Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   3/03/2015

Economic success and failure

Common sense explains the inability on the part of political, media and cultural elites to grasp the shortcomings of liberal/progressive economic policy: the simple recognition of success and failure. Every person and family, each private service or charitable group, every business, corporation and entrepreneurial endeavor—all face the reality that success is based on goals and purposes. That involves accepting the finite resources available to any given person, group or business with which to accomplish said goals—one’s income, a family’s time and effort, the sales, production or revenue of a company.

Wise and intelligent efforts produce not only successful and efficient results, but also the avoidance of wasteful or useless activity. In real life, quantity and quality standards, as well as comparative analysis, provide feedback to measure efforts, and guidance on recognizing and correcting problems.

The above principles explain why the information I’ve provided on America’s failed economic performance is important. Whereas commercial success is a known and measurable thing, our nation’s economic and employment success is measured in comparative terms. Progressives are unwilling to accept that policies driven by liberal, government-centric, Keynesian theory could objectively be termed failures—they simply dismiss verifiable, measurable facts, and impugn the motives and veracity of those pointing out said failures.

Facts, as they say, are stubborn things. In “For Most Of Us, There’s No Recovery,” Jack Kelly writes, “From 1820 through 2000, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent. Last year was the ninth consecutive year in which the economy grew less than 3 percent.” I showed already how Obama’s recovery lagged previous ones, massively so compared to the Reagan recovery.

In “The Missing Ingredient: Economic Growth,” John Hinderaker explained “Unemployment, low wages and lack of opportunity for income advancement dominate discussion of our economy these days. But an obvious ingredient is too often missing from the conversation: economic growth. Growth, the rising tide that lifts all boats, creates more jobs, more wealth, and more opportunities for advancement. The various ills that voters and politicians complain about are all largely the consequence of slow or non-existent growth.

“This is the Obama administration’s most fundamental failing in domestic policy…rapid growth should have been relatively easy to attain. But the administration’s wasteful spending (the stimulus) and anti-business policies (the EPA) put a lid on that great opportunity.” He included a chart, titled “Economic Growth In 2013 Just Half Of What The President Said His Policies Would Deliver,” which showed 4 years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) of predictions for the growth in 2013. Predicted growth averaged about 4 percent; actual 2013 growth was 1.9 percent. The difference “is enormous. We can now see that all of the projections that Obama and his budget team have given us are worthless.”

In “Defining Economic Failure Down,” George Will used Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous phrase, “defining deviancy down,” to explain how liberal mainstream reporting has attempted to persuade America that the “Economy Pulls Ahead” (NYT); the Times cheerily called it “an island of relative strength” which is, to Will, “defining failure down.”

The Wall Street Journal headlined “U.S. Economy Hits Speed Bumps,” as though speedy growth had been normal for a while. The single quarter of 5 percent growth, in a year (2014) that averaged just 2.4 percent, illustrated by comparison how America’s economy had gone “43 consecutive quarters without 5 percent growth, the longest such period since the government began keeping the pertinent records in 1947.” The ninth consecutive year under-3 percent compared to the Reagan recovery, when “there were five quarters of 7 percent-or-higher growth, and five years averaged 4.6 percent growth.” Will’s sub-headline, “We’re coming to accept a weaker economy as the new normal,” says it all.

April 2014 marked the point when the number of jobs returned to pre-recession levels; there were, however, 15 million more Americans. Nicole Gelinas writes in the Manhattan Institute’s ‘City Journal,’ “A healthy economy should add 200,000 new jobs every month…By that standard, America should have 133 million people working in the private sector right now, not 118.4 million.”

Will: “The progressive project of maximizing the number of people dependent on government is also aided by the acid of insecurity that grows rapidly when the economy does not. Anxious and disappointed people are susceptible to progressives’ blandishments about the political allocation of wealth and opportunity—‘free’ this and that. By making slow growth normal, iatrogenic (i.e. prescriptive) government serves the progressive program of defining economic failure down.”

Gallup’s survey showed that only 44 percent of adults work 30 hours or more a week. Businessweek found that men, in 2012, working full time earned less (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than they did in 1973. Obama’s 7,805 regulations cost $1.88 trillion per year; reduce growth by 12 percent; cost $10,000 per employee; and have reduced jobs by 546,000 (NAM, Phoenix Center). Donald Lambro nailed it: “Obama Is The Main Obstacle To Economic Growth.”