Posted on 09/11/2017 6:09:03 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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While Obama apologists like to claim that labor-productivity and labor-supply factors preclude 3% growth, most of the growth constraints we face today are directly attributable to Mr. Obama’s policies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that labor-productivity growth since 2010 has plummeted to less than one-quarter of the average for the previous 20, 30 or 40 years. Productivity fell during the current recovery, not during the recession. With high marginal tax rates, especially on investment income, new investment during the Obama era managed only to offset depreciation, so the value of the capital stock per worker, the engine of the American colossus, stopped expanding and contributed nothing to growth.
A tidal wave of new rules and regulations across health care, financial services, energy and manufacturing forced companies to spend billions on new capital and labor that served government and not consumers. Banks hired compliance officers rather than loan officers. Energy companies spent billions on environmental compliance costs, and none of it produced energy more cheaply or abundantly. Health-insurance premiums skyrocketed but with no additional benefit to the vast majority of covered workers.
In a world of higher costs, productivity plummeted. Productivity measures the production of things the market values that flow from the employment of labor and capital. Try listing the Obama-era regulatory requirements that generated the employment of labor and capital in ways that actually produced something you buy.
True, America is aging. In 2006, when the labor force participation rate was 66.2%, the BLS predicted that demographic changes would push it down to 65.5% by 2016. Under Mr. Obama’s policies, it actually fell further, to 62.8%, and the number of working-age Americans not in the labor market spiked to 55 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Phil Gramm, The man who gave us Enron.
Let’s not forget Xlinton signed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. Credit where credit is due.
The “lost” growth is no mystery, and it has very little to do with American tax policies.
In the last 20 years, the USA has LEGALLY imported almost 20 million low skill, low education foreign workers.
Heaven only knows how many ILLEGAL foreign workers are part of this catastrophe.
Because there is a massive - and completely artificial - oversupply of low wage labor, that has created a huge economic incentive to create low profit business models based entirely on paying low wages.
There was absolutely no reason for the George W. Bush Justice Department to destroy Enron.
There is no question that Enron's accounting practices were deceptive and may have been illegal.
But almost all of Enron's “real” profits were generated by its energy related financial trading.
When Bush's DOJ publicly attacked Enron's corporate accounting practices, the rest of the energy trading universe instantly stopped trading with Enron, and Enron's “real” profit center collapsed.
If Bush's DOJ and Treasury Department had made any serious attempt to carve off Enron's trading division from the rest of the corporation BEFORE they attacked, Enron's stock price would have dropped by 50%, but the company would have survived.
“Free” Trade as crippled the heart of the economy which is manufacturing and industry.
As usual, you are blind to reality. The reason for the roughly 50 years of American super prosperity was WW II. That war destroyed the ability of the best nations to live up to their inherent ability.
America filled the vacuum. Once those nations got on their feet and were able to resume producing goods and services, America’s dominant position was challenged by the competition.
In your analysis, you always fail to look beyond you county line and see there is a big world out there with literally billions of people willing to work hard and compete in order to emulate the Americans they hold as ideal.
Your extremely narrow view of what you consider free trade is ludicrous
Except for a few economic downturns that lasted a few years each, the USA was a a very prosperous debt free country from 1787 to 1913. I wonder what changed in 1913?
Before that, one morning JP Morgan went to the White House to see the President and the Secretary of Treasury. The Secretary confirmed that by three o’clock that day, there would be no more American gold. It would all be gone.
Morgan made arrangements with foreign banks for loans and by one o’clock the same day, the run on gold stopped. America was saved from literal, real, bankruptcy.
As usual, you’e got it all wrong
In 1913 progressives got their income tax. Why do progressives like you get to post on Free Republic?
Growth = applied intelligence. The USA running very short on both intelligence and application. Our best brains are busy designing video games and shopping sites.
Prtoectionists and Neocons have a similar argument - that we need to destroy the world again, before it can challenge us. In particular, the petrodollar.
But the big players loved it, as it was a quick way to weaken their smaller competitors - who could not afford the costs of compliance.
Let me help you Phil Enron, the 3% is in the almost weekly announcements of new hiring all over the country. Got Phil?
HAHAHAHA The same Altruistic JP that bought all of the MAJOR NEWSPAPERS in 1917? The Meeting at Jekyll Island A member of the exclusive Jekyll Island Club, most likely J.P. Morgan, arranged. HAHAHAH
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