think that one can attribute all the viscisitudes of the business cycle to an incumbent. E.g. the recession itself wasn't Bush's fault per se. The legitimate question is, of course, "what could Bush have done about the recession, and at what cost, and with what benefit?"

Giles finally said something not completely stupid, but I'm not sure he's ready for the big leagues yet.

Giles:

1. Why are you looking at this particular month? Why April a year ago? What about other months during the last four years? What about this year, 2004?

2. I couldn't find where on that site these numbers are. Do you perchance have a direct link?

Why am I just looking at April? Because that the most recent figures we have and if these number are grossly underestimating job growth, as I argue is possible, then its time for serious economists to start shouting "Brakes Alan! Brakes George! If the economy is creating about a million or so jobs a quarter then interest rates need to rise pronto and now is the time to start tightening fiscal policy.

Dumbo click on unemployment, then go to hisroical tables at the bottom, get employment private sector non seasonally adjusted, click on other formatting options, click 1 month changes et voila.

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