It occurs to me that one of the reasons that President Obama does such a lousy job of selling what he wants to do (besides an unwillingness to do it) is that what he wants to do is unsellable and he knows it. Take the jobs bill that the president keeps touting on the stump and which is stalled in Congress.
The president keeps repeating that the jobs bill will create 2 million jobs. The median estimate by economists is 288,000. More than 20 million people are unemployed or underemployed and the president has submitted a plan that would produce jobs for 10% of them (or 1.5% without the rose-colored glasses)?
What’s the follow-up? The sequel? The second plan? The backup plan?
Is it any wonder that the sales pitch consists of mentioning the plan every now and again?
It’s the kind of plan you produce when you want to be able to say that you have a jobs plan not when you want to solve the problem of unemployment and underemployment. Have jobs plan? Check.
And at what cost? These are presumably jobs that otherwise would not exist, so how does this legislation accomplish the task of 2 million/250,000 new jobs? Not by magic, so there has to be a cost.
That isn’t to say job creation is a bad thing, or if the government can stimulate it, that it shouldn’t. But what are we getting for the cost? Are we spending $1 million/per job? $100,000? $50,000?
What’s the follow-up? The sequel? The second plan? The backup plan?
The really depressing thing is the second plan and the back-up plan and so on are always the plans that have no chance of working as well as the main plan.
It’s just so very … useless. That’s the word. Useless.
How about creating a job for anybody who wants one, in their community, fitting their skill set, for $9.00 an hour? It solves unemployment and cannot be inflationary because it is hiring from the bottom of the wage structure rather than the top a la “military Keynesianism”.
Ben,
Why $9 an hour? A lot of people simply can’t work for that wage.
@Andy
You have to be careful with the rate because it will effectively establish a national minimum wage. If someone likes their new job and a private sector actor wishes to hire them back, they’ll have to wok to make the postion more attractive than the jobs guarantee (which isn’t a bad thing!). Putting the wage too high runs risk of pushing demand beyond productive capacity rather than the two spiraling up in tandem as we would desire.
Ben,
I can see how that would be a problem. On the other side, there are a lot of people who can’t afford to work for that – anyone with kids especially.
For nine dollars an hour I could only work part-time some evenings and the weekend, when my wife was home to watch our daughter.Working 8 to 5 at that wage would cost me money. I’m not that interested in generating revenue for other people.
Obama doesn’t need a plan, ’cause things are getting better! New UEC claims fell to a very low level today. And last month almost 900,000 people got new jobs!
Of course, the last time that happened GDP was running about 9%. Anyone think Q2 GDP was 1.25% and Q3 was 9%? The global economy has fallen into recession, companies are transitioning their workforces to more part-time workers at the expense of full time workers, foreclosures are getting worse again here in Florida (new story in the local paper today), exports are down, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
The big thing is to just cheat like Hell on the numbers that the masses follow and ignore everything else. That’s the plan.
Incidentally, each month I meet more people who just lost their jobs. I think I’ve know three people this year that got new jobs*, and one of them got laid off a month ago.
* I mean people that went from unemployed to employed. I actually know a fourth person who got a new job this year, my wife, but she switched from one job to another. No net employment gain there. (Yes, the old company did replace her. They also had another open full-time slot. They decided to combine the two full-time jobs into one part-time job. Let’s here it for efficiency!)
Ben:
I think our present problem is less that there aren’t enough jobs earning minimum wage or slightly above than that there aren’t enough jobs earning $20/hour.
Icepick:
The policies of the last several decades have encouraged businesses to have the smallest possible permanent full time payroll. That’s lead to the growth of temps and other forms of part time work. Consulting positions, outsourcing, things of that sort.
Dave:
True, but the $9 an hour wage isn’t a set figure. I advocate beginnng there as a “test” format to see how the labor market reacts, how popular it is and how much effect it has on aggregate demand. Once these can be observed there no reason the wage can’t be adjusted to suit society’s desires.
As I’ve noted before any wage floor can be exactly replicated via a tax-transfer program. Why should we do the above when we can simply implement a tax-transfer program that does the same thing without this dubious notion of “creating a job” (is there even a need) and supposedly “ending unemployment”? Not to mention the additional bureaucracy that such a dopey plan would also entail. And the tax-transfer plan would still have the same impact on aggregate (irrespective of how dubious it is) as well.
Seriously….all this convoluted bullshit is just not needed.
Turns out the UE claims was because 1 state did not submit their claims….bad data.
As for the CES employment numbers, I’m not going to jump to any conclusions given it is a single data point that is very high–i.e. it could very well be an outlier.
@Steve Verdon
We should end unemployment because it is socially destructive, because it forces the young to languish without developing skills and because it is enormously wasteful of resources. There is no rational argument for doling out dollars when we can allow people to secure their incomes through work.
Ben,
Sure it would be great to end unemployment. Problem is it would likely be extremely expensive to drive it to zero.
As for doling out dollars, what exactly do you think your idea is? Your “work/jobs” are made up. Work/jobs we currently don’t want.
“Work/jobs we currently want.”
Who is “we”? One need only google “Salton Sea” to realize there is extensive work to be done that isn’t.