Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   2/10/2015

Facts, statistics, sad truth

A serious, highly persuasive case can be made that the century-long progressive experiment in American governmental policy has not only failed but is also widely perceived to have failed. Book length analysis could dissect such contentions, with liberal writers marshalling data and presenting conclusions invariably reflecting the biases and prejudgments they brought to the issue in the first place.

The intelligentsia on the left appear resolutely unwilling to accept clearly provable and observable facts that undermine their devotion to the liberal/progressive project: Centralize policy and decision making in the government while subjecting ever-growing aspects of our personal and economic life to their statist, collectivist nostrums. Clear proof of failure is either dismissed or rationalized aside.

We have before us an economy that is presented in glowing terms by Emperor Obama and his political and media mouthpieces, with scarcely a discouraging word from the self-appointed arbiters of “objective” reporting. The people are not buying it; rather, party affiliation primarily determines whether voters are sold on the concept of economic recovery.

Such was the conclusion of Edwards Reporting, in SRN News in November. In their survey of over 20,000 voters, Democrats believed the country is “going in the right direction,” were about split on the economy, were convinced that global warming/climate change is a serious problem and were split on whether the next generation of Americans would be better or worse. Republicans were solidly in the camp that says we’re on the wrong track, the economy is “Not so good or poor,” climate change is not a serious problem and the next generation will be worse off.

The liberal narrative has taken some other hits in polling results from early January: “Government…was the most important problem facing the United States in 2014” according to Gallup pollsters. “That’s up from being the second most serious problem in 2013, and the third-ranker in 2012…The news that Americans are un-fond of government (comes) from an average of monthly survey results throughout the year” reflecting good common sense, a collective survival instinct or perhaps mass revulsion. Issues number 2, 3, and 4 were “Economy,” “Unemployment” and “Healthcare.” (J.D. Tuccille, Reason.com) On those issues, it is also accurate to say public opinion is skeptical of the performance of Obama over his 6 years in charge.

Gallup’s findings were similar to Pew, which found “public trust in the government at just 24 percent. A plurality of those surveyed (42 percent) told Reason-Rupe pollsters that President Obama has expanded the power of the government too much. Majorities among younger Americans say that government is wasteful and government agencies abuse their power. Americans have felt less free year by year since 2006, and there’s evidence to back up their perceptions of eroding liberty. That includes slippage in rankings of economic freedom and a plummet in the ratings of press freedom.”

Economic and unemployment reporting are inseparably connected by both manipulation of data and comparative analysis. I provided evidence that Obamacare-driven health spending inflation was folded into GDP figures to artificially boost those numbers. The contention is strong that Obama’s recovery (begun in June, 2009) has had little to do with massive deficit spending and Keynesian policies. His supporters can’t point to anything beyond correlation of a “plow horse,” or slow growing, economy to Obama’s tenure—correlation does not equal causation.

The Obama recovery is objectively the worst since WWII; it is the first recovery to feature more business failures than startups. Fewer businesses starting means 1) fewer new employment openings and 2) high-performing workers, discouraged from putting their dreams and ideas into their own startup, remain in wage or salary work and prevent other talented workers moving up, which would create more slots for new hires starting out.

A chart titled, “Recovery Rates—How the expansion that began in 2009 compares with other recoveries, change in GDP,” used inflation-and-season-adjusted economic growth data for the last 5 recessions. You can view and read about it at Powerlineblog.com in a post titled, “Speaking of Underinflated Balls,” Feb. 1. The Reagan economy, after the 1982 recession, grew over 30% at this point in the fifth year. Similarly, after the 1975 recession, Nixon’s growth was 20.6%, slightly better than the 5-year point after the 1991 recession, at 19.9%.

At this 5+year point under George W. Bush, the economy had grown 16.8%, trailing the growth of the previous 3 recessions. Trailing all other recession since 1975, the Obama recovery comes in at a dismal 13.6%, considerably below even one half of the Reagan growth rate. “As the Journal editorial page notes, 2014 was the ninth year in a row with economic growth below 3 percent.”

Look up “Reaganomics Beats Obama’s ‘Middle Class Economics’ By A Country Mile,” at Investor’s Business Daily. The chart, summarized, shows that Reagan’s recovery produced an economy that was $2.4 trillion larger than Obama’s (his economy lags the postwar average by almost $2 trillion). Reagan’s recovery had created 14.4 million more jobs, at this point, than Obama’s (again, Obama’s recovery lags the postwar average by about 7 million jobs). More on this and the phony unemployment figures next week.