Political Economy category archive

Back up to half a mil.

We don’t need no stinkin’ stimulus:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday’s report.

“Feral canola“:

The so-called feral canola is the first report of a genetically modified crop found in the wild in the U.S., although another genetically engineered plant designed for putting greens, creeping bentgrass, was found in Oregon in 2004. Feral modified canola has also shown up in the past decade in Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.

In the U.S., 90 to 95 percent of commercially grown canola is genetically modified to be herbicide resistant; the researchers said 80 percent of the wild canola identified in the most recent discovery had at least one of two herbicide-resistance genes.

It is the advance guard for the killer tomatoes.

Afterthought:

All joking aside, this is not good. The creature has escaped.

We need good old-fashioned traditional values, like breadlines.

Initial jobless claims rose by 2,000 to 484,000 in the week ended Aug. 7, the highest level since mid February, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits dropped, while those getting supplemental benefits surged by 1.34 million reflecting the government’s extension of eligibility.

Shamelessly stolen from Balloon Juice.

Dave Johnson:

This is the Reagan Revolution home to roost: the social contract is broken. Instead of providing good wages and benefits and paying taxes to provide for the general welfare and reinvestment in infrastructure and public structures, the bounty of our democracy is being diverted to a wealthy few.

We, the People built this country’s prosperity and this built wealth. We reinvested that wealth, building the world’s most competitive economy. Now a few people are gaming the system and breaking the formula, taking for themselves vast riches, leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess.

It’s worth a read.

Via Skippy.

Politicians of all persuasions love to complain about government waste. It’s this great big shadowy thing that is always there, even if it’s not.

Except, of course, when it’s their waste. The Department of War Defense wants to eliminate what it considers to be a wasteful and redundant command headquartered in this part of the world.*

Oh noes.

Not surprisingly, elected officials across the state and region lambasted Gates’ announcement and said they would fight it, but it’s not clear what they can do to halt the process. Unlike the Navy’s plan to relocate an aircraft carrier from Norfolk to Jacksonville, Fla. – which requires Congress to approve funds to make Mayport Naval Station ready to host a nuclear carrier – Gates indicated this bureaucratic reshuffle doesn’t require legislative approval.

It is noteworthy that many of these pols, especially on the state and local level, have willingly eliminated teachers, garbage collectors, police officers, and highway repair persons because they couldn’t figure out how to pay them.

It reveals how much of the caterwauling about government “waste and bureaucray” is just so much cant.

“Cut his waste,” they say’ “but don’t cut mine.”

_____________

*I don’t have a position on this particular command, but I do believe the government spends far more than needed on ways of ending lives and far less than needed on ways of improving them.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Noz points out the inconsistency:

(Conservatives claim that) government money can never stimulate the economy because when the government spends money there are all these hidden “costs” that end up choking off private investment.

(snip)

but if that’s the case, how to they explain the bipartisan outcry whenever something like this (base closure–ed.) happens?

Writing at the Guardian, Peter Wilby discusses Warren Buffet’s and Bill Gates’s efforts to persuade billionaires to give away the bulk of their fortunes upon demise. While applauding their efforts,* he suggests

If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to stop lobbying against taxation and regulation; to avoid creating monopolies; to give their employees better wages, pensions, job protection and working conditions; to make goods and use production methods that don’t kill or maim or damage the environment or make people ill. When they put their names to that, there will be occasion not just for applause but for street parties.

Never happen.

_____________________

*The efforts are worthy of applause. Whatever you may think of how they got rich–and I have no love of Microsoft’s business practices, which can best be summarized as “copy, co-opt, and crush“–Buffet and Gates both seem determined to use their riches to accomplish something more than more riches.

Not good. Bloomberg:

Initial jobless claims climbed by 19,000 to 479,000 in the week ended July 31, the most since April and exceeding the highest estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits dropped, while those getting extended payments rose.

(snip)

Economists forecast claims would fall to 455,000, according to the median of 43 projections. Estimates ranged from 444,000 to 470,000. The government revised the prior week’s total to 460,000 from a previously reported 457,000.

Who are these economists and why does anyone pay attention to their forecasts?

Congressman Kantor stumbles over a bit of truth. From TPM:

Appearing on MSNBC this morning, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor reiterated his support for renewing the Bush-era tax cuts for all income brackets, including high-income earners. But he was also forced to admit, with apparent reluctance, that doing so will balloon the deficit, at a time when deficits are the GOP’s supposed cause du jour.

He should get some positive credit for the admission. The article goes on to list big-name Republican congresspersons who are denying the obvious.

Karen explains:

I talked to a lady from church a couple of weeks ago. She wants to replace her old 3.5 gallon toilets with 1.6 gallon models, to get the credit. But since she’s been out of work for a year & a half, she wanted to know how much she was looking at if she got regular, plain jane toilets that aren’t name brand. If she wants to do it, she’ll buy them & call to get them installed.

Joe was at a woman’s house the other day. She has leaks on all 3 toilets she has in her house. He was able to repair 2 of them, but the 3rd has to be replaced. She’s going to check with her neighbor to see if they have an old toilet they changed out, that she can have. Her house has been on the market for 18 months, with no serious offers. And she’s in prime area, in Golden.

More at the link.

Why more stimulus is needed:

U.S. local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through next year to cope with sliding property taxes, a decline in state and federal aid and added need for social services, according to a report released today.

The report, a result of a survey by the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties, showed local governments are moving to cut the equivalent of 8.6 percent of their workforces from 2009 to 2011. That suggests 481,000 employees will lose their jobs, according to the report, which said the tally may yet rise.

Balloon Juice. Scroll to the list of bullet items in the bottom 2/3rds of the post.

We err when we let ourselves be convinced that the only measures of economic success are stock prices, dividends, and bonus payments to executives.

Important, maybe, at least the first two; the last should be eliminated and replaced with salary increases (or decreases, as warranted); only, no.

Eistein (possibly apocryphal):

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Republicans (from the transcript):

Unfortunately, those are the ideas we keep hearing from our friends in the other party. This week, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives offered his plan to create jobs. It’s a plan that’s surprisingly short, and sadly familiar.

First, he would repeal health insurance reform, which would take away tax credits from millions of small business owners, and take us back to the days when insurance companies had free rein to drop coverage and jack up premiums. Second, he would say no to new investments in clean energy, after his party already voted against the clean energy tax credits and loans that are creating thousands of new jobs and hundreds of new businesses. And third, even though his party voted against tax cuts for middle-class families, he would permanently keep in place the tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans – the same tax cuts that have added hundreds of billions to our debt.

These are not new ideas. They are the same policies that led us into this recession. They will not create jobs, they will kill them. They will not reduce our deficit, they will add $1 trillion to our deficit. They will take us backward at a time when we need to keep America moving forward.

Q. E. D.

It’s only two minutes long:

Via the ACLU.

A while ago, I demonstrated that there is an assumption which dare not speak its name underlying Republican Economic Theory (follow the link for the demonstration):

That the wealthy are inherently virtuous simply because they are wealthy. Therefore, kowtowing to the wealthy is inherently virtuous policy.

From this touching faith in the beneficence of the rich comes the Laffable Curve and voodoo economics, as well as the castration of the regulatory structure–those strategies which have worked so well to send the United States economy into a tailspin, dragging the rest of the world behind it.

The corollary which dare not speak its name is that the poor are inherently not virtuous, that they are poor because they either deserve or want to be, and therefore must be punished.

This accounts not only for the Republican Party’s opposition to unemployment payments (since obviously all those unemployed folks laid themselves off), but also for its slavering and slavish desire to cut taxes for the rich.

Excerpt:

And I have to say, after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, the same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans like Jim or Leslie or Denise, who really need help.

Republican Economic Theory does not work and play well with facts. Follow the link and read the whole thing. From the Neiman Watchdog:

Because it can have an effect on political stability, income inequality is one of the economic indicators tracked worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. Its current
World Factbook puts the United States just inside the most unequal third among 184 nations, between Uruguay and Cameroon. Immediately below the USA and Cameroon in the rankings – that is more equal — are Ivory Coast, Iran, Nigeria, Guyana, Nicaragua, and Cambodia.

(snip)

. . . California professor, G. William Domhoff of Santa Cruz, looks at the increasing concentration of wealth rather than income. By 2007, he reported, only 20 percent of the people owned 85 percent of the wealth in the United States. When he looked at pure financial wealth (leaving out the value of your home), the top 20 percent had a 93 percent share, leaving only seven percent for the rest of us.

One more time, Truman was right.

According to Republicans, jobs are out there:

Initial jobless claims dropped by 29,000 to 429,000 in the week ended July 10, the fewest since August 2008, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The government anticipates an increase in temporary factory layoffs in early July that did not occur this year, leading to the decrease in applications, a Labor Department spokesman said.

“The key story here is the extreme uncertainty over the near-term path of claims as a result of the annual retooling shutdowns, which throw the seasonal adjustments into chaos,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics LLC in Valhalla, New York, said before the report. Shepherdson projected claims would drop to 420,000.

Reality (via Zandar):

TPM explains Republicanism. A nugget:

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer compared the unemployed to stray animals back in January, saying that unemployment insurance is a lot like helping out strays. One is “facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply,” he said. “They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.” Though he later backtracked, saying this probably “wasn’t the best metaphor,” he has since said that “flat-out lazy” people “would rather sit home and do nothing than do these jobs.”