Unemployment drops to 7.8%

[_Analytics]

Romney said, "Americans are crying out for more jobs, less debt, and smaller government—and I will deliver." The irony here is that America is on a default track to have a significantly smaller government and less debt at the end of the year, but they call it a "fiscal cliff" and predict it would cause the economy to shrink by 5%.

Regarding Keynesian economics and balanced budgets, let me ask a question. If you believe the government's budget ought to be balanced, the question you still need to ask is this: over what time period should the budget be balanced? Should the amount it spends every year be limited to what it makes every year? Why is that? Why should the budget be balanced over the cycle it takes the earth to go around the sun?

Keynesian's would argue that the budget does in fact need to be balanced, but not over the calendar year, but rather, over the business cycle. Sure, balance the budget. But do so in a way that boosts the economy in down turns.

[Anonymous]

On the extreme right are folks like me -- far more to the right than Droopy and BCSpace in market belief -- who do not believe downturnes are the result of market failures at all, meaning, there is never a real motivation to intervene. If the economy is 20% of what it was last year, then it's 20% of what it was, perhaps a meteor hit the earth, and fiscal/monetary policy will just shift things around or hinder recovery, no matter how extreme the scenario.

What I do wonder if people who are in favor of severe freee-market Conservatism understand what the free-market might have in mind for them. If there were no government intervention and perfect markets, the supply and demand of labor would eventually meet, but at what price? Do unemployed conservatives really want the government to get out of the way so that they can work at a free-market wage of whatever it may be? Do they really want to build i-phones in the U.S. for something approaching Chinese hourly wages?

[_krose]

As far as I've heard, the biggest act of deregulation that led to the crash of 2008 was the repeal of Glass-Steagall regulations prohibiting banks from expanding into securities trading. This was done near the end of Clinton's presidency. Granted, it was at the behest of congressional republicans, but it wasn't Bush.

You are right. I messed up the time line on that one.

On that note, here is Time magazine's list of 25 People to Blame for the crisis.

Angelo Mozilo
Phil Gramm
Alan Greenspan
Chris Cox
American Consumers
Hank Paulson
Joe Cassano
Ian McCarthy
Frank Raines
Kathleen Corbet
Dick Fuld
Marion and Herb Sandler
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Stan O'Neal
Wen Jiabao
David Lereah
John Devaney
Bernie Madoff
Lew Ranieri
Burton Jablin
Fred Goodwin
Sandy Weill
David Oddsson
Jimmy Cayne

[_krose]

Jason, thanks for replying.

It appears you agree with me when I say that presidents have very little influence over unemployment in the country, if any at all. If they did, certainly they would do all in their power to keep the country at full employment, if only to get reelected.

Apart from the financial meltdown, which was fueled by greed and stupidity, I think the real ongoing problem we have is a gradual decline that is an inevitable result of a global economy. Things were not that great before the meltdown, and they won't be good after "recovery," no matter who is president.

Companies are free to locate their labor anywhere, and we can't hope to compete for jobs with countries where labor is dirt cheap. We could try to isolate our market by putting high tariffs on imports, but we are not willing to pay higher prices for goods made here. So we will probably continue to see the US standard of living decrease (as it increases in places like India and China) until a sort of worldwide equilibrium is reached.

[_Gadianton]

What I do wonder if people who are in favor of severe freee-market Conservatism understand what the free-market might have in mind for them. If there were no government intervention and perfect markets, the supply and demand of labor would eventually meet, but at what price? Do unemployed conservatives really want the government to get out of the way so that they can work at a free-market wage of whatever it may be? Do they really want to build i-phones in the U.S. for something approaching Chinese hourly wages?

Of course not. We owe the extraordinary success of "free-trade" with China to the inefficiency of the US labor market -- minimum wages, no salary cuts etc. -- and the inefficiency of China's labor market in the reverse direction, to keep the labor cheap, while I imagine the higher-ups take the profits they can. There are several examples where American prosperity has been bought by market inefficiency in favor of the US, and not just when dealing with poor countries, but European countries as well.

The links BC and Droopy post are riddled with ideas that contradict market efficiency, and often offer activism in the direction that will support the status quo or the interests of the wealthy -- in the name of the market, of course. With every example, one can hear Droopy's explanation about the free-market pie being bigger and therefore, the average person's piece bigger than would have been with the regulated pie, even if relatively speaking, the distribution of piece size is smaller. The problem is, as you rightly point out, many conservatives have pieces of pie above or well-above the average size, and with the free market pie, their take will be a piece smaller than what they have today.

[_Kevin Graham]

Here's another way to look at the jobs numbers:

[T]here hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office.

-Economist Edward P. Lazear

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087 ... 94296.html

Typical of Right Wing media spin.

(WSJ is owned by the same company that owns FOX News!)

Bush lost nearly a million private sector jobs in his first term, which was offset by a surge in public sector employment. The opposite is true for Obama, where private sector jobs have been increasing while State legislators around the country have been cutting back on spending due to the Bush recession. Blaming Obama for anything negative about the job market is just idiotic. Please name me a single "policy" of his that has done anything to hinder job growth?

Everything your Right Wing media priests had predicted back in 2009-1010 has been proved false.