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It's Time To Bring Back Jobs (Focus must be on better long-run policy, not short-term fixes)
Forbes ^ | 06/30/2010 | Lee Ohanian

Posted on 06/30/2010 6:50:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

If you define a recession as a period of declining real income and output, then it ended more than a year ago. But despite the fact that income and output are rising, with rapid productivity growth and declining labor costs, private employment today is about a million jobs less than a year ago. Why aren't private sector jobs coming back, and what can be done about it?

There are two economic views on this. What I would call the "older" view does not have much to do with economics at all, given that incentives rarely enter the discussion. This view sees continued fiscal expansion and government spending as central for restoring jobs, based on the idea that government spending got us out of the Great Depression. According to Paul Krugman, higher spending is necessary to restore prosperity, but not possible, at least not right now, because of the "new" economic thinking that is preventing a majority of economists from supporting this older view:

"A significant proportion of the economics profession has spent the last three decades systematically destroying the hard-won knowledge of macroeconomics. It's truly a new Dark Age, in which famous professors are reinventing errors refuted 70 years ago, and calling them insights...I was so anxious to see Obama go for the maximum stimulus possible: It seemed obvious that he would have only one shot...And because that shot wasn't big enough, I really do think we're looking at a lost decade."

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: jobs; policy; unemployment
Author observes :

There are two important errors with these views.

* One is drawing inferences about the efficacy of fiscal policy from the Great Depression. The view of Krugman, CEA chair Christina Romer and some others is that the recovery of the Depression was rapid until Roosevelt sought to balance the budget and reduced aggregate demand. But hours worked per capita recovered very little during the New Deal--the increase in GDP was primarily due to productivity growth.

* The other error is that the older view doesn't use the basic logic of incentives to ask why businesses aren't hiring much, even those that are doing reasonably well. Healthy economies, particularly those that go through deep recessions, come back quickly once fundamentals improve. This happened in our last severe recession in 1981-82, when unemployment fell 3.6 percentage points two years after the economy hit bottom, even though interest rates were much higher and productivity growth was lower than they are now.

1 posted on 06/30/2010 6:50:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Only jobs available will be govt jobs.

Private businesses are dissed


2 posted on 06/30/2010 6:52:04 AM PDT by bestintxas
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To: SeekAndFind
I've seen Stimulus funds used to build parks, used to build bicycle trails, used to repave roads that didn't need repaving, used to put toilets in public places.

None of these actions are stimulative. None of this grows the economy nor provides long-term employment of any kind.

The government needs to cut taxes and regulations. Just get out of the way.

3 posted on 06/30/2010 6:54:56 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy
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To: SeekAndFind

That’s fine. BUT - you can’t do that until the American people stop electing LEFTISTS and SOCIALISTS.

Pelosi, Reid, Obama and their RAT minions have to be removed.


4 posted on 06/30/2010 6:55:08 AM PDT by LibFreeUSA (Show me what Obama brought that was new and there you will find things only radical and destructive.)
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To: SeekAndFind

We are bringing in 125,000 legal foreign workers a month. Does that make sense when there are 25 million Americans looking for full time employment?


5 posted on 06/30/2010 6:55:57 AM PDT by kabar
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To: SeekAndFind
This is an excellent article. After I have another cup of coffee, I will read it again. The fact that BO and minions have created a business environment that is scared to death of the future (uncertainty), is the main reason the jobs have not come back. This has resulted in a downward spiral that is self-perpetuating.
6 posted on 06/30/2010 6:59:31 AM PDT by LuvFreeRepublic (Support our military or leave. I will help you pack BO!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Fire the Obama admin and we can bring back jobs.

Won’t happen until that thing is ousted from the WH.


7 posted on 06/30/2010 6:59:30 AM PDT by dforest
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To: LibFreeUSA

Egggactly!
The voters who put these people in office have swollowed hook line and sinker the propaganda of ‘wealth redistribution’.
They do not discriminate between the ‘rent seekers without property’ and those that ‘create value’. So the producers from where all value (wealth) is created are on the menu for destruction by the ‘progressives’. History tells many tales of the results when the balance is tipped from the makers to the takers.
No one in DC is listening. They’ll just have to repeat the failed mistakes and hopefully enough will learn from those mistakes and create a better future.


8 posted on 06/30/2010 7:05:25 AM PDT by griswold3 ('Regulation and law without enforcement is no law at all)
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To: kabar
We are bringing in 125,000 legal foreign workers a month. Does that make sense when there are 25 million Americans looking for full time employment?

You trying to create a depression in the slum landlord business. LOL

9 posted on 06/30/2010 7:06:23 AM PDT by org.whodat
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To: SeekAndFind
The economy and job creation is not rocket science. The point is, there are many in Washington that know what to do in order to get the economy back on track, if that in fact is their goal. It is not!

Distribution of wealth, the leveling of the “playing field”, securing equal results regardless of effort, is the goal.

If they can not raise the “poor” they will lower the middle class so all are equal.

Want to improve the economy, announce no new taxes, no new regulation, no new regulatory body. Give business time to adjust to the burden they already carry.

Really want to improve the economy, lower taxes, cut regulations, shut down some regulatory bodies.

It should be clear to anyone paying attention, this administration and this congress does not have the best interest of the nation in mind. Regulating business, overlooking the excess of unions, spending way beyond our ability to pay is a recipe for bankruptcy.

10 posted on 06/30/2010 7:16:08 AM PDT by CIB-173RDABN
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To: SeekAndFind

Forbes magazine helped elect the one. One of their columnists is a money manager and one of O’s closest advisors. He financed him before Soros. Forbes magazine helped make this guy very wealthy.


11 posted on 06/30/2010 7:16:56 AM PDT by Frantzie (Democrats = Party of I*lam)
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To: org.whodat
125,000 brand new foreign workers with work permits each month -- HERE'S THE PROOF
12 posted on 06/30/2010 7:44:34 AM PDT by kabar
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To: SeekAndFind

The depression would have ended years earlier if it wasn’t for all that government intervention. With few exceptions (Defense, foreign relations, regulation of interstate trade) everything the fedgov touches turns to crap. And the obama regime is even turning the exceptions to crap.


13 posted on 06/30/2010 8:05:38 AM PDT by John O (God Save America (Please))
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To: bestintxas
Our government for years has betrayed the American worker.

Corporate elites seeking to expand the bottom line have “convinced Congress” of the virtues of outsourcing jobs for corporate/investor health and growth.

Problem is, the convincing comes in the form of campaign cash, junkets, gifts. Essentially legal bribery.

Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Campaign cash in return for policy beneficial to your business.

It's an absolute traitorous act to put cash and or foreign interest before the interest and well being of the country of your birth.

Everyone knows trade is good, everyone knows we must pay taxes, right minded folks support a capitalist system and the right to make an honest profit.

This is NOT what I am referring to. Our capitalist system has become a hyper globalist perversion.

The old saying is, “doing the jobs Americans won't do” or “Americans want cheaper goods.”

In some cases, these sayings may be true, but now that the standard of living and good paying manufacturing jobs are evaporating, would Americans see the picture a bit different.

I submit, these sayings are a ruse.

Remove every penny from the process, utilize worker pools at slave labor wages, little or no benefits, little or no environmental protections.....whew hew, more to the bottom line.

Greed and corruption, plain and simple.

Yep, time to restore our nation back to her greatness.

14 posted on 06/30/2010 8:09:59 AM PDT by servantboy777
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