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.”
