7 thoughts on “I Heard It On The NARN”

  1. Dr. Jacobs is a big believer in the “correlation equals causation” theory of reality, isn’t he?

  2. I read that Julie Rosen has decided against running for governor. Sad to hear this. Rosen would have been a great addition to the current list of GOP candidates.

    Re: Jacobs NYT piece.
    The comparisons with neighboring / regional states / competitors is more interesting. It gets worse when you take the numbers apart. Not only is Wisconsin adding jobs below the national rate, and the regional rate, but the jobs being added are, for the most part, low-wage, low-skill jobs.

  3. Re: Rosen – she was the media’s darling. And whenever you start talking about Republican “media darlings”, Berg’s 11th law and its various corollaries apply with iron-clad consistency.

    When the likes of Steve Perry and Keri Miller start pining for a Republican, it’s because a) she’ll keep the base home and b) once that mission is accomplished, she’ll be easily destroyed among those who are left.

  4. Emery,

    Jacobs is such a DFL shill, it’s infuriating – but typical – that he gets the megaphone he does. And his piece is pure garbage.

    Example: Jacobs touts a Forbes article that showed WI was in the bottom half of states in terms of jobs created. He omits, or doesn’t know, that the previous year – as WI was trying to emerge from DFL lunacy – WI was in the bottom 20%. That’s a move in the right direction. He also claims Minnesota has a great business environment – but the Kauffman Index showed Minnesota’s entrepreneurial climate had sunk to the single worst in the United States.

    Wisconsin was controlled for most of 50 years by idiots, capped off by two years of Democrat-fomented chaos. Recovery takes time, and has just begun. Minnesota had a decade of mixed control – combinations of GOP governors and legislative chambers, including eight years with a competent governor.

    Economic trends take years, not months, to shake out. The policy consequences of complete idiot control went into effect in MN in August. Four months. Puhleeze. Tell Dr. Jacobs to get back to us in a year.

    Here’s a prediction; he won’t.

  5. “Not only is Wisconsin adding jobs below the national rate, and the regional rate, but the jobs being added are, for the most part, low-wage, low-skill jobs.”
    So you are in the correlation = causality club, too, Emery?
    Walker causes low job growth. I wonder how he does it?
    Raising taxes to increase prosperity is is neither keynesian nor classical economics. Let’s call it ‘magic-nomics’.

  7. The idea that raising taxes can increase growth is utter fantasy. Government spending, yes, under certain conditions, but high taxes magically conveying growth?
    If you have an economy that is running too hot and causing high inflation, one sure-fire way to slow it down and decrease growth is to increase taxes. This is true in both classical and keyensian theory. If Obama (or Jacobs) was in charge of a government, and they increased taxes too much and so got too much growth, too fast, how would they slow it down? By decreasing taxes? It’s bizarre, magical thinking.
    The reason why spending in a consumer-driven market increases growth is because every transaction is voluntary. No one spends a dime unless they get a dime’s worth of value (or more) from the transaction. Government doesn’t spend money to get value, it spends money to get political support. Hence it has no multiplier. If it taxes to redistribute, the money spent is taken from others, no increased multiplier. If it borrows money and distributes it to consumers, you get a multiplier, but only so long as consumers don’t slow spending in the belief that in the future taxes will be raised to pay for the money borrowed to distribute today.
    It’s ludicrous. Everyone should know this the way that they know the sun rises in the east. The post-WW2 period, which saw market economies boom and command economies stagnate, or worse, put an end to any controversy about which system created greater growth.

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